It was one of the most high-profile online events of the year, but it's ended with another black eye for online poker.
The winner of GGPoker’s WSOP Online $25K GGMillion$ Super High Roller Championship – 'forzaitalia' – has reportedly been disqualified and his $1.1 million winnings redistributed to the affected players.
That means huge pay jumps for big-name stars such as Chris Brewer, Bryn Kenney, Patrick Leonard, Adrian Mateos and Ole Schemion.
Daniel Negreanu also played the $25K buy-in tournament, streaming his play from Canada, but he busted just after late registration ended on September 24.
Who is 'forzaitalia'?
That was the question that was being asked on Twitter ahead of the massive final table back in September.
Thought to be Francesco Garofalo, 'forzaitalia' (who only had $38K in winnings on GGPoker prior to this event) started the final table with the third-largest stack, good for 49 big blinds.
He doubled through Brewer before knocking out Mateos in sixth and Dimitar Danchev in fifth before busting Brewer heads-up.
His win was worth $1,122,201 and a WSOP bracelet. Full payouts can be seen below.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 'forzaitalia' | $1,122,201 |
| 2 | Chris Brewer | $865,335 |
| 3 | Bryn Kenney | $667,265 |
| 4 | Patrick Leonard | $514,531 |
| 5 | Dimitar Danchev | $396,758 |
| 6 | Adrian Mateos | $305,942 |
| 7 | Roman Hrabec | $235,914 |
| 8 | Ole Schemion | $181,914 |
| 9 | Samuel Mullur | $140,275 |
The MTT Database Review Twitter account first posted the news, saying, "So apparently GG banned winner of a $25k GGMillion$ SHR Championship and everyone laddered a FULL PAY JUMP. Don't know the reason. Never heard that name before so my guess would be multiaccounting? Is this the largest single ban and refund in history of online poker?"
PokerOrg contacted two players from the final table and confirmed the news.
Separately, Patrick Leonard tweeted about waking up to a refund from GGPoker of $152,733.53, the difference between third and fourth place money.
No reason for the disqualification was provided by GGPoker, and they didn't announce which tournament the refund was from, but they did confirm that the "offending players have been permanently banned from playing on GGPoker Network."
Prior to this, the largest refund Leonard said he had received was "at most $2K."
Leonard went on to praise GGPoker for the refund, saying, "Massive, massive props to GG for doing this refund, I assume they refunded $1.1m to everybody bumping everybody up one position."
That just left one question: would Brewer get the bracelet? The answer to that is no, but he posted that he was "quite happy either way."
Huge refund but not the biggest
The ban and refund will go down as one of the largest in online poker history, but it's not the biggest.
'TheV0id' won the 2007 PokerStars WCOOP Main Event for $1,228,330, which was the biggest ever online prize at the time. The account was registered to Natalie Teltscher, the sister of English pro Mark Teltscher, and was disqualified, with Kyle 'ka$ino' Schroeder awarded the win.
Natalie Teltscher tried to recoup the winnings through the courts but dropped the suit after admitting that she hadn't played the tournament herself.
Dutch player 'wann2play' was also disqualified after winning the WCOOP Main Event for $1.353 million in 2018. Argentinian poker pro Ezequiel Waigel was declared the winner.
Additional image courtesy of bCp-Poker Replays YouTube.
