Dude plays like a lady: Winner of $30k Women's Platinum Pass on Pokerstars was actually male
In recent years, Pokerstars has been giving away something called a "Platinum Pass" as part of different promos, which includes a seat to a $25k-buyin live tournament, along with $5000 worth of hotel/flight/expense benefits for the trip.
They have an event planned for August 2020 in Barcelona, which may or may not take place, given the coronavirus situation.
On March 8, they held a special women's only tournament to win the Platinum Pass:
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Don’t forget, women also have another chance to win a Platinum Pass at PokerStars on International Women’s Day this Sunday (March 8) in the Women’s Sunday tournament.
The event will award a Pass to the highest-placing female, with two €1,050 PSPC direct qualifier tickets going to the second- and third-placed females.
To celebrate 25 years of International Women’s Day, and to ensure more players can take part in this weekend’s celebration, the buy-in has been cut by more than half to $22, and features one rebuy. Players must be female to play in the tournament and have their gender assigned as female in the “Settings” tab. Females who would like to assign their gender can contact PokerStars Support.
https://news.pokerstarsblog.com/en/n...um-pass/61543/
The tournament was won by someone named "ameliaroy007", a regular winner on the site. Second place was a female Pokerstars Pro, who was already getting a Platinum Pass. Third was a female recreational player named Senja.
Senja recently posted this on Instagram:
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I played $ 22 women’s tournament on international women’s day on PokerStars.
There was $ 30 000 Platinum pass added to the prize pool for the winner. It includes $ 25 000 buy-in to 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. Now I have $ 30 000 live tournament package. 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 few hours of cash games online, but not at all live games. 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.. let's start hunting the 6 million with thousand other players. #pspc #pokerstars #unbelievable @pokerstars
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Fht6Ql...d=yi4u2zvftytm
It's not clear how Stars investigated, but they ended up determining that, yes, ameliaroy007 was male. Supposedly people complained because ameliaroy007 was a regular, yet wasn't a known female pro player, so people got suspicious. Indeed, it looks like either "amelia" switched his gender to female for the event, or was always listed as female.
However, for some reason they did not ban this account for what he did, and instead just confiscated the $30k Platinum Pass. It also appears that he was allowed to keep the prize money, as Senja only got the $30k Platinum Pass, but did NOT appear to have been moved up to second place prize money, as would be expected if ameilaroy007 were disqualified.
