Hoax or for real? A remarkable Indian story

Online poker information sites were debating the veracity of what appeared on the face of it to be a pretty tall story this week concerning a reported $500 000 win on an unidentified Internet poker site....by an 8 year old Indian boy!

The story appears to have originated from a free-to-all blog on David Karp's Tumblr.com website, which is described by Wikpedia as "...a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users are able to "follow" other users and see their posts together on their dashboard."

Suspiciously devoid of the sort of detail that can be verified, the story claims that a legal suit currently running in New Delhi, India pits lawyers acting for an 8 year old poker prodigy against an unidentified online poker site that is refusing to pay out a win of 22,912,500.38 Indian Rupees (about $500 000).

Setting the background, the impoverished parents of eight-year-old Aashish Nanak from Chandigarh describe in the report how the toddler has been a computer prodigy since the age of 3, and a poker ace since the age of 6.

In his latest escapade he is alleged to have signed up to the poker site through his uncle, thus disqualifying any win due to standard industry T&Cs regarding underage play and account fraud. Quite how he won such a significant amount of money is not clear from the blog, which claims that the case is now in some unspecified court adjudicating the poker site's refusal to pay the 8 year old his winnings.

"Lawyers for the gambling website that cannot be named for legal reasons say that legally they do not have to pay out the winnings, as Aashish is under age, and are accusing him of entering false details," the blog claims, adding that the 8 year old's legal team are arguing that the registration details belong to Aahish’s uncle and that at no time was it stated that Aashish could not play in the games.

"They are also arguing that he had previously been paid smaller winnings into a legitimate online paypal account set-up for him by his uncle and that administration staff had confirmed that this was in fact within their guidelines," it continues.

It is also claimed that the boy was asked on several occasions on the poker site if he was underage by website staff, who thought the age of the boy was amazing and had nicknamed him 'littlepokerwizard'.

The case - on which InfoPowa has been unable to find any independent confirmation, apparently continues.