GGPoker CHEATING Scandal: Superuser Scores $60K+
An online poker cheating scandal has come to light whereby a user known as “Moneytaker69” was able to access illicit information on the GGPoker platform to gain an unfair advantage over his opponents. Most alleged cheating at online poker sites these days involves realtime assistance software, bots, or collusion, but this incident is more a case of a superuser, kind of like the old “potripper” scandal on Absolute Poker. On Friday, Dec. 29, 2023, GGPoker posted a statement on its website acknowledging the situation, explaining that “Moneytaker69” was banned and his winnings confiscated.
How Did the Cheating Work?
The cheater was able to exploit vulnerabilities related to the Adobe Air framework within the Windows client of GGPoker. According to site management “a specific set of circumstances related to the 'Thumbs Up/Down Table Reaction' feature,” enabled “Mokeytaker69” to conduct his shady activities.
Using a modified game client, he was able to intercept network data. A “client-side data leak vector” allowed him to learn his all-in equity during any hand. Using this info, “he could guess his win probability with reasonable assurance.”
GGPoker noted that no servers were compromised by this illicit activity; all the data accessed by the cheater was gleaned from traffic sent to the client software. Although the Thumbs Up/Down feature, which led to the security breach in the first place, was disabled by a software update on Dec. 16, the malevolent user had already altered the game client by that time and was able to continue cheating by blocking any software updates from installing.
What Did “Moneytaker69” Do With This Information?
The cheater took incredibly bizarre lines in cash game hands, such as calling big all-in raises on the river with third pair when his opponent was bluffing and min-raising the flop with an underpair to the board that was nevertheless ahead of his opponent's hand. In one hand that bore a remarkable resemblance to the infamous Robbie Jade Lew/Garrett Adelstein cheating controversy, “Moneytaker69” called it all off with J-high on the turn against a big draw:
Suspicious J-high Hand Played by “Moneytaker69”Nor was this nefarious activity restricted to cash game tables. “MoneyTaker69” entered a Sunday $150 GGMasters tournament with a $400,000 guarantee. He took first place for a prize of $47,586. He employed a similarly unusual playing style during the tournament, which raised the suspicions of some of his adversaries.
Penalty and Restitution
GGPoker has banned “Moneytaker69” and confiscated his account balance. The sum of $29,795 will be refunded to players affected by the cheating. Furthermore, tournaments in which this dishonest individual participated will see their payouts retroactively adjusted accordingly.
Twoplustwo Community Instrumental
Though not explicitly mentioned in the statement from GGPoker, members of the Twoplustwo forum community were a big part of bringing down “Moneytaker69.” This was tacitly acknowledged in the concluding paragraph of the statement:
We would also like to thank the poker community. This incident further proves the power of our community and the poker players’ hive minds, as constructive community feedback gave us great confidence in resolving the issue. We will continue to take community feedback seriously and open our ears to all comments and suggestions. Let’s build a safe future together.
The day before GGPoker issued its official statement on the matter, a twoplustwoer with the handle “GGSuperUser” posted a thread in which he discussed the unlikely success of the “Moneytaker69.” Within his post, this forumite stated, “GG Poker has acknowledged the situation privately and is preparing to address it,” thus further confirming that the malfeasance was first uncovered by private poker players before GGPoker was even aware of it.
“GGSuperUser” posted a statistical analysis of some 8,900 recorded hands of “Moneytaker69.” During this sample, the user in question posted a phenomenal winrate of 90bb/100. At the same time, his VPIP/PRF stats were a fishy 53/17: an extremely loose playing style that virtually no winning player utilizes.
Running a few variance sims, “GGSuperUser” concluded that a run this good was all but impossible for a breakeven player. For a likely loser, which is what “Moneytaker69's” stats pegged him to be, such a sick heater was even more improbable.
“GGSuperUser” speculated that “Moneytaker69” was able to see his opponents' hole cards. In this detail he was incorrect although not by much. The cheater was actually able to view his all-in equity throughout the hand, which may in fact be better for an inexperienced user than being able to see hole cards. While every seasoned poker pro can accurately estimate equity given the down and community cards, this is more difficult for a novice, which “Moneytaker69” may have been. Thus, being able to see his exact equity percentage may have saved him from having to perform a mental step.
Reactions
In the wake of this cheating incident, GGPoker has vowed to double the size of its security team and hire “renowned security professionals” to help keep its games secure. Although nearly everyone was pleased that the fraudster was caught and penalized, many retain their doubts as to GGPoker's ability to run clean games in the future.
Forum Posters Weigh In
The fact that the exploit didn't depend upon hacking server-side resources but rather upon intercepting packets sent to the client side of things was troubling to some. Redditor “SaggyFence” explained this line of thinking pretty succinctly:
Others pointed out that “Moneytaker69” was only caught because of his particularly egregious style of play. It's likely that there were any number of swindlers using the same exploit who acted with more subtlety and remained undetected.
“meltron28281” also touched upon an aspect of this case that many find unsatisfactory. The original post on TwoPlusTwo outing this offending player showed a graph of more than $15k in winnings from cash games. We also have record of “Moneytaker69” binking an MTT for more than $47k. This is in excess of $60k in winnings without even accounting for additional sums won in hands that were not tracked.
Yet, GGPoker is only refunding slightly less than $30k to affected customers. This is less than half of “Moneytaker69's” illicit profits. Given the unusual nature of this incident and its potential to mar GGPoker's good name for some time to come, most observers feel that the site should have committed more funds to making cheated users whole even if this amount represented more money than was finally confiscated from the cheater's account.
KidPoker - no Comment
One person who has remained conspicuously silent during these shocking revelations is Daniel “KidPoker” Negreanu. He has been a brand ambassador for GGPoker since November 2019 and so could reasonably be expected to have some opinion on the subject. Yet he has not made any public comments about this cheating incident at the room he represents.
Daniel “KidPoker” NegreanuIt's not a case of Negreanu's communication channels going unused either. He has posted both to his Youtube and X (formerly Twitter) accounts in the time since the scandal became public. Indeed, he has made several tweets in the past few days promoting GGPoker's reality TV show “Game of Gold.”
Some believe that Daniel Negreanu has sold out entirely and is now nothing more than a shill for his employer, GGPoker. For a man as famously outspoken and gregarious as Daniel to have no comment is certainly a bit unusual. Perhaps he is still evaluating the evidence and formulating a response. We'll be watching in the next few days to see if KidPoker opts to publicly put in his two cents on these unfortunate proceedings.
New Scandal Brewing?
Even as the fallout of the “Moneytaker79” events is making itself known, there may be another concerning situation developing at GGPoker. “bigleanmandarin” on the Twoplustwo forums thinks he has detected a pattern of play in GGPoker's lottery-style Spin & Gold games indicative of realtime assistance software.
Supposedly, there is a group of players who habitually fold to min-3bets preflop. This allegedly points to the use of automated solver software that often has trouble dealing with unusual bet sizes and may recommend folds to small raises much more frequently than is optimal.
“bigleanmandarin” says that he has contacted GGPoker support but was ignored. However, others in the thread opined that folding to min-3bets a lot is standard in the short-stacked Spin & Gold format and does not necessarily mean that prohibited software is being employed. We'll have to see if further evidence emerges to decide if these claims relating to Spin & Gold are baseless or have legitimate merit.
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