Fedor Holz Accuses Two High-Stakes Players of Collusion

Fedor Holz has accused two high-stakes players of collusion at the final table of a WPT Deepstack event on 888Poker. The German star posted his accusation in a tweet on Christmas day, calling on the high-stakes community to work together to stamp this type of unethical behaviour out of the game.

Open-Minded

A pretty obvious collusion spot including Seijistar on a big 1K FT vs his friend Selouan. They are part of a Brazilian HS group that work together called “9Tales”. Cheating sucks. I think every HS reg that doesn’t cheat should work together to bring up similar situations. pic.twitter.com/TZLT8BoHC7

— Fedor Holz 🐧 (@CrownUpGuy) December 25, 2021

“In case It isn’t clear, AJ folds. They probably weren’t aware it’s live-streamed with cards up.”

A thread on 2+2 discussing the hand couldn’t come up with anything better than a simple misclick.

The two players under suspicion are Seijistar and his friend Selouan. A pair of Brazilian high-stakes tournament regs who Holz claims are a part of the same players group, called “9Tales”.

This no doubt means that both players are involved in some action sharing.

“I don’t think this automatically means they are cheating. There are potential other explanations why he made that fold. I think it is a clear call for basically every HS pro I know and given that he financially profits from it I wanted to raise awareness. I will do so with others”

“I think it is a very sketchy spot knowing that they share action. To me it looks like he made that fold because he has action and wouldn’t otherwise, that’s why I posted it. “

Holz goes on to say that there is currently a lot of cheating going on in high-stakes games and that more effort is needed to raise awareness.

Many well-known faces from the poker world joined in the conversation. Justin Bonomo thanked Holz for his post and hopes that 888Poker will do the right thing.

Patrick Leonard said that it wasn’t such a fist-pump call, in his opinion, but a call nonetheless and one that any good player would make.

Of course, somebody had to bring up Phil Hellmuth and his notoriously tight folds over the years. Daniel Negreanu said if the posters had played more with him they might think twice!

888Poker did respond to the fast-growing thread, indicating that an investigation will take place with both players being forced to explain their actions.

“Any type of collusion is in clear violation of our user agreement. We are reviewing this hand and others played between these two players. We are contacting the players to better understand their POV. We will be in touch with the players and act upon our investigation results.”