At the end of August, Joey Ingram announced that Bryn Kenney would be joining him on the podcast and asked readers for help in compiling a list of questions.
Remember that in the spring, Martin Zamani put forward a number of serious accusations against Kenney.
Joey's followers did not disappoint .
– Well, questions... I forgot how crazy my audience is 🤣 It should be interesting. We will announce the date soon...
Many advised Joey against this venture, suspecting that Kenney would just chat with him. However, Joey promised to prepare carefully and ask all the uncomfortable questions. On the day of the broadcast, Ingram posted a screenshot with a plan for the podcast.
Ingram kept his word and really was extremely strict with Bryn. However, this did not gain much, Kenney was talkative as always, he praised himself a lot, but, it seems, he couldn't convince anyone. We have transcribed the main points of the conversation.
How the allegations affected Bryn's life
The last few months of my life were, shall we say, interesting. The accusations coincided with a period when I was working very hard on my new project. And I perceive it as a new experience from which something useful can be learned. That's how I try to handle any trouble. In general, I'm used to the negative in my world, before everything was limited to the Internet, but now the hate has become more widespread.
About Martin Zamani's accusations
I admit that I participated in the ghosting, but I categorically deny all accusations related to the software. Hundreds of people played under me, and only one now says that I forced him to participate in shamanic ceremonies or something like that. I did advise this to my players, but it was only advice, I never said: "You do it, or I don't sponsor you anymore." I have always been focused on self-development and I also push people around me to grow, sometimes even, perhaps, I took too tough a position. But I never told people what to eat, what medicines to take, and so on. I advised Martin to take up yoga and eat better, it seemed to me that this would be useful for his poker career as well.
Next, I would like to mention frog poison. This is an ancient tradition that is hundreds or even thousands of years old. Many people believe that it helped them. I also heard a lot of positive reviews and decided to check it out for myself. The effect was positive, so I shared my experience with some of my friends. I will never force people to do something that I have not tried myself. A lot of the players I sponsored didn't take care of their nutrition, fitness, or development. I sincerely wanted to help them develop both in poker and in life. Wasted my money and time on it. Throughout my life, I very often made mistakes with people, because of which I became bankrupt more than once. Over time, I begin to behave quite harshly towards people who are not interested in self-development. Why would I waste my energy on them? Martin is one of those.
On his role in GG
I first met the owner and top management of GG in March 2017. The meeting was organized by my friend Kitty Kuo. I wanted to open my own skin on their network, but at the meeting I realized how much headache it would be with a license, payments, security, and so on. This is where my interest faded. But a few days later, the owners of GG made a new offer – to become the face of the room. Prior to that, they planned to invite Johnny Chan to this role.
At first, they planned to make a room without a desktop client and abandon tournaments. But I convinced them that without a fully-fledged client, which has the ability to multi-table, a serious room cannot be created. Before I joined GG, the biggest tournament was $500 buy-in, $10k guaranteed. I explained that MTT is the foundation of poker marketing. He advised me to hold large series simultaneously with other well-known rooms. I helped with the schedule, the structure of the satellites, suggested what guarantees to put and so on. In November of the same year, we successfully held the first series with a $50 million guarantee. I also helped organize a high stakes cash game in the room, brought people, helped with transfers, and became a major affiliate. He worked around the clock, in fact, he held the position of general manager of the poker room. I note that at the time of my arrival there was no game at all.
I did not intersect with the security service in any way, I never participated in the discussion of bots, scammers and tipsters. When players shared their suspicions with me, I relayed their messages to SB. I have guaranteed the safety of funds to all my players. People were ready to play huge sums because they knew that in case of problems I would pay everything. But the purity of the game was monitored by other people.
About participating in a dishonest game
There was not a single case that, at my direction, there was some kind of soft play or fraud. I did ask my players to register for satellites and tournaments early enough to start the game. It is important to understand that during my career I have repeatedly run into millions of dollars of debt, but I have always been saved by the fact that I was honest in business dealings. As soon as I had money, they immediately went to pay off debts. I have always taken my reputation very seriously. And he was sincerely interested in the development of the GG room. The number of my players, and consequently, my income there, was constantly growing. Around the same time, I won a $1 million Triton. I was going through the best period of my career. It just didn't make any sense for me to get involved in some dubious business.
I myself have never used hints either, I don’t even know what they look like. If you look at my statistics online, I used to always have a stable graph at PokerStars. But now that the online game has evolved, I have a huge loss on GG. I spent all day sitting at the computer and making sure that there was an active game in the room. But I did not have any additional software, I received only the information that is available to everyone in the client. My account on GG has never been banned, and there was not even any suspicion; or if there is, I don't know about it. So the owners had no reason to doubt my honesty. According to my information, they blocked about 500 accounts for various types of fraud. And only one of my players got on this list, and later he was given back the ability to play. I can still play in the Triton series even though other players who are suspected of cheating have been banned there. I still communicate with GG management. In my opinion, all this is a strong proof that I am clean.
I was also accused of instructing my horses in satellites to shove any cards in order to rebuy and avoid overlays. But I don't really benefit from overlays or not at all, with the rebuy money coming out of my own pocket. So that doesn't make any sense either.
Correspondence with George Wolf
There was no real multi-accounting, which I am accused of. The thing is that at the very beginning it was possible to play on GG through different storefronts and create several accounts. Some players had 5-6 accounts. Ghosting was real, but these are isolated cases. And in 2018, I strongly opposed any kind of foul play, which is clearly seen from our correspondence with George. One day, two players who played low stakes for me made the final table of Millionaire Maker, they were sure that I would help them, but I categorically refused.
At this point, Joey interrupted Kenny:
– In your correspondence with George, you directly tell him to play one tournament at Party Poker from two accounts via Team Viewer. And you want us to believe that this happened for the first time and never happened again? What does it mean?
I didn't say it was the first time. Hundreds of players played for me, sometimes I helped myself, sometimes my other players did it. But mass ghosting, so that strong players finish playing for weak players at the first opportunity, never happened.
Relationship with Lauren Roberts
We met at the poker table. We became friends, and she said that the next time I was in Vegas, I could stay at her house. In the summer of 2018, I came to the WSOP and stayed with her and her husband for a couple of days, but they insisted that I stay for the entire series. Lauren at the time was in a very big game where you could lose or win a million in a session. I helped her a little with tips on the game. We got on well, constantly laughed, became true friends. I didn’t have thoughts of using our friendship for my own benefit, as she is now trying to present everything. For all the joint dinners, flights on private jets and everything else, I always paid for myself. There is not a single person in the world who could say that during our communication she spent more money on some common affairs than I did.
Naturally, I never put my players against Lauren to beat her. I, on the contrary, constantly gave her loans for an big online game. She claimed that there were no problems with money, and she would return everything at the first opportunity. At some point, her debt grew to $2 million. But she had a share from me and Sergei Reixach, and after our trip, the debt was reduced to $700k. Of this money, I did not receive a penny.
Lauren made accusations against me that contradict each other. It was as if I put my horses against her, and I myself played from her account. But I never even had a share of her action, not a single percent. A game was running, it was profitable for me, but there was no fraud.
During the podcast, Martin Zamani posted new screenshots of the correspondence with Bryn. For a while, Martin was a sub-affiliate of Bryn on GG and, according to him, he brought over 100 players to the room. But then his affiliate program was closed and all the players were transferred to Bryn. Kenney agreed to pay Zamani compensation, but never did.
In the podcast, Kenny replied that his own players began to complain about Martin, after which GG closed his affiliate program. Kenney himself has nothing to do with this. He ignored the question about the promised compensation.