ShareDaniel Negreanu may be looking forward to this year’s Poker Masters series, but on the eve of the highroller event he found time to tweet about those he doesn’t expect to face – alleged cheats Ali Imsirovic and Jake Schindler...
The annual highstakes MTT series is set to kick off Thursday 22nd September with a $10k buy-in NLHE tournament, followed by another 11 tournaments, concluding with a $50k buy-in.
Daniel plans to play the full series, hosted by the PokerGO Studio in the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, but if recent events are anything to go by, Imsirovic and Schindler will not be welcome.
For those who don’t know, a massive cheating scandal erupted this year when Alex Foxen outed Imsirovic for online and live cheating, the Bosnian apparently banned for Real Time Assistance (RTA) use on GGPoker.
Foxen followed up with another tweet that read: “Ali is known as a cheater to almost all in the high roller community, however without much ironclad proof, most stay silent. After watching this hand on the SHRB live stream, enough is enough.”
More names followed, with Jake Schindler chief among them, the US pro, like Imsirovic, refusing to deny the allegations that he used RTA to win $millions online.
Justin Bonomo and Krissy Foxen both tweeted about how they lost massive sums in the GGPoker highstakes games, and Imsirovic and Schindler were suddenly placed in the hot seat.
With neither willing to speak about the alleged cheating, their peer group complained to tournament organisers at the PokerStars EPT stop in Monte Carlo after the duo played the $100k SHR...
Rumours of a potential ban travelled swiftly, though nothing was confirmed, and Imsirovic and Schindler – along with Bryn Kenney, another who has faced serious cheating accusations this year –playing this summer’s WSOP.
However, GGPoker’s recently launched Poker Integrity Council, headed by Jason Koon, brought multiple big-name live operators along with them in the creation of a blacklist of sorts.
“To keep the cheaters from prospering in the poker industry, and to deter future cheating, the PIC has formed an alliance with the support of all the major live poker tours,” the site revealed.
“Cheaters that are Industry Blacklisted by the PIC, will be barred from participating in any tournaments and events under the following brands...”
What follows is a resume of the biggest events and tours in the world, headed by the WSOP, WPT, and Triton Poker.
The PokerGO brand is also on board, with confirmed cheats facing a ban from the PokerGO Tour, the Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB), and the Poker Masters.
That would seem to preclude Imsirovic and Schindler, and potentially some other big names, from playing this week at the Aria-hosted Masters. The pair were also notably absent from the recent Triton Poker SHR series in northern Cyprus – which included the $200k buy-in Coin Rivet Invitational –indicating the enforcement of the ban may already be in place.
The potential get-out clause offered by GGPoker to allow all bar the most serious transgressors a second chance presumably won’t be extended to Imsirovic and Schindler, given that RTA-use is seen as the biggest threat to the online game, outside of super-using and similar hacks.
Imsirovic currently sits in 2nd-place in the Poker Masters all-time moneywinners list at $1,890,700, with Schindler in 7th spot at $ 1,145,500.
Negreanu will be looking to improve on his $709,400 in cashes and 18th place and, although all three trail Germany’s Steffen Sontheimer, who boasts $ 2,733,000.
