ShareGGPoker has announced the formation of a Poker Integrity Council (PIC) to further its integrity initiatives.
The new council will work to maintain and uphold the poker industry's reputation for honesty. Additionally, the PIC will be responsible for spotting any dubious activity, such as collusion, RTA, botting, or ghosting.
GG Poker will send all reported incidents to PIC members and Jason Koon, GGPoker's Integrity Ambassador. Afterward, based on a majority vote, PIC members will decide whether disciplinary action is necessary.
Ultimately, the council may drop the matter, or the board may take disciplinary action. The PIC may impose disciplinary sanctions such as a warning or account restriction. Cases involving the misuse or severe violations of the integrity rules may lead to a permanent suspension from GGPoker or a permanent ban with cash seizure.
An industrial blacklist is the most severe disciplinary punishment. It implies that if the PIC determines that a player cheated and imposes that penalty, the Council will bar the player from participating in all main live poker events in the industry. The WPT, WSOP, APT, PGT, APL, Triton Poker, and many more events and live poker events fall under this category.
Members of the Poker Integrity Council
Notable PIC voting members include Andrew Lichtenberger, the American poker player known as LuckyChewu; Fedor Holz, the German professional poker player; and Koon, as GGPoker's Integrity Ambassador.
Seth Davies and Nick Petrangelo will also serve on the Integrity Council. The PIC members will see the data for analysis as "anonymized and encrypted" to maintain its impartiality when enforcing a judgment and preserve the users' privacy. In other words, no nicknames, stakes, or hand IDs would be visible to council members.
Koon expressed his excitement and said it was an honor to introduce the Poker Integrity Council. He claims that the Council will contribute to the safety of online poker for all participants.
The integrity ambassador also stated that the current endeavor fits well with his strategy to assist the "GG Poker team in making their poker games more safe and fair than before." The "wider community," he said, would be better safeguarded because of GGPoker's roster of partners and the ability to ban cheaters across the board.
Over the last few months, several high roller players have been accused of cheating by their colleagues in both online and live events. The three most prominent personalities in the poker world currently being investigated for significant cheating accusations are Bryn Kenney, Jake Schindler, and Ali Imsirovic.
While GGPoker and other poker sites cannot speak explicitly about individual accounts, rumors suggest that Schindler and Imsirovic were both banned for utilizing RTAs. On the other hand, Kenney is said to have operated a ghosting and collusion scam on GGPoker.
