Argentinian pro Jose Ignacio Barbero, better known as Nacho Barbero, came into the spotlight a few days ago when he posted a photo on his Instagram story of the Venom online tournaments underway at ACR's American poker room. Among them, however, could be seen an open GTO Wizard, the use of which is banned during the game. Nacho was thus accused of cheating.
Barbero defended himself by saying that he did not use the software during the game itself and had it on while training his stable of players. He then asked GTO Wizard Game Intergity to send him all the hands he was looking for. The Argentine pro, who has more than $21.6 million worth of live tournament winnings to his credit, still received a lot of negative feedback from the poker community.
News in the case
New information in the case was made public today, and it was brought to you by the very online poker room where it all took place. The latter released a statement on its social network that it has conducted an internal investigation which has proven Nacho's innocence. "After a thorough internal investigation of all hands played in the tournaments Nacho participated in, we have concluded that at no point did he use Real Time Assist (RTA) to aid in his decision making. We understand that independent parties conduct their own checks and we are confident that they will reach the same conclusion. We remain committed to transparency and fairness and will continue to work to earn the continued trust of our players and the community at large."
The independent investigation was also undertaken by well-known professional Patrick Leonard, who viewed over 1,300 hands played by Barbero via GTO Wizard. He subsequently published the results of his inspection, "Nacho in no way used GTO Wizard to cheat pre-flop or post-flop. In almost every borderline spot, he used either a different bet size than the GTO Wizard would have used or a different hand selection. After the flop, he had completely different ideas than what GTO Wizard would have done. Nacho has consistently played poorly in 3-bet pots throughout the history of the game. There were many, many inaccurate 3-bet spots."
However, Patrick Leonard admitted that Barbero could have used someone else's account to search for hands. Since Leonard is friends with Barbero, the poker community is demanding that someone truly independent be brought into the case. The poker room itself earned a wave of criticism after the results were published, and people don't like the "self-investigation". The negative comments continued even after the release of Patrick Leonard's results, with the community asking why then did Barbero have GTO Wizard running when he wasn't using it? Was he using it during someone else's game?
Finally, Nacho Barbero also commented on the new information, stating, "As someone who represents not only the ACR game company, but also the game itself, I should have been more aware of how my actions could be perceived. And I understand that some people will continue to question my actions while playing the Venom event. For this reason, I have decided to forfeit the two active stacks I still have in play."
However, even this statement wasn't enough for the community, and there are many comments under his post like, " If you didn't cheat, why did you decide to forfeit your stack?" "Isn't that an confession of guilt?" "Are you going to get your buy-ins back from the cardroom?" Sam Greenwood also added his opinion on the topic, stating that it didn't matter whether Nacho used GTO Wizard or not. He had it open during the game and that is prohibited. In his opinion, Nacho should be punished for that just like any other player would be.
In conclusion, Patrick Leonard urged the owners of GTO Wizard and other similar software to add a delay to their programs to prevent real-time use.
Source - pokernews.com, X/Twitter