What's going on in the world of online poker? First we had an article about a Russian bot farm that made its way into many online poker rooms, then we saw a player's account blocked after winning a WSOP bracelet just a few days before, and now we have a very similar situation.
It's been just over a week since we informed you about the WSOP bracelet winner, which was Kevin "GR4ND_THEFT" Ruscitti. He was accused of cheating by players and the online poker room decided to block his account and investigate the whole situation.
Another case on the scene
In the last few hours the poker world has been alive with a similar theme again. Back in September, the WSOP Online series took place, open to players from all over the world, where almost anyone could have won their bracelet. One of the winners was Francesco "forzaitalia" Garofalo, an Italian player who defeated Chris Brewer in the final heads-up of the WSOP GGMillion$ SHR Championship to win a bracelet with a prize of $1,122,201. Note that this tournament had a buy-in of $25,000.
Garofalo's winnings on this platform were only worth $38,000 going into this tournament, and he was the only unknown player at the final table. Sitting against him were such names as Chris Brewer, Samuel Mullur, Roman Hrabec, Dimitar Danchev, Patrick Leonard, Ole Schemion and Adrian Mateos. However, the Italian player handled all his opponents with ease.
But now, out of nowhere, all the participants of this tournament received an email from the platform telling them that the first place prize would be redistributed to all of them and they would automatically move up one place. The first place prize has now gone to Chris Brewer and Fracesco Garofalo has reportedly had his account permanently blocked.
So apparently GG banned the 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?
- MTT Database Review (@MTT_Data_Review) November 4, 2024
Is this the largest single ban and refund in history of online poker?😱 pic.twitter.com/cQnt7LU0ii
What exactly happened unfortunately no one knows. The game room has not commented on the situation and hasn't even come close to saying what might happen. However, it is not a common practice for an online gaming site to permanently block someone's account and redistribute their winnings among other players, thus we can assume that his transgression was very serious.
Of course, after this situation, the question started to arise whether Chris Brewer is therefore the official winner of this tournament, and if he will therefore get the WSOP bracelet. However, nobody knows the answer to that question right now.
I got the difference between 2nd to 1st. But I don't get the bracelet, quite happy either way
- Chris Brewer (@Chris_D_Brewer) November 4, 2024
Biggest online win confiscated?
Word has also started to spread around the net as to whether this amount is the largest amount confiscated in the world of online poker. It is certainly one of the biggest, but it is not the biggest. In 2007, the $2,500 WCOOP Main Event was won by a player with the nickname "TheV0id", who won the sum of $1,378,331. However, this account was registered in the name of Natalie Teltscher, who was the sister of pro Mark Teltscher, and since it was discovered that Natalie was not playing this tournament, this amount was confiscated, and Kyle "ka$ino" Schroeder was determined to be the winner.
Source - poker.org, X, pokerlistings, wikipedia, pokernews
