An unregulated, underground online poker club known as Pokerclub.ag promoted by Adnan “NYPokerKing” Mohammad has been accused of slow paying its customers, with some players saying they haven’t been paid at all.
The site was the subject of an extensive thread on the TwoPlusTwo.com forums, where a poster going by the name Wizard-50 shared images showing conversations from players who said they were owed money by the site, with one player – who was identified only as “Adam” – supposedly being owed more than $40,000.
Play Money Apps, Real Money Poker
Poker clubs typically work as private games that utilize free online software, such as PPPoker, in which some form of credits are used at the virtual tables. These credits stand in for real money that is often changing hands offline, removing the need for complex internet banking systems. The operators collect rake as normal, while players deal with agents to cash out when they wish to do so.
Essentially, this allows for online poker to be played in states and countries where the practice isn’t available, or where the legal situation has made grey market sites difficult and unwieldy to use. These clubs have made headlines in China, where authorities seem to be playing whack-a-mole in order to try to eliminate them from social media networks, but they exist in many other jurisdictions as well.
Pokerclub.ag seems to have attracted a fair number of players, thanks in large part to heavy promotion from Mohammad and others on Instagram. But for many users, it appears as though the actual experience of playing on the site didn’t match up to what had been advertised on social media.
Play for Pay
In the initial post, Wizard-50 shared the story of two players in particular, who were owed about $60,000 in total. In chat logs shared by the poster, Mohammad says that while all players will eventually be paid out, not everyone is treated equally by the site when it comes to the withdrawal process.
Understand that it is not required you play to get paid,” an unnamed Pokerclub.ag representative says in a chat log that is said to come from the player named “Adam.” “The level of play, determines how quick you’ll get paid. A player who is playing every day, contributing to the rake…is going to get priority over a player who is basically cashing out to play somewhere else, because that player is an active player.”
Many of the responses to the thread were stunned by the fact that players were willing to hand their money over to a site being promoted by Mohammad, who was convicted in 2012 on a federal grand larceny account – only the most recent run in with the law for the poker player.
“It always amazes me how these people in the poker community can get away with scamming without getting killed or at least broken knee caps,” wrote a poster named Kelvis.
