Last updated on December 3rd, 2022 at 04:50 pm
Nemo Zhou, a female chess grandmaster, won a seat for the upcoming WPT World Championship. However, she announced she would give out her seat via a contest. Thus, it led to a poker contest prize scandal.
In December, Wynn Las Vegas will host the WPT World Championship. It is the first ever live poker tournament with a $15 million guarantee.
As a result, many industry professionals and influencers, such as Nemo, have participated in online tournaments in which they may win a seat and travel costs to the $10,400 buy-in event.
However, in this situation, many poker players believe that she handed away the WPT package in a dishonest manner. Some even accused her of fixing the competition.
Poker Contest Prize Scandal
According to casino pay per head services experts, it all started when Zhou won the $12,000 prize while live-streaming her game after rebounding from a significant heads-up disadvantage. She then shared specifics about how to win the contest on Twitter, which included watching her upcoming video and being one of the first ten people to comment on it using a unique code word revealed inside the film.
According to casino software reports, she would choose one individual from those ten remarks who she believed was most deserving of the costly gift. Unaware of when the video will be released, many people spent hours checking her page, hoping to leave a comment with the code word in time.
The woman’s chess grandmaster announced Thursday that she would donate the WPT World Championship package to Alex Epstein, a World Series of Poker bracelet winner. He’s also known in the poker world as Thallo.
Online casino platform operators said Thallo was one of the first ten people to remark, making him eligible. However, many people are skeptical that the event was legitimate. Some people pointed out that Thallo was Zhou’s poker tutor. Also, some people said he was her boyfriend.
Feeling the Heat
Following some criticism from poker Twitter critics, the contest’s presenter stated that the next time she offers a giveaway, she would choose the winner from a hat, which did not go over well with her.
Another component that didn’t go well for the contest winner and chess player was Thallo’s apparent editing of his statement in reaction to the giveaway video. It led some to suspect that some criminal activity had occurred.
Thallo acknowledges editing the statement in another tweet, which has since been removed but caught in a screenshot. However, he clarified that he commented as rapidly as possible to guarantee he was in the top 10 and then changed it to include the code word.