The world of online poker has recently been captured in the story of a player at FullTilt being recognised as a cheat in another prominent online poker tournament. Travelling back around a month ago, a much heated topic around at the time was that relating to the antics of Chris “BluffMagCV” Vaughn, an employee of Bluff Magazine.
The issue raised came as a result of the player taking down two Sunday Million tournaments, to start with Vaughn took down the Full Tilt $1 Million Guaranteed tournament and the following week he proceeded to take the title in the Sunday Millions tournament on PokerStars playing under the name of “SlippyJacks.” Much controversy was created in terms of a potential scam existing in the FullTilt tournament, but the exact shenanigans weren’t made completely clear until Soren “Kongsgaard” Kongsgaard announced that he had received an email from Full Tilt Poker saying the following; “BluffMagCV had been disqualified from the tournament and “Kongsgaard” would gain the first place prize money.
Full Tilt Poker said that an already eliminated player had taken over “BluffMagCV”’s account towards the end of the tournament. This particular player who took over the account is apparently Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi, and it is reported that he has also been banned from Full Tilt Poker. If Mizzi was involved in this scam then it is of course a serious matter as he has been extremely popular and one of the most productive players in the online poker community. Many people have spotted Mizzi’s absence from the FullTilt site so it can be assumed that he has certainly been banned.
These series of events are obviously complete negative news for the poker world, the impact of such goings on will remain unknown until the near future. The impact could potentially be severe on the online community, with many players surely feeling more and more uncomfortable with putting their money into online poker with these scams flying in from all directions. An additional issues that is likely to cross many players minds is how much of this online poker cheating is actually discovered and exposed to the public, these particular players may have not been caught in the act if they hadn’t be as reckless as they were.
Many poker sites have developed a habit of shielding the cheats from exposure by keeping their names confidential, surely it would benefit everybody if innocent players were aware of the player names of individuals involved in such scams. The risk of getting caught and exposed doing online poker crime appears to be much slimmer than the benefits on offer, tempting many into the business.
