ShareGlobal Poker has started to pay out money to affected players in the latest cheating scandal to hit online poker.
Last month, we saw players taking to the 2+2 forum to complain about a player named “projectbaby97” who is accused of using GTO Wizard during play to win as much as $200,000.
Online GTO solver tool GTO Wizard recently added a security feature called Fair Play Check which allows users to see if a particular hand was solved at the same time it was played.
In the case of “projectbaby97”, we can see that there are several hands which match, but as always, it’s not so simple to be sure the accused is truly guilty.
A statement from Global Poker included the following:
"At the outset, I would like to say that the battle against RTA tools has been ongoing for years, it did not start few weeks ago and will not stop any time soon – that is the nature of the ever-evolving technology and at least perceived upside to cheating that will always find its way in this and adjacent industries."
When the “Fair Play” feature was released initially, which coincides with the vast majority of the reports we have received, it did not offer the accuracy to take it as anything more than a trigger to start a far more in-depth investigation.
It did not provide the context behind the specific spot and, most importantly, the timestamp of the solution was bucketed into one-minute windows and not down to a second as it is right now.
Recently, Chris Battenfield was exonerated of the same charge, as was another player known as UrNightmare. GTO Wizard apparently threw up some outliers or false positives. “Projectbaby97”, however, wasn’t off the hook, even if Global Poker was still allowing him to play.
But then on November 17, the investigation was completed and “Projectbaby97” was gone from the site.
A poster on 2+2 wrote:
“He’s banned! And lots of ppl he played against got refunds.
“The last week he was playing he was taunting other players about not being banned and about making huge withdrawals despite being investigated. Class act all around.”
Another poster added:
“I received 340 this morning from Global! Was wondering if it had to do with Projectbaby. I played with him a few times.“
In the absence of any detailed statement from Global Poker, we can’t be sure of exactly where the definitive proof came from. Was it finally happy with the evidence from GTO Wizard, meaning that the standard of the Fair Play Check tool is now accurate enough to ban a player on its own?
There have only been three players publicly outed with evidence from Fair Play Check so far, with two of them apparently having fallen victim to a false positive. Meaning the evidence was worth no more than some impetus for further investigation.
