It’s that time of year when we look back at what we all went through over the past 12 months – the good and the bad! – and today the focus is on the (“alleged” says my lawyer!) bad guys of poker and their attempts to cheat the rest of us!
5 Marked cards at the WSOP
We start with a simple but very brazen cheating attempt from this year’s World Series of Poker – card marking, one of the oldest cheats in the book!
10 hands into sitting down at PLO8 $1500
EVERY A234 in both decks were marked, a woman who plays mixed grabbed both decks and was able to identify every A-4 from face down cards.
The floor replaced the deck and told us they were not going to investigate?!?! @WSOP
— Mike Holtz (@MikeHoltzPoker) June 5, 2024
Using a sharp fingernail to scratch aces, applying an ink that can be read using special glasses, it’s all been done before. Nobody does it quite like Martin Kabrhel, though, whose “mark or no mark” mind games are in a league of their own…
4 GTO at the table? Gtfooh!
The fear of players using the latest technology to gain an edge is never far away in modern poker, something we saw when an outraged James Chen spotted a potential cheat, again at this summer’s WSOP…
Caught a guy on @GTOWizard in the @WSOP 1k Mystery Millions NLH Flight A.
First photo was taken at Paris white section table 194 at 17:39. Despite the privacy screen protector, you can make out the GTO Wizard login screen. Second photo is for identification.
More details below. pic.twitter.com/G68cnwTPk5
— James Chen (@ChipBurglar) May 31, 2024
“… I notice the player on my left input his stack into a calculator app and divide by the big blind. He then opened GTO Wizard and was about to log in when I snapped the photo and confronted him,” wrote Chen.
Normand’s defence that he was just “caught changing my subscription and wanting to give my account to my housemate” was as flimsy as it gets. A floor warning that he “would be penalized on future offenses” seemed to do the trick, but we’ll be meeting GTO-abuse again soon enough.
3 Father and son cheats arrested!
Keep it in the family might be good business advice but not when it comes to poker cheating, a father and son duo outed for card marking all down the east coast.
Stay frosty my Tampa peeps.
Looks like a cheating duo is on the loose. Marking cards.
Caught at One Eyed Jacks in Sarasota. pic.twitter.com/NGBxz1uMx7
— Ondrei (@lowstakesdre) October 21, 2024
Using the age-old “invisible ink and special glasses” combo, the father (known only as Benny) and son have apparently been up to their tricks at public and private games for over a decade. The long arm of the law finally caught up with them in Florida…
2 $10million WSOP laptop controversy
It says something that a potential $10million cheating incident only makes number two on the list, but our number 1 is a humdinger, so the WSOP Main Event final table shenanigans only gets a silver medal!
Soon to become known as “LaptopGate”, Jonathan Tamayo running to the rail to consult GTOWizard guru Dominik Nitsche and 2015 WSOP Main Event champ, Joe McKeehen instantly went viral…
With a $10million top prize at stake, the trio ignored WSOP warnings of potential DQ and… got away with it!
The rule, announced at the start of the tournament, stated: “We do ask you to please do not use any type of poker solvers at any point in time at the table or in the tournament area. If you’re found using one of these poker solvers, there’s a possibility of being disqualified from this tournament.”
Cheating? Ignorance of the rule? Or simply exploiting a weakly-written warning? You decide!
1 GGPoker catch a $million bad guy
Top of the 2024 cheats goes to Francesco “forzaitalia” Garofalo, the Italian player screwing the $25k buy-in GGMillion$ SHR Championship for a monster $1,122,201 cash.
A quick look at the final table shows why suspicions were heightened, Garofalo downing some of the biggest names in the game…
So apparently GG banned winner of a $25k GGMillion$ SHR Championship and everyone laddered a FULL PAY JUMP. Don't know the reason. Never heard that name before so my guess would be multiaccounting?
Is this the largest single ban and refund in history of online poker?😱 pic.twitter.com/cQnt7LU0ii— MTT Database Review (@MTT_Data_Review) November 4, 2024
… but having every cent of his ill-gotten gains stripped from him and redistributed to the other players, GGPoker feeling the love from Patrick Leonard…
Well, that’s it for another year! What do you think the biggest cheating issues of 2025 will be? Let us know on our social media channels and remember, be safe at the poker tables!
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