International Women’s Day Platinum Pass winner turns out to be a he
PokerStars have apparently disqualified the winner of their International Women’s Day Platinum Pass tournament – who played under the username ‘ameliaroy007’ – for being male, with the 3rd placed finisher now taking the $30,000 top prize…
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Fht6Ql1Fi/?igshid=yi4u2zvftytm
PokerStars themselves have not made any public announcement of the revised results, nor have they responded to VIP Grinder requests for comment.
However, Senja V’s Instagram post details what happened following the IWD2020 Sunday tournament held on March 8th…
“I played $22 women’s tournament on international women’s day on PokerStars. The poker room added a $30,000 Platinum to the prize pool for the winner. It includes $25,000 buy-in to the live tournament, flights, hotel, events and some money to cover expenses.
“After many hours of playing I end up to be 3rd out of around 500 buy-ins. I was very proud of this, even though Tapio was mostly just annoyed that I didn’t win. 😊
“Well, last Saturday I got some news. The winner was disqualified since she turned out to be he. The second one was PokerStars pro-player, and she already had a Platinum Pass. So, the next one was me.”
The 2nd-placed player mentioned above, Georgina ‘GJReggie’ James, streams her PokerStars tournaments and the red spade site tweeted out her close finish against ‘ameliaroy007’…
A #PlatinumPass for $22! 🤑
Congrats to ameliaroy007 on taking down the #IWD2020 Women's Sunday. 👇Congratudolences to our own @GJReggie on the 🥈. pic.twitter.com/7q2sENqkdx— PokerStars (@PokerStars) March 9, 2020
Inconsistent PokerStars Policy?
As you can see in the lobby image below, the rules on gender were clear enough from the outset…
‘Note: This tournament is only for female players. Male participants will be disqualified and will forfeit any prize with no refund of the buy-in’
It’s not entirely clear, however, what PokerStars penalized the ‘ameliaroy007’ account for.
A 2plus2 forum discussion of the incident raises a very valid point that if the player account was found to be male-registered, then not banning it completely – as seems to be the case – is rather inconsistent.
If it was a male player using a different account for the IWD win, then multi-accounting should be an automatic account ban.
PokerStars seems to be less-than-keen on filling in the gaps in the story. We are reduced to conjecture, although it’s good to know that the rules are at least being enforced.
Is there a need for women-only events?
It’s far from the only case of women-only events being hijacked by the stupider sex.
In 2010 at the WSOP, Shaun Deeb dressed in drag for the $1000 buy-in Ladies No-Limit Hold’em Championship event, which included at least five other males.
Deeb claimed he was doing it to highlight the fact that males and females should not be playing separate events, and that Liv Boeree had helped him with his attire.
Many players, however, were incensed by his actions and WSOP Communications Director Seth Palansky told Cardplayer magazine that “suspensions or bans from the WSOP would be handed out to the interlopers.”
French player Vanessa Hellebuyck won the event and the gold bracelet. She won the $192,132 first prize ahead of 1053 other entries.
As for the woman who is now the proud new owner of a PokerStars Platinum Pass, Senja V from Finland, it will be a whole new experience to take her poker on to the live stage.
As she admitted in her Instagram post: ‘…Next August I’ll be playing poker with professionals in Barcelona (if the corona doesn’t postpone the event). My experience with poker is minimal, under 10 tournaments and just a few hours of cash games online, but not at all live games.
She added: ‘All of my gaming counted together might be around 100 euros. Well, now I know what I’m studying these next 5 months. I still can’t believe this, and I’m scared like crazy…’
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