The first day of February 2025 brought a new scandal to the poker scene that is shaking up the poker world. The whole issue once again involves the use of RTAs and thus the accusation of cheating, which was allegedly committed by the successful Argentine pro Jose Ingacio Barbero, better known as Nacho Barbero.
It all kicked off with his Instagram story, where Nacho shared a photo of the laptop he was playing tournaments on at ACR, the online poker room run by Phil Nagy. This poker room has faced various controversies in the past, such as allegations of collusion or warnings about the large amount of bots in their tournaments.
However, the keen eye of the viewer will notice in Nagy's story that an RTA, specifically GTO Wizard, can be seen open amongst the tournament tables. It should be noted that any use of RTAs during gameplay is banned at almost all online gaming sites, and ACR is no exception. A player can be banned for using such a tool.
The photo from the Instagram story immediately became the center of attention on social network X, and was brought to the attention of EPT Cyprus 2023 Main Event champion Gilles "Ghilley" Simon. He also added a question to the photo directed directly to the online gaming site mentioned above, " Can we use GTOWizard while playing on your site?"
Nacho Barbero himself responded to the accusations, stating that he only had a GTO Wizard table to train "his 4 horses" on Discord call. According to his tweet, he didn't use it to help his own game and asked GTO Wizard Game Integrity to send him all the spots he was looking for that day and post them. He also added that, if anyone really thinks he was using the solver during the game, fell free to make a bet with him. He'll give odds of 10:1 with a minimum bet of $1,000 that he didn't use the solver during any of the games. One of the panelists then stated, "I thought we agreed a long time ago that ghosting and providing live coaching is rude and no longer acceptable."
People on the social media also added a very interesting question to Nacho's statement, "Why leaving the space in between windows to have gto wizard visible when you're not using it?" or "You might not be playing and using GTOwiz, if so one of your horses is using it while playing, which also is breach of TOS.. Despite you say they don’t have it.. so where is the truth in your statement?"
More fuel was added to the fire by the online gaming company itself involved. It too added its own statement on the subject, "Nacho Barbero is a goofball and we love him. Anyone who’s played with, against or around him knows he’s not a GTO-style player and likely never will be. We’re confident he was not using GTO Wizard to gain any advantage for himself."
Following this statement, a handful of negative reactions was unleashed, and thus the game room itself decided to ban comments on their post. Even so, they didn't shy away from letting the community voice their opinion. "Possibly the dumbest response to cheating I’ve ever heard. If you play on this site or collect a paycheck from ACR, you are scum," said one of the users.
The whole situation has led the poker community to label Nacho Barber as a cheater and the ACR site as a place where no rules apply, and they have also expressed concerns about whether the site cares about the integrity of the game at all.
What do you think about this issue? Did Nacho Barbero really only use RTA to train, or did he use RTA for himself in his game? Do you think the statement made by the game room was in order? Let us know in the comments on our social media.
Source - Pokernews, Instagram, Twitter/X