Another Online Poker Scandal! Not Again!

Yep, it's true, and I am really thinking about writing "Dirty Poker 2." I said it in "Dirty Poker" and I'll say it again: The cheating population in online poker is rising at pandemic rates! Many people thought I was nuts when I announced two years ago that in a decade more than 90% of people playing online poker would be cheating in one form or another, many simply succumbing to the eventual reality that "everyone else is cheating, I might as well too."

Last month, the incident occurred at Absolute Poker, now it's Full Tilt. Read all about it:

Full Tilt Poker - Another Alledged Online Poker Cheater Busted and Banned
November 30th, 2007 Written by Cathy "LadyHoldem" Roberts

Once again in the online poker world we have allegations of cheating. It would seem that here real soon, online poker is going to be the cleanest industry out there, though we do wonder just a bit if we will see the same big names still offering their up online poker tables to the masses. Will these online poker rooms where cheaters have run rampant, security leaks have been found, and poker players have been frankly - screwed - be able to grab hold of their tarnished reputations, wipe them clean and stay in business?

Just before the Absolute Poker Saga we read of quite a few poker rooms where online poker bots were present, for the most part, the bots can’t beat the people and are just there to generate rake on rake back deals, so they didn’t get a whole lot of press, they might have gotten a little more time, if it hadn’t been for the major online poker cheating explosion at Absolute Poker following the 2+2 fact finding mission that uncovered that whole thing.

Just before that saga broke out however, a little tiny tournament incident came up at PokerStars, the story involved theVOid finishing a tournament on his sisters account, after having already busted out with his own username. This wasn’t the OH MY GOD sort of cheating like we heard about with Absolute, more just a shame on him! He lost the money, I believe he got banned, maybe even just a suspension, but it was handled, it was timely, and the Absolute Poker news definitely out shined.

Now here we are just weeks later, the poker world is getting back to normal. Absolute Poker is cleaning up that mess they have going on over there, dealing with audits, and we’re all waiting to hear final outcomes, repayments, etc. When today, Pokerati a major online news source’s headline reads “Tiz the season for Cheating” following talk of cheating, in a big way, at Full Tilt Poker.

The current accusations involve Bluff Magazines managing editor Chris Vaughn and a couple of tournaments - high stakes poker tournaments, that played out about a month ago. The claim is that Vaughn won the Million Dollar Guaranteed tourney played at Full Tilt Poker, scooping $197,984.00. Then just one week later he took down the Poker Stars Sunday Million scraping in $240,633.00.

Now here’s where the story starts getting good… #2 in the final finishers of the Full Tilt Poker tournament “Soren ‘Kongsgaard’ Kongsgaard says he got a letter from Full Tilt via his email that said Bluff Magazines Managing Editor Chris Vaughn or “BluffMagCV” had been disqualified from the tournament. “Kongsgaard” was now the winner, and was awarded the prize money.

What happens next, or what Pokerati describes as unconfirmed seems to parallel a story brought to us by the PokerKing not to long ago, allegedly Chris was backed by “Imer1um” Mizzi who took control of the computer, and therefore the tournament somewhere during the tournament, finishing the game for Chris. As a result, but Sorel Mizzi (Imper1um) and Chris Vaughn (BluffMagCV) have been banned at least temporarily, pending investigation by Full Tilt.

There is someone’s side of the story posted on Sorel’s blog. Pokerati also brings up a valid point, Chris from Bluff Magazine was just interviewed back on November 18th by Scott Huff and Haralabos Voulgaris on Big Poker Sundays, a radio show that you can tune into on PokerRoad.com. Haralabos asked Chris if he’d ever been accused of ghosting, meaning the staked players backer steps in and finishes up a game. Chris’ response was yeah “I’ve been accused of that. I think it’s going to come with the territory when someone relatively unknown wins two in a row.” In response to the truth in the question Chris says “But as far as having someone take over for me, that’s ridiculous”

We don’t have any word yet on how the alleged tag teaming came to Full Tilts attention, but this is an important event, people will always try to cheat, however, as online poker undergoes closer scrutiny, and in turn becomes more secure, they will get away with it less and less.

We spoke to Bluff Magazine’s editor in Chief Mathew Parvis, who tells us that Chris Vaughn (BluffMagCV) “will not be commenting at this time.”
Kudos to Full Tilt for being on the ball.