Logo
external image

PlayOJO confiscated my funds for doing something they explicitly wrote was allowed, then edited their website.

xexe

xexe

Experienced Member
PAB Experienced PAB In Progress CM Veteran (5yr+)
Joined
Dec 16, 2018
Location
Sweden
A month ago, I logged onto PlayOJO to play blackjack. The next day, my account was closed. Their support finally got back to me 4 days later, stating that they consider counting cards a "forbidden activity", and thus reserve the rights to seize my winnings. Their official blackjack site (
You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.
) has a FAQ that had 5 questions (now 4). One of them was "Is card counting allowed at PlayOJO?", and the answer literally could not make it any more explicitly clear:

1782323410651.webp


They also had a page on their official website titled "11 blackjack tips - how to win at blackjack", where tip #4 was to learn to count cards, and tip #5 was to play blackjack at PlayOJO specifically.

So naturally, I was baffled when I read their email. I replied, sending 4 links from their official website where they state card counting is allowed at PlayOJO. And what they did next was thé grimiest thing I have ever experienced.

On the 2nd of June at 5 PM, they replied claiming that the text I was referencing was "taken from blogs and other websites", and that this was never published on their official licensed website. Very odd, since this was their reply to my email containing 4 links to their official licensed website. So I open my sent email again, double-check the links, and what do you know? Every single one of them had now been either deleted or edited! Everything relating to card counting being allowed is gone.

I coincidentally archived these pages locally at 11 AM, that same day. So at some point between 11 AM and 5 PM, they deleted every trace of card counting from their website & claimed they were never published in the first place. Just to give you an idea: They had a card counting guide & a general blackjack guide, both advising you to count cards at PlayOJO, both published in September of 2020. The card counting guide they completely deleted. In the general blackjack guide, they replaced tip #4 with a different tip:

1782319948919.webp


Here's from their official blackjack page (
You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.
), before & after the day they sent the mail claiming it was never published. Top image being the FAQ with the 5 questions, bottom one having one question deleted:

1782320602792.webp


They've also removed all card counting terms from their blackjack lexicon, entirely deleted their Swedish blackjack guide, even edited their French blackjack guides to no longer mention card counting. All of this can be independently verified by anybody via archive.org by selecting a date prior to the 2nd of June.

I decided to post this as like a general warning to others after finding out I gotta wait upwards 6 months to get my own money back (via ADR case against SkillOnNet /PlayOJO), or potentially even longer if they refuse to follow the ADR ruling (legal action). I get that the card-counting part in specific is irrelevant to almost everybody here, but a company that is willing to go through this level of effort to scrub their entire site, editing & deleting 6 year old articles & then claiming they were never published, all in an attempt to get out of paying 1 individual their own money, is not a site that I would recommend trusting with your money. And if you already do have money on PlayOJO, the only advice I would give you would be to withdraw it in smaller increments. I played blackjack on there regularly since november of last year, made 3 smaller withdraws of €50 without issue during this time. It wasn't until I attempted to withdraw my whole balance (€2300) that it became an issue.

For the sake of transparency, I'm also pinging @EGO. If anything I've written here is inaccurate or misleading in any way, please feel free to point it out.
 
lockinlove said:
File a PAB also message the playojo rep.
Click to expand...
Already did a month ago, and the PlayOJO rep responded with the same lie (that it was never published on the licensed site). I disproved it both with both screen shots & archived links and told him that one can't just delete it and then act like it never existed. The casinomeister team also asked him if he disputed my evidence, but he stopped answering. He was in the PAB at some point every single day, so he had seen my messages and the cm team's request for comment, but chose not to respond. So I decided to escalate to the designated ADR.
 
xexe said:
Already did a month ago, and the PlayOJO rep responded with the same lie (that it was never published on the licensed site). I disproved it both with both screen shots & archived links and told him that one can't just delete it and then act like it never existed. The casinomeister team also asked him if he disputed my evidence, but he stopped answering. He was in the PAB at some point every single day, so he had seen my messages and the cm team's request for comment, but chose not to respond. So I decided to escalate to the designated ADR.
Click to expand...
That sucks.

It really seems to be the wild wild west nowadays.

When you actually win, you never know if you will get paid and usually have to fight for it.

Even in accredited and licensed casinos, i have to fight for most of my cashouts. All casinos do now is stall, make up bs, delay, lie.

The industry is pretty garbage now
 
Haha thats wild you found it on their own site, best of luck that they come to some sort of private agreement, I imagine they don't want to admit the sites contents in any public manner as it may impact their relationship with providers etc or open them to liability for other advantage players they have banned.
 
teckiwi said:
Haha thats wild you found it on their own site, best of luck that they come to some sort of private agreement, I imagine they don't want to admit the sites contents in any public manner as it may impact their relationship with providers etc or open them to liability for other advantage players they have banned.
Click to expand...
I think it should be a public statement. If everything the OP said it correct, it's appalling what they have done. Dont open a casino if you dont like people winning
I would also expect the score of the casino in question to be downgraded.
 
SYPlayer95 said:
Is there a punishment for reps who blatantly lie to suit their own agenda? Just curious.
Click to expand...
Yes, that’s shite Customer Support and under normal circumstances we’d likely drop their Rating because of it. However, this case was pulled out from under us before were able to reach a conclusion.

xexe said:
Already did a month ago, and the PlayOJO rep responded with the same lie (that it was never published on the licensed site). I disproved it both with both screen shots & archived links and told him that one can't just delete it and then act like it never existed. The casinomeister team also asked him if he disputed my evidence, but he stopped answering. He was in the PAB at some point every single day, so he had seen my messages and the cm team's request for comment, but chose not to respond. So I decided to escalate to the designated ADR.
Click to expand...
FWIW I can report that this is a fair and accurate representation of the situation. That said, the OP decided to escalate their case to the casino’s ADR which took the matter out of our hands, not to mention scrapping two weeks worth of work on the case.

- Max
 
Last edited:
maxd said:
Yes, that’s shite Customer Support and under normal circumstances we’d likely drop their Rating because of it. However, this case was pulled out from under us before were able to reach a conclusion.


FWIW I can report that this is a fair and accurate representation of the situation. That said, the OP decided to escalate their case to the casino’s ADR which took the matter out of our hands, not to mention scrapping two weeks worth of work on the case.

- Max
Click to expand...

The last message I sent before escalating was:
xexe said:
The first thing I did after my account was closed was to contact the Swedish Gambling Authority to explain the situation (for advice, they don't handle disputes). I finally got an answer from them this morning, informing me about my consumer rights. They recommended I turn to ARN (the Swedish ADR), and with the information I now have, I feel very confident in this option.

I said last week that I would prefer to solve it here, and that is still true. But it has now been exactly 2 weeks since I opened the PAB. I don't get the impression that @EGO is here in good faith. He has been in the thread every day, but does not respond when I point out contradictions & untruths. Every single playojo-page I have linked to in this thread has been scrubbed from their website.

So I plan to give this PAB another 24 hours. I'm going to spend today sifting through videos & screenshots in preparation, and tomorrow before noon I plan to submit the case to ARN if nothing has changed here.

I want to thank the casinomeister team once more for your time and for trying to get a response. If you think there is a reasonable reason to wait longer before escalating this to ARN, please let me know. Otherwise, I think moving forward tomorrow is my best option.
Click to expand...

Somebody on the CM team was viewing the PAB thread after this was written and didn't say anything, so I presumed not much was going on behind the scenes.

Either way, perhaps you're right in that I should have been more patient. Having a casino confiscate money and outright refuse to reason is new territory for me and quite stressful, and I just did what I thought was the right move with the info I had.
 
The bottom line for us is that we have very limited resources and any time we spend on your case is valuable, AND it’s time we don’t spend on other people’s cases. So when you just skip off and turn it over to someone else you are — as far as we are concerned — saying “F you, I have no respect for your time or your efforts on my behalf”. As you might imagine we find this situation most unwelcome. Also depressingly common these days, but that’s another story.
 
Last edited:
FWIW the angle we were pursuing before our involvement was terminated was this:
  1. the “you’re free to card-count” article appeared on a blog.
  2. that blog was hosted on a legitimate PlayOJO site.
  3. we were pursuing the verification of 1 and 2.
  4. assuming the result of 3 was “yes” on both counts our position WOULD HAVE BEEN that PlayOJO was on the hook for what the blog had posted; PlayOJO was of course free to remove that article as they saw fit but up to the point where it was removed they would be responsible for what that article said, namely that players were free to card-count.
Once the case had been taken out of our hands we lost our bargaining position with the casino, so all the above was for naught and had to be abandoned.
 
Last edited:
xexe said:
A month ago, I logged onto PlayOJO to play blackjack. The next day, my account was closed. Their support finally got back to me 4 days later, stating that they consider counting cards a "forbidden activity", and thus reserve the rights to seize my winnings. Their official blackjack site (
You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.
) has a FAQ that had 5 questions (now 4). One of them was "Is card counting allowed at PlayOJO?", and the answer literally could not make it any more explicitly clear:

View attachment 222560

They also had a page on their official website titled "11 blackjack tips - how to win at blackjack", where tip #4 was to learn to count cards, and tip #5 was to play blackjack at PlayOJO specifically.

So naturally, I was baffled when I read their email. I replied, sending 4 links from their official website where they state card counting is allowed at PlayOJO. And what they did next was thé grimiest thing I have ever experienced.

On the 2nd of June at 5 PM, they replied claiming that the text I was referencing was "taken from blogs and other websites", and that this was never published on their official licensed website. Very odd, since this was their reply to my email containing 4 links to their official licensed website. So I open my sent email again, double-check the links, and what do you know? Every single one of them had now been either deleted or edited! Everything relating to card counting being allowed is gone.

I coincidentally archived these pages locally at 11 AM, that same day. So at some point between 11 AM and 5 PM, they deleted every trace of card counting from their website & claimed they were never published in the first place. Just to give you an idea: They had a card counting guide & a general blackjack guide, both advising you to count cards at PlayOJO, both published in September of 2020. The card counting guide they completely deleted. In the general blackjack guide, they replaced tip #4 with a different tip:

View attachment 222556

Here's from their official blackjack page (
You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.
), before & after the day they sent the mail claiming it was never published. Top image being the FAQ with the 5 questions, bottom one having one question deleted:

View attachment 222557

They've also removed all card counting terms from their blackjack lexicon, entirely deleted their Swedish blackjack guide, even edited their French blackjack guides to no longer mention card counting. All of this can be independently verified by anybody via archive.org by selecting a date prior to the 2nd of June.

I decided to post this as like a general warning to others after finding out I gotta wait upwards 6 months to get my own money back (via ADR case against SkillOnNet /PlayOJO), or potentially even longer if they refuse to follow the ADR ruling (legal action). I get that the card-counting part in specific is irrelevant to almost everybody here, but a company that is willing to go through this level of effort to scrub their entire site, editing & deleting 6 year old articles & then claiming they were never published, all in an attempt to get out of paying 1 individual their own money, is not a site that I would recommend trusting with your money. And if you already do have money on PlayOJO, the only advice I would give you would be to withdraw it in smaller increments. I played blackjack on there regularly since november of last year, made 3 smaller withdraws of €50 without issue during this time. It wasn't until I attempted to withdraw my whole balance (€2300) that it became an issue.

For the sake of transparency, I'm also pinging @EGO. If anything I've written here is inaccurate or misleading in any way, please feel free to point it out.
Click to expand...

1. when you were placing bets, what was your lowest bet and highest bet? (spread)
2. did you sometimes sit out to wait for the count to go up?. (wonging)
3. I'm not even going to ask about bj card counting software as you probably wouldn't want to say about that but they are out there and keep accurate count of any card counting.
4. did you by any chance use the HI/LO count?
5. do you know how many rounds you played in total?
6. good luck with the ADR case.
 
maxd said:
The bottom line for us is that we have very limited resources and any time we spend on your case is valuable, AND it’s time we don’t spend on other people’s cases. So when you just skip off and turn it over to someone else you are — as far as we are concerned — saying “F you, I have no respect for your time or your efforts on my behalf”. As you might imagine we find this situation most unwelcome. Also depressingly common these days, but that’s another story.
Click to expand...
I apologize if you interpreted it like that, that definitely was not my intention. Had I known that, I obviously would've waited longer.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason you can't just continue anyway? Not that it matters a great deal to me, I don't think EGO has any plans to reason anyway, and I feel very confident in the ADR case (there's apparently a chapter in the Swedish gambling law that targets this exact type of practice).

I'm just thinking for the sake of other users, given that a casino that behaves so egregiously is currently in the top 3 accredited casinos on Casinomeister.
 
xexe said:
… Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason you can’t just continue anyway? ...
Click to expand...
  1. When a player has their case in progress at multiple complaints services the operator will typically circle the wagons and take a highly defensive position against what they perceive as the player’s attempts to attack and/or bully them. In other words an arbitrator’s position is seriously undermined at best, or (typically) rendered useless. We don’t have the time or resources to waste on what will largely be a pointless exercise.
  2. The PAB Rules are there for a reason, in this case to prohibit exactly what is described in the above. Respect of the PAB Rules is all that we typically ask of a PABer, but if that’s too much to ask then we’ve got plenty of other cases we can pursue where the PAB Rules will be respected. To put it bluntly: you ignore our Rules, we ignore your case. That’s simple and fair as far as we’re concerned.
Would it have been worthwhile to have pursued your case? By all means, and we fully intended to. But when you, regardless of your reasons, wilfully damage our ability to negotiate a case — and with an operator like EGO whom we’ve known for a good many years we almost certainly would have been able to negotiate with them on your case — then you’ve effectively knee-capped us and our ability to do what we do. As previously mentioned, we’ve got better ways to spend our time.

- Max
 
Last edited:
maxd said:
  1. When a player has their case in progress at multiple complaints services the operator will typically circle the wagons and take a highly defensive position against what they perceive as the player’s attempts to attack and/or bully them. In other words an arbitrator’s position is seriously undermined at best, or (typically) rendered useless. We don’t have the time or resources to waste on what will largely be a pointless exercise.
  2. The PAB Rules are there for a reason, in this case to prohibit exactly what is described in the above. Respect of the PAB Rules is all that we typically ask of a PABer, but if that’s too much to ask then we’ve got plenty of other cases we can pursue where the PAB Rules will be respected. To put it bluntly: you ignore our Rules, we ignore your case. That’s simple and fair as far as we’re concerned.
Would it have been worthwhile to have pursued your case? By all means, and we fully intended to. But when you, regardless of your reasons, wilfully damage our ability to negotiate a case — and with an operator like EGO whom we’ve known for a good many years we almost certainly would have been able to negotiate with them on your case — then you’ve effectively knee-capped us and our ability to do what we do. As previously mentioned, we’ve got better ways to spend our time.

- Max
Click to expand...
Truly did not deliberately sabotage it, the last thing I said the day before escalating was "I plan to give this PAB another 24 hours. If you think there is a reasonable reason to wait longer before escalating this to ARN, please let me know. Otherwise, I think moving forward tomorrow is my best option.", which somebody on the PAB team saw but did not respond to.

Anyway, I 100% respect your decision, and I apologize again for my ignorance about how PAB works. I'm done gambling for the foreseeable future, so I likely won't need to use the PAB service again, but if I do, I'll know not to make the same mistake again!
 
xexe said:
Truly did not deliberately sabotage it …
Click to expand...

But you did violate the PAB Rules which, as I’ve explained, amounts to the same thing.

... which somebody on the PAB team saw but did not respond to.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but you have no idea what the circumstances there actually were. For instance I typically don’t get involved in cases that other PAB staff members are working on unless they explicitly ask me to. So, for example, if I had seen your “24 hours” thing I would have blown right by it because it wasn’t my place to jump into the middle of someone else’s case.

Also, and again, the PAB Rules tell you that we’ll work on your case and report back to you when we have info to share. Deadlines set by the PABer are not typically something we respond to because we have 50+ other cases on the go and those people need our time too. Someone setting deadlines it effectively trying to push their case to the front of the queue and, for reasons already cited, that’s not gonna work for us. If you want to go, go, but telling us “you have 24 hours to respond” is basically white noise that we don’t have time for.

Keep in mind that we’re looking at something like 800+ cases this year — a record number for us by far — we’ve got a very modest crew to do that work. This simply forces us to be lean and mean when it comes to our procedures; there’s no other way to handle that workload with the resources we currently have at our disposal. The bottom line is “do as the PAB Rules ask of you” or your case very likely won’t be a good match for us. In your case that’s a shame because we were in a very good position to get a proper settlement.

- Max
 
Last edited:
Was not trying to push my case to the top of the queue either, didn't even know there was a queue. I got the advice from the Swedish Gambling Commission to turn to ARN, and took it because I thought it was the best move. That was my thought process.

I'll see it from the bright side, if there is a huge workload right now, I freed up some space for others, because I'm fairly confident about the case anyway!
 
Update: They had a month to respond, waited until the very end of the deadline to... retract their previous lie and replace it with a new one.

They completely dropped the argument that it was never published (which was completely indefensible with the evidence I had submitted to the case) and now instead claim it was published by accident.

We're talking about over 10 different pages where they explicitly stated that card counting was allowed & encouraged, including both the very blackjack page where you play live blackjack, and a literal guide teaching you to count cards and encouraging you to do so at PlayOJO's online blackjack sitting on their site for nearly 6 years... by accident.

I cannot stress enough that I would urge anybody who currently has any amount of balance on PlayOJO to withdraw it ASAP to avoid getting into my position and having to go through the process of debunking barrage after barrage lies, for months on end just to get your own money.
 
Last edited:
satchnz said:
Sorry, late to this thread but how on earth do you count cards in online live blackjack? I'd imagine the deck penetration would be around 50% like most live online blackjack games?
Click to expand...
online you can avoid betting when the count is low and you can also use software to count and have 100% accuracy.
 
satchnz said:
Sorry, late to this thread but how on earth do you count cards in online live blackjack? I'd imagine the deck penetration would be around 50% like most live online blackjack games?
Click to expand...
Good question. And I wouldn't recommend it unless you're really really good at it, or simply trying to practice it (like me). In their ADR response, they also included the exact data for all my hands:

1785860477295.webp

For reference, at a true 3 you've got roughly a 1% edge, or probably even lower since online always has unfavourable rules (no re-splits, no surrender etc). I got in 8 out of 76 bets at ~1% edge. And I could've just as easily lost all of those, you're more likely to lose any given hand than win it, regardless of true count.

Nearly 60% of my bets were at break even or worse. Minimum bet size being €5, you can tell that I'm far from a perfect card counter, the "Negative"-section should be €5 average wager size and nowhere near €20 lol, but I constantly let cards slip when other players join my table.

I'm also down overall on card counting. Was up roughly €3k-4k until 4-5 months ago, when I had a session where I lost over €10,000 on 10bet in the course of one shoe. Was one of the worst days of my life lol

So yeah, summary: Would not exactly recommend unless pro or practicing, but after PlayOJO, I probably wouldn't recommend it even then. The tiiiny amount of EV you generate on the rare occasion a shoe (despite shite penetration) reaches 1% edge doesn't make up for the risk of a scam-casino like PlayOJO simply deciding to steal your money.
 

Similar threads

lockinlove
Player Beware Gamdom - The Tale of my Missing Balance
2 3
Replies
126
Views
8K
nisosbar
N
L
RESOLVED: All British casino - Withheld Funds?
Replies
32
Views
1K
satchnz
satchnz
T
Question 32 Red unresponsive
Replies
2
Views
7K
Thestump
T
E
Should My Bank Have Done More?
2 3
Replies
108
Views
11K
Educated_ant
E
S
PAB in progress 1xbet didnt pay my withdrawal for 4 days now.
Replies
9
Views
3K
slaman29
slaman29

Users who are viewing this thread

  • ... and 1 more.
    • Total: 6 (members: 3, guests: 3)

    Accredited Casinos

    Read about our rating system and how it's done.

    Actions
    winz.io
    8.7
    Thrill
    7.5
    Lussurio Casino
    6.8
    24 Casino
    8.0
    Bitkingz
    9.2
    Back
    Top