As 2025 begins, we'd like to say farewell to 2024 by looking the year's most-read articles. Controversy brings attention, and this top list definitely has its fair share. Big changes to poker rooms, cheating allegations, multi-million dollar theft, and debt scandals were viewer favorites—but there were glimmers of positivity too.
Here are the 10 most-viewed articles from the first day of 2024 to the last.
#10 – January 2024 High Stakes Player Analysis with NL20K Pro
To analyze the professionals, it's useful to be a professional yourself. In this post, Avr0ra and Brdz went through the results of 10 top professionals playing the high-stakes cash games. They examined winnings, hands played so far for the year, and talked about the signature aspects of each player.
The list included online crushers like Nacho12441, TaxHere, Barak Wisbrod, the late Matthew Bergart, and of course, LLinusLLove.
#9 – Luda Chris Caught Cheating on Hustlers Casino and.. Beeping?
Once you open this article, you'll understand the title's sarcasm. During a stream on Hustlers Casino, one of the show's long-time players, Luda Chris, was accused of cheating. The accuser wanted him checked for "beeping" and Luda even offered to be strip searched.
What was the reason? Pocket aces got cracked.
#8 – GG Network Skin PokerOK Declares War on Poker Stables
2024 brought a wave of changes on the GG Network. First, poker stables (also known as poker funds) were outlawed on the network. Closer to the end of 2024, GGPoker also introduced a new invitation-only high-stakes cash game system which rubbed many players the wrong way.
In this article, we looked at posts from one of the GG Network CEOs as he declared an all-out war on poker stables.
#7 – GGPoker Bans Superuser “Moneytaker69” After Security Breach
As poker sites fight to stop and ban cheaters, a few were able to slip through security and have disastrous effects on other players. Moneytaker69 was one of these cheaters, who managed to use a client-side vulnerability to gain hole card information in real time. The theory is that Moneytaker69 was able to see his equity against other players—not their exact cards—but still more than enough information to hold a huge edge in games.
GGPoker responded and confiscated the money, but not before some damage was done.
#6 – Tom Dwan's Debt Saga in 2024 & Joining the ACR Team
As one of the most well-known names in poker (for a long time), Tom Dwan's reputation was never really dragged through the mud—until March of 2024. Several people who were owed money came forward, airing their grievances on Twitter for the world to see.
Exact amount are tough to come by, but Doug Polk speculated that it was multiple millions. Jungleman and Haralabos Voulgaris were two others who Tom allegedly owed money to.
#5 – Is Poker For Smart People? A Study of Intelligence
Not all of 2024's leading articles were negative. This article answered a question that many of us have probably asked, but never had a real answer for.
Is intelligence the key to a high win rate? Are smarts super-important for being a superstar in this game? We found the answers.
#4 – LikeAA: "I've found hidden features in PokerStars and Partypoker more than once"
The creator of caption programs for major sites like PokerStars, partypoker, and 888poker spoke candidly about hidden features.
What kind of hidden features? Well, on partypoker, LikeAA found a way to collect gender information about players, while other poker sites gave up location information.
#3 – Bots on ACR: The Facts + Poker Community Opinions
In the first months of 2024, Americas Cardroom was in very hot water. Bots were discovered on the site and posted to the 2+2 forums. The amount that players were alleged to have lost was nearly $10 million, making it an eye-catching event in the poker world.
The first reported activity from these bots was all the way back in 2015, mainly focusing on Texas Hold'em cash games and MTTs.
What made this story even more incredible was ACR's response. Chris Moneymaker and Ebony Kenny created a tragic challenge, stating, “If you can make a bot, put it on WPN, and make it operate for 5,000 hands – bring it to us, show us. We’ll give you $100,000 on the spot and we’ll give you a job.” Read the full story to see how it ended.
#2 – High-Stakes Theft: Stefan11222 Loses $3M in Crypto (Full Story)
Stefan11222 is a mythical cash game player who experienced a big downswing in 2024. However, this wasn't from poker.
This tale has many twists and turns, but at the beginning, Stefan11222 accused his ex-girlfriend of stealing around $3 million in cryptocurrency. By the end of the saga, she wasn't as suspect, as Stefan switched his focus to another. We followed the entire debacle, using Stefan's own words from our GipsyTeam forum.
#1 – Matthew Bergart 1994 – 2024: High Stakes Reg Gone Too Soon
It's rather somber to have an article like this top the list, but their isn't a more worthy topic. A beloved member of the high-stakes poker community, Matthew Bergart, lost his life in 2024 after an armed robbery took place in Toronto, Canada. Matthew, just a visitor at the address and not the intended target, was struck by gunfire during a struggle.
