The 5 biggest scandals in online poker

Earlier we talked about cheating with online poker , now we have arrived at the 5 biggest scandals in the world of online poker. Over the years, there have been a lot of scandals related to online poker. We have tried to make a top 5 of the biggest scandals that have occurred in the last 20 years.

One of the biggest scandals that has occurred in online poker happened in 2007 at Ultimate Bet, which was a big player at the time. online poker games . Ultimate Bet was one of the big names in the online poker world with Partypoker, Absolute Poker, Fulltilt Poker and Pokerstars.

In 2008, it was revealed that a player named “POTRIPPER” was active, which gave fellow players the impression that he could see everyone's cards at the table. This is because the player makes weird calls and other decisions that didn't make sense unless you can see the opponent's cards. The player also always knew how to bluff at the right time and always bet big when the opponent just had a worse hand than the POTRIPPER himself.

In the end, Absolute Poker revealed that there was indeed a super account that had the power to see other players ' cards. The online casino eventually paid back $1.6 million dollars to the players who were disadvantaged.

Not much later, a similar account appeared on Ultimate Bet called “NioNio”. This account also showed striking behavior that corresponded to the previously mentioned account “POTRIPPER”. Because of this, Kahnawake Gaming Commission decided to investigate. After this investigation, it turned out that the account had been working on a super account since 2005. The owner of the account was Russ Hamilton, who at that time was a well-known poker player who managed to win the Main Event of the World Series of Poker in 1994 with a prize money of $ 1 million and his weight in silver. With his super account on Ultimate bet, Hamilton finally managed to win $21 million dollars through this way of scam.

In the end, the player never paid the money back, Hamilton withdrew from the poker world and never played a poker tournament in public again.

Black Friday has a good name in Retail, but in poker, black Friday refers to a black day for poker. On april 11, 2011, the biggest poker sites; Pokerstars, Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet and Full tilt poker went black. The domains of the website were seized by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for misconduct at these companies.

The whole poker world was in shock, because there was a lot of uncertainty. A lot of poker players had large amounts of money on this website, some also lived from this and got into money problems because they no longer had access to the money.

The DoJ found out after investigating that the 4 previously mentioned websites had a kind of pyramid scheme. More and more money was deposited by players, and other players were paid with it again. However, there was not enough money to pay all the players. Poker players Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer and (not unexpectedly) Russ Hamilton were the face of Full tilt poker and were involved in these scams. These players were well-known in the poker world and forced the players to deposit money at full tilt. As a result, many players lost their confidence.

The future of online poker was then also heavily on the line and confidence had dropped to the 0 point. In the end, Pokerstars was the only one to survive this black Friday and was able to repay all its members properly. The company also eventually took over Full tilt poker allowing players to get their money back there.

For players with money in their account at Absolute Poker / Ultimate Bet, things turned out much less well. Many of them never got their money back.

Since then, the poker landscape has changed forever. Especially for American players. Players from the United States are only allowed to play at websites from America itself, and cannot participate online in tournaments where players from other countries also participate.
In the end, there will never be another online casino games provider of poker in the US market with the great that Pokerstars or Full Tilt Poker had

Backing a poker player is quite normal in the poker world. This means that someone, or several people (partially) pay the buy-in of a poker tournament for another player. This player must then give a portion of the winnings to the person or persons who backed him.

For example, this often applies to more expensive tournaments, poker players sell part of their buy-in to run less risk. For example, Jamie Gold started the WSOP Main Event in 2006 with a buy-in of $10,000. To spread the risk, he sold 50% of his action to Crispin Leyser, in return Leyser would receive half of the money won. After days of playing poker, Gold finally won the tournament, but then it was all about the money. Gold had won $12,000,000 and was not waiting to give half to Leyser.

Gold was not one of the most popular players anyway because of his brutal and noisy way of playing. This got even worse when he didn't want to pay out his backer. Leyser therefore filed a lawsuit against the main event winner, which seized the $6 million that Gold had yet to receive from the tournament organization. One of the reasons Leyser managed to win the lawsuit from Jamie Gold was a voicemail from Gold on the day of the final stating that Leyser would get half the money he would win. In the end, the 2 came to a private agreement, of which it is unknown how much money Leyser ultimately received.

However, this was not the first, but certainly not the last time that there will be a dispute over the payment of money to a backer. However, this case symbolizes all poker players who do not want to share their won money with the investors in their tournament. This incident is therefore in the top 5 scandals in poker.

Once in a while, a new poker player comes along who manages to make a name for himself in a short time. So Isildur1 came out of nowhere on the high stakes poker from Pokerstars, and managed to know all the big names in the scene. Previously, Tom Dwan did the same and in 2010 there was another new talent that would invade the poker world with his talent.

This talent was Jose Macedo, who played online poker under the name Girah. This talent, before revealing his identity, was already active as a player when he was still a minor. Poker pro Dan Cates took Girah under his wing as a protégé. This Cates was convinced that Girah would be the next best thing that would make Girah one of his students. Girah and Dan Cates would then build a strong bond. Because Cates is a well-known name in poker, Girah quickly gained the trust of other high stakes players.

Girah quickly made a name for himself in the poker world and quickly managed to work his way up in the various limits. When Macedo turned 18, he was able to reveal his identity and then also did his story. However, soon there were stories about the player.

The player was active in various strategy groups. Something that is normal in poker, players meet online to exchange knowledge and thoughts. Nothing crazy, until Girah advised players from this strategy group to take on a poker player named sauron1989.

Girah then wanted to watch via skype with his friends from the strategy group, so he could see the cards. This is more common in online poker, so there were no suspicions at that time. What the players didn't know was that Girah was actually behind the account Sauron1989. As a result, the account Sauron1989 was able to win every time from the players whom Girah sent to him to play against. Because this Girah could always see on skype which cards the players from his strategy group had.

In the end, this began to stand out and the members of the group Girah managed to link the account Sauron1989. However, the entire poker world was in great shock, as the player put his reputation and career at risk with these scams. This while Macedo did so well and had a lot of talent to be able to win in a fair way.

When the player was confronted, the Portuguese stated that he was doing this to help a friend. He had introduced this friend to online poker, however, he only made a loss. This made Girah feel guilty in his own words. Which made him come up with this kind of scam. In the end, the account Sauron1989 managed to win about $30,000 dollars, something that is a pittance with the potential that Girah had.

In the end, Jose Macedo disappeared from the poker world, as a result of which it seems that the player threw out a very promising poker career for only thirty thousand dollars.

Nothing is as bad as getting money from a person when you see that person spending money and pretending there is nothing wrong. This kind of thing happened in 2016 when Chris Ferguson, one of the protagonists of Full tilt at Blackfriday, reported to the WSOP. Chris Ferguson appeared out of nowhere at the WSOP, one of the biggest poker tournaments on Earth. Without offering any explanation or apology about what happened to Black Friday, he started playing his tournaments here. By the way, he did not do this undeservedly. However, poker players who still had to get money from Full Tilt were furious and wanted the organization of WSOP to intervene, but this did not happen.

This is to the great anger of the players. Ferguson, however, just went ahead, and avoided interviews and did not speak in public. He even knew 4 ^e in the $10,000 6-handed no limit tournament, which accounted for a prize of $183,989.

A year later he showed up again, this without giving any explanation about the entire situation that had occurred in 2011. In 2017, he did even better at the WSOP than the year before. He managed to buy far in multiple tournament including a 4 ^e place which was good for $150,000 and a 2 ^e place that earns him $151,000 dollars. In total, Ferguson, who is nicknamed Jesus, won a small $400,000. This earned him the title of player of the year, much to the horror of the poker community who still knew a lot of old friends about the situation around Black Friday.