ShareA Twitch streamer has been caught red-handed using GTO Wizard during his session on PokerStars. The Brazilian brought up the window showing the solver output during play, seemingly without caring if anyone saw.
Of course, it’s possible he didn’t realise the incriminating window had crossed over into view but many commentators assumed that he didn’t care as it was likely standard behaviour for him.
Incredibly, after Felipe Carmanhani was dobbed in by one of his viewers, Pokerstars saw fit to hand out only a two-week ban!
As you would imagine, this sent a section of Poker Twitter into meltdown.
One poster stated the obvious:
“If he did use RTA then the only acceptable outcome is permanently banned. If not, what kind of message are you sending?“
The poster of the original tweet, Mark Rubbathan, AKA Weazel, is a prominent Twitch streamer himself, with thousands of followers viewing his opinions. No doubt Pokerstars buzzed into action seeing the storm that was building.
Soon after, Pokerstars’ Director of Online Poker Experience took a look at the case and posted a lengthy apology, stating that the offence was worse than initially assumed.
His reasoning was that a one-off resulting from consultation of pre-flop charts or similar usually results in just a short time-out. Now he agrees this was much worse, especially given the current paranoia about RTA use during play.
He ended his statement with the following:
“Going forward we will conduct a review of our internal process to ensure this does not happen again. Browsing of pre-flop charts and/or using RTA is strictly prohibited and strong action is indeed warranted. Our sincere apologies for the initial review which was not adequate for the infraction in question and did not meet our high standard.”
WSOP Online Main Event champion Bert “girafganger7” Stevens isn’t much of a fan of the platform, recently describing its software as looking like “ass cheeks” and saying it hates its customers! He posted:
“what u want them to do? admit that their actual security is completely made up? they have to treat this as a one off, not a guy being so comfortable cheating that he does it on stream lol”
It was also pointed out that cheating in any game streamed on Twitch is against the terms and conditions, with a permanent ban an option.
Mark Rubbathan noted that GTO Wizard banned the Brazilian’s account upon seeing what he had done.
But then there was the detail of what Carmanhani was actually looking up. Someone noticed that he was using chip EV charts while actually playing a bounty tournament.
