YouTube star Ludwig and prominent chess streamer Alexandra Botez have claimed a poker sponsor has withheld payments to them and other creators.
Ludwig was streaming on YouTube and answering questions from his live chat when one of them asked him which sponsor, out of all the ones he has worked with, he regretted the most.
The streamer answered: “The sponsor that I regret the most is a poker company I used to work with called America’s Card Room. I was only sponsored to play poker. They did have a casino. But I never got sponsored to play the casino. Only the poker.”
“Now you might think I regret it because I was promoting gambling or something,” he continued, adding “I didn’t give a f**k about that. I think poker is a dope game.”
“The reason I regret it is because that company refused to pay me out and the money that I earned playing poker,” Ludwig explained.
He concluded: “It was so f**king hard to pull the money out. If it’s hard for me, it means it’s hard for the other people who I was promoting to play poker. And so I stopped working with them because I think they’re kind of a dogs**t site.”
Timestamp: 1:37:45
After the clip surfaced across socials, Alexandra Botez responded via Twitter/X to make further accusations against the poker company.
“ACR hasn’t paid out dozens of creators for sponsored streams from well over a year ago, myself included. ACR contracted @EndGameTalent and blames them for ripping them off. While that complicates things, I spoke with ACR CEO who promised to make things right but instead ghosted. They are not trustworthy,” Botez said.
Ludwig has been no stranger to poker content. An avid player, he most notably hosted a $1,000,000 YouTube poker tournament back in 2022. This included some of the biggest streaming and poker stars, such as MrBeast, xQc, Phil Hellmuth, and Alexandra Botez herself.
Meanwhile, Botez has been mixing up her Chess content by also competing in various poker tournaments and streaming the broadcasts via her Twitch channel. On July 3, she dramatically crashed out of a high-stakes Las Vegas poker competition and lost $10K in a matter of seconds.