He should have made it more obvious
Sometimes someone does something and you just have to shake your head and ask, “What were you thinking?”
And that’s me right now, slumped in my office chair, facepalming as I wonder what in the hell Winamax sponsored pro Ivan Deyra was thinking earlier this month when he multi-accounted during the Winamax Series. He was quickly found out and promptly banned from the site. Obviously, Winamax also terminated his sponsorship deal, which was scheduled to end in June.
As often happens when someone gets caught cheating, what did Deyra in was that he succeeded. Had he lost while playing on more than one account, he might not have been noticed (it also doesn’t help that he is a visible member of Winamax Team Pro).
Deyra won the €2,000 Super High Roller event for €83,300, but the catch was that he did it using his father’s account, “MATIVANAO,” not his own “ValueMerguez” account. It appears that Winamax caught him fairly quickly, as players in the tournament received payouts from Deyra’s confiscated funds. The poker community, however, did not realize what had happened until late last week, when a poster on Club Poker, a French poker forum, said that a Winamax employee told him that Deyra had multi-accounted.
After that, players who received distributions from Deyra’s winnings put two and two together, realizing that the allegation was likely true. On top of that, someone noticed that the winning player, MATIVANAO, was a screen name comprised of Deyra’s name and his siblings’ names, so it had to be related to him.
Nice excuse, guy
Once the poker community realized the rumors about Deyra were true, he put out a statement admitting to what he did. He apologized, saying, “Neither [Winamax] nor I would have wanted this but it is so,” he said. “Today, with hindsight I recognize the cheating aspect of multi-accounting.”
Of course, this means that Deyra is either a complete moron or a liar, as even if one didn’t know that multi-accounting was technically against a site’s rules, one would absolutely understand that it was ethically wrong. And this dude is a sponsored pro, which is why I would lean toward him being a liar. He knew it was cheating.
He added that he was “searching within myself to dig into the reasons for this unforgivable and serious act,” but at the same time, he explained his reasons.
Deyra said that he had not made money at Winamax since becoming a member of Team Pro. He guessed that the reason for this was not because he was playing poorly, but rather because he was forced to keep the same screen name, whereas others could change theirs every six months. Because of this, any information he had on an opponent could become obsolete when they changed their name, but information his opponents had on him was always good. Deyra was, he theorized, at a competitive disadvantage.
He used his father’s account because he wanted to test his theory. Unfortunately for him, he will now get the chance to test it at another site because he won’t be on Winamax anymore.