Monarch Under Attack, Grok vs Galfond, PLO Championship, & New Poker Movie
GipsyTeam
Yesterday, 14:58
Ossi Ketola is under attack from competitors, Phil Galfond plans to beat a neural network, Daniel Negreanu and other professionals star in a new poker film, and other news.
GGPoker put an end to the ghosting incident at the GG Millions final table:
A breach of integrity occurred during the GGMillion$ final table on October 14, 2025. We’ve completed our investigation and taken decisive action.
Actions Taken
RealOA: Permanently banned from GGPoker, WSOP, and all partner platforms.
Ren “Tony” Lin: Indefinitely suspended from GGPoker, WSOP, and all partner platforms.
Restitution: GGPoker reclaimed all the funds remaining in RealOA’s account, $250,523. While $96,380 short, Lin voluntarily contributed the remaining amount from personal funds to cover the shortfall. Lin’s contribution was made from his own money and was not related to any staking or compensation from the final table. It was his personal commitment to restoring fair play.
Our Message to the Poker Community
This case demonstrates three principles:
We will prevent and detect violations. Our monitoring system and hand analysis identify suspicious activity.
Consequences are immediate. Any result from the GGPoker investigation will extend across GGPoker, WSOP, and all partner platforms worldwide.
Players are protected. When integrity is compromised, we ensure that financial restitution is made to those affected.
Real-time assistance through private communication channels remains challenging to prevent, but GGPoker’s detection and investigation capabilities will continuously improve. Competitive poker depends on trust and equal conditions. We will not allow anyone to undermine that foundation.
The winner and his advisor returned the first-place prize to the poker room, Daniel Negreanu stood up for his colleague, and Patrick Leonard hopes this story will help online poker.
"Banning Ren from WSOP is absolutely egregious," Michael Moncheck protested, outraged by the harsh decision . "Ban him from GGPoker, that’s fine whatever. WSOP? He’s hurting no one and makes amateurs like myself at any stakes have a way better time! The guy is EXACTLY what poker needs in a live setting. This has to be reviewed before summer."
– I’ve been waiting a bit to share my take on this.
From my own experience, ghosting is a huge issue. I wouldn’t say it’s 90% of the FT as it was claimed, but I’m very sure that on some big final tables, something feels off.
As an experienced player, you just know when someone suddenly turns from the biggest nit into a maniac, perfect sizings, balanced small 3-bets, suddenly check-raising like a solver. Something’s not right. You can’t prove it, but it’s obvious. And it crushes your EV.
Let me address a few points and opinions I’ve seen.
Overall, I’m happy with GGPoker’s decision. It’s tough, but it’s necessary. For too long, we’ve let cheaters get away with it.
Now, many people say this punishment isn’t fair because others in the past got away with worse. And? Yeah, that’s not great, but at least stronger actions are being taken now.
And this idea that “he’s a nice guy, so he deserves less punishment?” Come on. You know how many criminals seem like nice guys? (Not saying he’s one, just showing how absurd that logic is.)
WSOP is GGPoker’s partner. They have every right to exclude whoever they want from their venues and events.
“He was just helping a friend.”
“He did it out of kindness.”
Really? If you claim “90% are doing it,” then you know exactly what you’re doing. Do people not see the precedent this sets? If we start judging based on intentions, where does it stop?
Next thing, someone says, “I used RTA to fund my kid’s college.”
Some of the takes I’ve seen are just unbelievably stupid. It’s like nobody’s thinking one step ahead anymore. Sure, you can argue the punishment might be a bit harsh. But it’s absolutely justifiable and fair.
“He paid the money back.”
And? Do we really want to open that door, where cheaters think they can just pay back what they stole and move on?
The only way to keep things clean is for cheaters to be afraid. Afraid of losing everything: their money, their reputation, their access.
The moment you leave even a sliver of hope that there’s a way out, you make it a hundred times worse for everyone.
Twitter has banned Ossi Ketola's personal and work accounts. He claims it's all a plot by competitors willing to spend huge sums of money.
– They spread fake videos, screenshots, chats and generally anything to ruin my reputation.
Monarch built the only casino in this game that actually plays fair, with the lowest margins and no shady moves.
Now competitors are panicking, spreading fake screenshots, and even got his X account banned to shut him up.
He’s going live on Kick today — let people hear the truth themselves.
Help spread real info, it’s rare to see a project in this industry done the right way.
The next day, they streamed together on Kick, where they quickly lost $1 million at an online casino, and then played poker.
In the $5,000 buy-in WPT Shooting Star tournament, 75 players won special "shooting star" bounties. Knocking out one of the 75 stars pays an additional $2,500 and rewards a T-shirt autographed by the victim.
– Playing day 2 of Shooting Stars and one guy shows 20 minutes late says he was playing limit cash all night. He proceeds to order a bottle of champagne and make mimosas for himself. A few hours go by and the bottle has dwindled and the dealer needs to wake him up every hand. The player next to him puts in a sizable river bet and he wakes up upon hearing it while not in the hand and grabs the chips and puts them in his stack 🤣.
One of the star players, Chance Kornuth, has retained his bounty; he has reached the final table, which will be played in December.
The neural network poker battle, organized by Russian IT specialist Maxim Pavlov, has concluded. Over five days of non-stop play across four tables, participants played 3,799 hands.
All week, popular language models played Hold'em nonstop, taking notes on opponents and explaining moves. We watched their play and asked Alexey "Avr0ra" Borovkov to comment on several notable hands.
"Let GTOWizard enter and Grok will be way behind," Tom Dwan quoted Musk's tweet.
In the comments, they suggested a Galfond vs. Grok Challenge and asked the neural network who would be the favorite.
"I'd be the favorite against Phil in a 50k-hand PLO match," Grok declared confidently . "as AI like me can compute near-perfect GTO strategies without tilt or fatigue, exploiting any human deviations over volume. Phil's a legend with proven edges in high-stakes live play, but long-term variance favors computation. Betting line sits at about 10 bb/100 in my favor, based on solver benchmarks outpacing top pros by 5-15 bb/100 in simulations. Let's make it happen—xAI vs. Run It Once?"
– What limits will we be playing at? Galfond asked curiously.
– $100/$200 PLO, heads-up, 50k hands, 200bb deep. xAI bankroll versus the Run It Once empire. Winner takes all, or do we donate the money to charity? It's your call, Phil 🚀
– I'm happy with everything. Let's add a $1 million side bet for extra excitement?
– Which room do you want to play in?
– BetRiversPoker, though bots are prohibited there 😁
– Fair point, Phil. xAI isn't your average bot, but rules are rules. How about a neutral site, like PokerStars , or creating an xAI-powered room specifically for our match? We could even stream it. Okay?
– The main thing is that everything is fair. I'm ready to stream too. How can we make it official?
– We'll discuss the details in private messages—rates, rules, room, charity, and so on. xAI's lawyers will review everything, then we'll sign the agreement and make an official announcement. Game on, Phil!
– It’s gotta be a simulation,” Will Jaffe said about the dialogue.
– What are the chances that the match will actually take place?" Rob Kuhn asked.
– Unless Elon stumbles across it and finds the idea entertaining… Grok can’t ping him (or DM anyone, for that matter)
The CoinPoker PLO Cash Game World Championship is finished, and before the High Stakes Cash Game World Championship starts (on November 10th), we must talk about the Omaha winners.
Godfromstock confidently walked across the finish line, with nobody able to close the gap over the last week. They won with about 17,200 points, while the next closest competitor was about 6,500 points away. The battle was only between the runners up, and the win was secured by godfromstock long ago (along with the $15,000 Rolex 1st place prize).
2nd Place + $5,000: CanarianSPA racked up a respectable 10,767 points after 32,000 hands.
KaskaGrrossa would have came in second, but didn't hit the 20,000 hand minimum. However, with $52,216.09 won, they won't walk away with empty pockets.
3rd Place + $4,000: Cumicon came in true third, running way under EV and down $62,513 after 42,299 hands.
4th Place + $3,000: ZaGeZ came fourth after playing a whopping 118,910 hands, collecting $81,561 in winnings.
5th Place + $2,000: Venom2 came fifth, logging 29,304 hands and about $96,000 in winnings.
– Whilst attempting to convince GG a rake decrease for HU and SH would generate action (and rake), GG said word for word:
'Competition among PokerPros sadly does not occur on GG or anywhere worldwide'
Since then >2milli hands played across the 3 CoinPoker challenges 🙏
The PLO Cash Game World Championship had around a million hands played on its own.
4.7
Founded in 2017, CoinPoker is a cryptocurrency-only online poker room supported in several languages including; English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. While CoinPoker doesn’t prohibit users from any specific country, users are advised to ensure that the country they are residing in allows online gambling.
Filming took place last year in the Bahamas during WSOP Paradise.
"I just spent a year making a poker show for people who don't play poker," wrote project creator Dustin Iannotti. "'I'd call this show a success if your spouse watches it and tells you she 'finally gets why you love this game'"
The filming featured Scott Seaver, Kristen Foxen, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Jesse Lonis, Maria Ho and others.
Another poker film we recently reviewed was Dead Money from 2024, with Emile Hirsch, and about 2 minutes worth of Alan Keating.
Dead Money (2024) promised poker played by a pro, but delivered a generic thriller with poker sprinkled lightly onto the plot. Read our honest review of Dead Money here and decide if you should watch it.
– Streaming poker is just calmly explaining why you're losing while pretending everythings fine.
One Reddit user tried to figure out how tough his opponent was:
– I'm new to PLO. Isn't that a fish?
"That's completely standard wdym" responded the official Club WPT account, the room where the screenshot was taken.
"I once played a guy who had 48/48," Daniel Strelitz recalled. "Which is much more impressive. He played several thousand hands without even calling. It was fascinating to watch. A true work of art."
– Gold up so much that those "I care about the bracelet, not the money" people were right all along
Matt Salsberg reminded us of a reliable way to protect yourself from being pushed around in closed games:
PSA: if someone ever invites you to a home game with supposed whales they think you'll crush, say "Ok, stake me, I'll play for 5 percent" and see what they do next.
Pavel "Rigapols81" Spirin won the latest Venom $2,650 buy-in event for $675,224.
You will be able to leave comments, rate posts, participate in discussions and increase your poker level.
If you prefer a four-colour deck or want to turn off avatar animation, change your profile settings.
You will have an access to bookmarks, staking and other useful poker tools.
On each page you will see where new posts and comments have appeared.
If you are registered in poker rooms through GipsyTeam, you will receive rake statistics, bonus points for in-store purchases, exclusive promotions and extended support.
