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The popular online poker site GG Poker has come under fire after revelations emerged that a super user had been exposed on the site. On Christmas Day, TwoPlusTwo forum member “y2da,” posted a screen shot of MoneyTaker69 winning the GG Masters $400K guarantee for $47,586.80 alongside unrealistic game play statistics.
GGPoker Banned "Moneytaker69"after claiming to have identified a client vulnerability.
"We sincerely apologize for the incident," GGPoker said. "Which has caused many poker players to worry about the game’s integrity and shaken their trust in GGPoker to provide the best poker experience.
"We take this incident very seriously and continue to work hard not to disappoint poker players."
Poker players can be forgiven for being just a little bit suspect.
In 2007, the online poker world was brought to its knees after Absolute Poker would admit a super user compromised its platform. The site claimed it "was the victim of a breach of security in which a high-ranking consultant to the site devised a sophisticated scheme to manipulate internal systems and access third-party computers and accounts to view the hole cards of other customers during play and without their knowledge, resulting in unfair play."
They would go on to identify seven accounts that had engaged in suspicious play. But an audit by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission later confirmed what many online poker players strongly suspected: that the cheating was conducted by Absolute Poker insiders who had access to opponents' hole cards through a God Mode.
And now players want more than just an apology from GG Poker.
AceJacko, posting on Two Plus Two, asked the question: "Did we get a confirmation on the dates? Looking at the leaderboards posted in the GG thread it seems possible this was an team that was churning accounts every 15k hands or so and “only” winning at a 20bb/100 clip in an attempt to fly under the radar. GG security patches the vulnerability on the 16th and potentially this is just the last account that hasn’t reset the client and is on the old patch. The team knows the jig is up so they just go full full smash and grab in an attempt to pull as much as they can from the site before they have to restart their computer or w/e. They start at lower stakes because they don’t want to risk moving funds into the site."
The GG Poker scandal has turned into a godsend of sorts for ACR Poker, which is currently recovering from a massive platform meltdown over the past holiday weekend. That site's CEO, Phil Nagy, released a video featuring a Christmas poem he had written and read while promising to make things right. Players weren't exactly feeling the Christmas spirit and widely panned Phil's poem (it wasn't THAT bad). By Friday a parody video of an individual pretending to be GG Poker's CEO got posted to Twitter.
"Twas the week after Christmas when the poker elite heard that on GG there could be a cheat."
What if Phil Nagy managed GGPoker… pic.twitter.com/YbfZ7575PA
— Jesse Fullen (@jessefullen) December 30, 2023
By Friday, much of the poker media began covering the GG Poker story and providing their own takes.
David K Lappin of VegasSlotsOnline questioned an ill-fated move GG Poker made just months earlier.
"Worryingly, this news comes just three months after GGPoker decided to block SharkScope from tracking and displaying tournament results on its platform. That decision was heavily criticized because of how it limits transparency and hinders the players’ ability to detect cheating or collusion. GGPoker released a statement today claiming that this breach was caused by a “client-side vulnerability.” Regardless, players have been speculating about the possibility of an inside job and problematically for GGPoker, blocking Sharkscope as it did is certainly a measure that would have been seen as necessary if such an inside job was about to take place."
This story continues to develop.
Lappin adds that "there is also the more general concern that players are only now finding out that GGPoker hasn’t been encrypting hole card information."
The ramifications could prove to be extensive.
Just as the Absolute Poker scandal would go on to all but ruin poker ambassador Annie Duke, GG Poker's ambassador is none other than one of poker's most recognizable faces, Daniel Negreanu. "Kid Poker" had come under fire this week for his outspoken comments related to the Israeli-Gaza War. He is yet to comment on the GG Poker scandal.
More to come...
- Ace King, Gambling911.com
