What's up guys, Code Doug here, and we have some breaking news. According to Fedor Holz, GGPoker, the new owner of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the largest poker tournament series in the world, will begin to ban cheaters from playing in their events. Let's have a moment of silence for our fallen comrades.
All jokes aside, what exactly is going on here?
So, it started with a tweet from GGPoker where they tweeted, saying, "In collaboration with GTO Wizard, we have blocked 31 player accounts for violating our fair play rules. Together, we are continuously strengthening our security measures to protect the integrity of the game."
This is a strong tweet; you like to see tweets like this from poker companies, as opposed to some tweets that include goofballs with slightly different tones being used here.
Patrick Leonard quoted this and responded:
To which Fedor Holz, a GGPoker ambassador, said, "That's the plan and that's what will happen."
That, my friends, is a big piece of news because traditionally speaking, online poker and live poker were very much separated, and there were all these different entities. So, when a player got banned, it rarely impacted the other ones because if you're a company and someone cheats elsewhere, you can't really verify that you don't really know about the cheating; you don't have all the information. And so, you can't really ban them at your location.
It's kind of like, we're not just going to ban people at the lodge unless we knew for sure that there was cheating. Ali, you can't come play our tournament; so please don't try. A little bit off-topic, but Ali did try to recently play this tournament over at Champions Club in Houston, Texas, and ended up being sent packing back to the cage. So, we do see some operators taking these stances, particularly in notorious cases. But in general, it's tough for one operator to just believe other operators, and at the end of the day, most of these companies are just trying to generate revenue.
This is no longer the case anymore, as we're seeing a real arms race develop as a couple of the major companies in poker—WSOP and WPT—starting to consolidate power and assets and platforms with GGPoker buying the World Series of Poker and WPT launching Club WPT Gold online. Sometimes the truth hurts. I'm doing a challenge on that platform to win $100,000 in one month, and I'm giving it away to anyone that signs up and deposits using Code Doug.
So, WSOP has been purchased by GGPoker, and so now we're getting around that problem I mentioned where operators don't know it's the same operator. So, you know, you get banned in one, and then you get banned everywhere. And this is actually kind of a good thing for poker, where people that are cheating now are being removed from other areas where it used to be that you could cheat here, cheat there, and you have to get banned in all these different places. Well, now, because it's the same entity, they can remove you in both.
However, it does come with a major drawback, as just one operator can decide who plays or doesn't play. It opens the door for essentially whatever they think should go will go for people in many of the largest tournaments. So, for example, clear-cut cheating cases where we definitely want those people gone—that might be fair enough. But there could be scenarios that occur that are a little more up to interpretation. For example, and I'm not saying this is what GGPoker is going to do, but they did ban pros from playing in their high-stakes games online.
Would it be impossible for us to see something similar happen in certain select tournaments in the live poker realm? Probably not. But again, if they're going to take some of these things they do online and do it live, it would not be impossible that way down the road we actually see some similar types of constraints.
But for the time being, let's focus on this. So, we know that cheaters are going to start getting banned, but who is going to be banned and who is not going to be banned? Who will get to play, and who might not get to play? Well, today, I'm bringing you a tier list.
The "Who Should Be WSOP Banned" Tier List
- Tier1: Dead man walking—these are people that absolutely should be banned.
- Tier 2: Probably should be banned—basically people that have done enough that most likely it would be best just to remove them, but maybe there's not enough evidence today, who knows?
- Tier 3: It could go either way—these are people that maybe they should be banned, maybe they shouldn't be banned; maybe it's close—kind of the middling tier of our list.
- Tier 4: Probably going to be good people that are most likely going to be fine, but I could see the argument towards banning them as well. '
- Tier 5: People that we think should not be banned—and you have to wonder why are they on this list to begin with, and frankly, the answer to that is because it's more fun.
Justin Bonomo:
We're going to start this list off with a very famous high-stakes pro, Justin Bonomo. Justin was caught multi-accounting over a decade ago at this point, where he was using multiple accounts in the same tournament in order to gain an edge. Despite the fact he was caught red-handed, this guy shouldn't be banned. It's been plenty of years; he's done nothing unethical in a long time, and so he should be able to play. Even though he made a mistake in the past, I'm going to go ahead and put him on my F-tier on this list, which makes sense because Justin is F-tier in more ways than one. What can I say? I'm a monster.
Ali Imsirovic:
Our next candidate is Ali Imsirovic. This is one of the most well-known cheaters over the last few years. In fact, we did a video here on the channel about him that was quite popular; you might want to check it out. Anyway, Ali is someone that is a dead man walking. He's been caught cheating online; there were a bunch of stories. He did a YouTube video where he admitted that he was cheating, and in that video, he said—and this is true—because he "needed some money." You got to appreciate the balls to cheat like that. Look, everyone I know it seems bad that I cheated, but the only reason I did it was because I needed some income. So, if you really think about it, who am I to say that it was wrong when I needed your money? So, I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me for this thing. I will do again soon. Thanks.
Jake Schindler:
No list with Ali Imsirovic is complete without Jake Schindler. I think Jake actually has a bit better of a chance than Ali to get back in there. I'm going to go and put Jake down in the "probably should be banned" category. I know he also got caught and was in the whole Ali thing, but I do feel like he's been a little less under the pressure that Ali has. He's also kind of stepped out of poker entirely for a while, or so it seems, and there's also less proof about his cheating, including no ridiculous public apology where he says he cheated or says he basically cheated because he needed money. So, I'm going to put Jake in that "probably should be banned" category, but I could see maybe over time that softening a little bit. I don't know; we'll see how it all plays out.
Mike Postle:
This list would not be complete without probably the most legendary cheater of all time—the absolute most famous. We're talking about Mike Postle, who allegedly spent two years cheating at Stones Gambling Hall, where he had something very interesting in his cross that allowed him to win over $4 million playing in some incredibly small-stakes games. I don't think there's that much argument here; I think we know exactly what tier this guy's going to go on. Anything less than "dead man walking" would be impossible.
Men Nguyen:
Men "The Master" Nguyen has made headlines countless times for angles and allegations and all kinds of things to the World Series of Poker. I'm going to go ahead and put him on the "probably should be banned" category now. He's a bit of a different flavor than some of these other ones—whether it's live cheating or RTA—but if we have people that are sketchy and we've seen them do sketchy things over years, are those people really who we want to have in our tournaments? I lean towards probably not. So, I'm going to say "probably should be banned," maybe a stern talking to, and if there's another infraction, he's banned. But at the end of the day, I don't think the tournament scene would be a worse place if Men wasn't in it, although they would be substantially worse if Men weren't in it—those would be some small fields.
Robbi Jade Lew:
This is going to be a controversial one, but Robbi Jade Lew—where should she go on here? Of course, everyone knows about Robbie from the infamous Jack Forehand over on Hustler Casino Live, where she ended up giving the money back to Garrett Adelstein. Should she be banned from the World Series of Poker? Well, this might be a little bit controversial, but I do think that she actually should probably not be banned.
I think there are two reasons why: the first is that there is still some doubt out there as to whether she cheated or not. I have made my opinion very clear on this channel that I think it is most likely that she did, however, it was just one individual instance, and because of the doubt involved in the situation, I don't know if it's enough for us to be able to start banning people. This is in contrast to the possible situation where, because of the statistical chance of him winning that much for that long and the damning nature of those hands, it is a tremendously different situation.
Also, we have to look a little bit at what's the threat level of the person in the tournament. Really, Robbi Jade Lew is not able to cheat in these tournaments. Let's say hypothetically she did cheat in the Jack-Four hand and she knew the cards well; she's not going to be able to do so here. You could perhaps also make that argument for Mike Postle.
Russ Hamilton:
This one's going to be an open and shut case. Russ Hamilton from UltimateBet cheated using everyone's cards; he had access to the software to win their money. I don't even see a reason to continue; I think we know what tier this guy's going in.
Nacho Barbero & Ebony Kenney:
This brings us to the ACR crew, which has been making waves last few weeks. Nacho Barbero had GTO Wizard up in the background while playing, and also an Ebony Kenny post that resurfaced—I believe this one's actually from more like a half year ago—where she had some ranges up in the background while streaming. I just don't think that this is on the level of almost any other things that have been happening. Of course, you should not have this stuff up if it's against the site terms of service, but it does remain unclear if they were using it while playing. And I also think having a chart up in the background should not be a basis for banning people from the biggest live poker series in the world. Perhaps if there's a recurring theme to these things, then we upgrade the charge, but in my book, these people should not be banned from the WSOP.
Jonathan Tamayo:
Next up, Jonathan Tamayo, who won the World Series of Poker Main Event in controversial fashion last year—I'm also going to say should not be banned. Because while what he was doing did violate the terms of service, and he's going over and getting some essentially in real-time coaching from solutions on the rail, given that no one even stepped in to do anything about it, and it was the largest stage in the world, I would say that he probably thought that it was just fine to do so. So, I'm going to say should not be banned.
That said, I can see where this is going—where if I'm going to be kind of lenient on some of these things, or rather GGPoker is going to be kind of lenient on some of these things, it can get out of hand quickly. So, we will have to figure out what is the line in the sand.
Worm:
Another open and shut book—I think Worm from Rounders. Now, I looked at his history of play, and it does appear to me like this guy is pretty likely to continue cheating. I think we got to do the right thing and make sure we don't let Worm into our tournaments, because that guy has quite the sleight of hand.
For cheaters, obviously, we talked about all these cheating instances over the last several years. But what about scammers? Should scammers be allowed to play? Yes, there is a difference between cheaters and scammers. Cheaters are impacting the game integrity; scammers, however, are just out there trying to steal people's money. Generally speaking, I think poker rooms should stick to just banning cheaters.
However, when scammers get bad enough, should you go ahead and ban them as well? There is some good logic both ways. You protect your players by not allowing them to get scammed, and so maybe it would make sense to ban these people too. But again, it becomes a bit of a gray line, as it's not exactly clear what happened in some of these scamming instances.
Now, there are some people that we can think of where we're pretty sure that some scamming took place, and there are some debts that maybe should have been paid, or were some other situations where some backing arrangements went south. But all of those things said, I don't know if these people should be banned merely for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, because that's how low the goddamn bar is in this godforsaken industry.
So, we're not going to go in depth on the cheaters, and I'm going to go ahead and say this is my tier list. As we can see here, a lot of people in the "probably should" or "really dead man walking" category, and plenty of people that I think should be allowed too. I don't really have anything in the middle here; I think it's all kind of clear-cut. But I would be interested to hear some cases.
This tier list actually reminds me of a tier list of the best states to live in in America—a recent tier list I put together where 46 states actually ended up in the S-tier as places to live, and four states—I'm looking at you, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Michigan—ended up being in the F-tier because they do not have access to play with the worst players in the world over on Club WPT Gold. So, I think we all know what tier those states should be in.
