Match Indian Poker League has apologised on Twitter after the Indian poker news site, Poker Guru, advertised the launch of the new league including a host of star players included in the project.
When there’s a smell of gunpowder, you eventually find a gun.
Not for the first time, the image of the Match Indian Poker League (IPL) finds itself smelling like a boiled haddock, after the Indian poker news outlet Poker Guru ran an article on Match IPL falsely advertising a swathe of internationals stars appearing in the league.
The article in question featured here – summarised expectations for the event taking place in Mumbai’s Playboy Club on 17 & 18 November.
Somewhere in that article (the details have since vanished), the writer stated that Faraz Jaka, Mustapha Kanit, Luke Schwartz, Victoria Coren, Marsha Waggoner, and Kinichi Nakata would be competing in the league.
This statement caught the attention of Global Poker League (GPL) founder Alex Dreyfus, who contacted two of his GPL players (Jaka & Kanit) to ascertain if the article was correct, and they told him it was false. Dreyfus tweeted Poker Guru suggesting they check their facts. Jaka then tweeted Poker Guru to ask for his name to be removed from the article saying he had ‘no affiliation’ with Match IPL and ‘had never heard of them.’
Match IPL responded on Twitter:
This is to state that certain player names were used by MatchIPL unintentionally. The error is regretted & the names have been retracted.
Match IPL is the brainchild of Raj Kundra of Viaan Industries and Patrick Nally of the International Federation of Match Poker (IFMP), and the message tweeted has a very different flavour than a similar tweet sent out by Kundra in December 2016.
A Christmas ago, Kundra was forced to shut down his online poker project celebritypoker.in, launched from his company Satyug Gold Pvt Ltd. During the messy end to the whole thing, the Australian cricket legend, Shane Warne, responded angrily to press reports that he was an ambassador for the site. Kundra acknowledged that the statements were inaccurate, joking that he couldn’t afford Warne’s wages.
The Match IPL statement doesn’t suggest that the reports are inaccurate which tells me that they are taking responsibility for false advertising, and as Jaka points out, that’s not the brightest move with your launch a month away.
. @PkrGuru If they use pro names to build credibility w/o asking permission then not sure its a company id recommend any1 trust their $ with https://t.co/HS7ZZcbZ8R
— Faraz Jaka (@FarazJaka) October 13, 2017
