Global Poker Index, official partner of the 2015 WSOP, is apparently stiffing players out of WSOP seats from contest

[Dan Druff]

Someone should bring this to the attention of Effel/Palansky/Stewart. While the WSOP itself isn't at fault for any of this, they should know about the shadiness of their new partner Global Poker Index (GPI).

Here is a long writeup of the situation: http://www.bigcockpoker.com/?p=408

Below is a summary of the situation.

In June 2014, GPI put out press releases regarding their "Challenger Cup", a ranking system for low and mid stakes tournaments. They announced that the top ranked players in Asia, North America, and Europe would each receive a 2015 Main Event seat (for a total of 3 seats).



Here are two such press releases:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...262862261.html

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2014/0...-cup-18504.htm


Erwann Pecheux finished 2014 as #1 in Europe (and the world), while Aaron Massey (the author of the blog linked above) was #1 in North America. Each should have received 2015 WSOP seats for this.



Interestingly, Massey didn't even known about this throughout 2014, but that didn't matter. He was still entitled to it.

Erwann Pecheux contacted Massey to both let him know that he had won, as well as inform him that it seemed GPI was stiffing them of the seats they won.

Apparently Alex Dreyfus (CEO of GPI) then tried to severely change the terms when he was discussing the prize with Erwann:

Erwann had another round of emails with Dreyfus and forwarded them to me. Although Dreyfus had originally said there were no prizes, he changed his tune and informed Erwann that indeed he/we did win the package, but that it was subject to terms and conditions. These terms were that our buyin was a “stake” from GPI and not a prize. If we redeemed the $10k seat it would be under a 35%/65%GPI staking deal that included media and patch requirements. These terms and conditions had never been posted anywhere on the GPI website at anytime ever, and still were not posted even after the last email was sent from Dreyfus to Erwann explaining the terms. I searched for terms and conditions throughout the website and they were not posted.

So basically it changed from a free WSOP Main seat to a 35/65 staking deal (that is, 65% for the player) which also required wearing patches and doing media interviews.

The change was cited as a "terms and conditions" matter, but no such terms were posted on the website throughout 2014, and in fact still hadn't been posted yet when Dreyfus informed Erwann about them.

Dreyfus also changed the 65% to 55%, seemingly on the fly. From two different e-mails to Massey:

... we do pay upfront (end of june/early of july) the $10,000 buy for 2015 WSOP Buy-in, with a ‘staking’ deal where you pay 100% of the buy-in but get only 65% of the winnings.
– you have to commit to a certain amount of interviews/social media/etc ….
GPI and myself, are committed to promote players and invest in some opportunities as you can see, I’m not sure what the others ‘guys’ said, but rather ask us directly than listening to gossips.

Best,

Alex

hi Aaron,

Mistake from my team, its not 65 but 55% (they wrote 45+65 =100 … which is unlikely )

www.globalpokerindex.com/challenger-cup/terms/

Sorry for the misunderstanding

Alex

The problem is that these "terms" were added on June 10, 2015. They did not exist on the website before that.




From GPI's own page, notice these two screen shots -- one from before Massey was e-mailing with Dreyfus, and one after. You'll notice in the "before" there was no hyperlink to the Terms and Conditions page, whereas in the "after" screenshot, suddenly there is. That's because Dreyfus invented the terms and conditions on June 10, 2015 -- almost 6 full months after the contest was over!

[Dan Druff]

And what about the 2015 winner? After all, we're almost halfway through 2015, so there is obviously someone leading the pack at the moment, thinking they might win a 2016 WSOP Main Event seat.

Nope!

Apparently they are going to get screwed, too.

On May 31, 2015, Alex Dreyfus posted on 2+2 that a WSOP Main Event seat will also be awarded next year to the 2015 Champions Cup winner:



... yet in an e-mail to Massey on June 10, 2015, he denied knowing where claims of a 2015 prize came from -- even though he posted about them himself just 10 days earlier!

We haven’t make any statement re: Challenger Cup 2015 so I don’t know where this is coming from.

This is shady beyond belief.

The WSOP needs to sever ties with these slimeballs immediately.

[Kevmath]

Shortly after Massey's blog and the thread on 2+2/Twitter outcry, Dreyfus said he was going to honor the three seats awarded to the 2014 Challenger Cup winners (Dean Blatt won the Asia Challenger Cup seat), without the staking "agreement", suggesting they donate a portion of the winnings to charity.