Ivan Deyra kicked off Winamax after winning a major tournament on his father’s account
Winamax Team Pro Ivan Deyra played a recent major online tournament using two different accounts. That decision has cost the French tournament specialist dearly.
Deyra admitted to playing the Winamax Series €2,000 Super High Roller on two different screen names, a tournament which he won for €83,300. Deyra took the win using his father’s Winamax screen name, however, after busting out with his own account earlier in the tournament.
As a result, Winamax cut ties with Deyra after the multi-accounting tactics came to light. PokerNews France first reported the story earlier this week.
Deyra’s poker resume includes just under $1.4 million in live tournament earnings. His prowess in both live and online tournaments caught the eye of Winamax, an online poker network available throughout the European Union.
Deyra signed on as a Winamax Team Pro in 2017. That relationship has now come to an end, however, with the poker network ending the sponsorship and banning Deyra from the network.
French poker forum breaks the news of Deyra’s downfall
PokerNews reports that French poker forum Club Poker first broke the news about Deyra’s disqualification from the tournament. The €2,000 Super High Roller was won by ‘MATIVANAO,’ which turns out to be a screen name registered to Deyra’s father.
The Winamax security team noticed suspicious activity from Deyra’s normal account and the ‘MATIVANAO’ screen name in the tournament. Players posting on Club Poker reported the news of Winamax issuing refunds based on Deyra’s fraudulent win.
Club Poker forum members also deduced that the ‘MATIVANAO’ screen name was an anagram of initials of Deyra’s family members. The forum thread also noted that Deyra’s normal screen name had advanced to multiple Day 2 flights in other Winamax Series events, but the account sat dormant as those tournaments played out.
Participants in the forum thread eventually put the pieces together that the tournament refunds, along with Deyra’s now dormant account, were related. Winamax banned both accounts involved in the multi-accounting incident and ended Deyra’s sponsorship immediately.
Deyra releases a statement explaining his actions
Deyra made a statement on Club Poker explaining his actions. He states that he felt the firing from Winamax was a “very heavy” but “logical and understandable” result of the multi-accounting.
The French pro fully admitted to the multi-accounting, saying that he was “searching within myself to dig into the reasons for this unforgivable and serious act,” according to PokerNews reports of the statement.
Deyra’s statement went on to explain the rationale behind the multi-accounting attempt. A standard Winamax account allows players to change screen names every six months, allowing for only limited database statistics collection.
Once a player changes their screen name, any data collected on that screen name disappears. As a known Team Pro, however, Deyra didn’t have the luxury of changing his screen name, allowing opponents to collect three-plus years of playing tendencies on him.
Deyra’s statement indicated that the multi-accounting tactics were made in an attempt to see if his results would change if other players didn’t know who he was. It worked in a sense, as Deyra won an €83,300 score in the High Roller.
That attempt resulted in great consequence, however, as Deyra finds himself without a poker sponsorship for the foreseeable future.
Featured image source: Flickr/World Poker Tour
