Update: After this article was published, ACR Poker issued another statement: "We acknowledge that our initial response to the concerns surrounding [Nacho Barbero's] play was in poor taste and did not convey the seriousness with which we take the situation. We sincerely apologize for this. We want to assure the poker community that we are conducting a thorough and objective investigation. Our game integrity and security team, along with external investigations, are carefully reviewing all relevant data, consulting GTO Wizard for analysis, and ensuring that any findings are addressed in full accordance with our Terms of Service. If any infractions are identified, we will take appropriate action. We understand the community’s concerns and will provide updates as soon as we have more information."
ACR Poker ambassador Nacho Barbero has come under fire after posting an image of himself playing the Venom tournament with GTO Wizard open at the same time.
This was picked up by another player who posted it on X and asked: "Yooo @ACR_POKER Can we use GTO Wizard while playing on your site?"
His post has gone viral, with over 269,000 views and responses from a huge amount of poker players, including Patrick Leonard and Barbero himself.
Barbero's excuse is that he wasn't using GTO Wizard for himself but for coaching players on a Discord call.
The original poster came back to Barbero on this, saying: "Weirdly worded post in that case, as it isn't clear if you're playing here or not. It also sets a very bad example for the many followers you have on socials to see ACR open with an active GTO Wizard window. I'd make sure to be very careful with these softwares next time."
Using RTA tools like GTO Wizard – that help you make optimal decisions – while playing online is against the rules of service of pretty much every poker site, including ACR Poker.
ACR Poker posted its own statement on the issue and managed to make the matter much worse.
ACR had the foresight to turn off comments on the post but couldn't stop the quote tweets racking up. If you want to see why good PR is important to a company, check out the rest of them.
Patrick Leonard: GTO Wizard needs a delay
Cheating online is an emotive subject.
Since the thread went viral, many players have responded. Patrick Leonard came up with a response that rubbed some people up the wrong way, forcing him to record a video to try to explain away some of the language he used.
Leonard's first response (which itself has racked up almost 160K views) was as follows: "Obviously all of Nacho's friends (including me) will defend him, the haters will hate. Nobody will actually know so no point arguing about that.
"The unarguable has to be that GTOW needs to have a delay; it’s needed a delay for so long but surely it needs to happen before [the] WSOP this summer. I didn’t fire any WSOP online last year and don’t play the Venom.
"I literally love online poker and tournaments more than 99% of people. If I won’t play because of GTOW imagine how many hundreds/thousands don’t play because of it?"
After criticism from Lex Veldhuis, among others, Leonard added that he is going through Barbero's GTO Wizard history from the last 48 hours.
Optics are terrible for the game
One of the big issues is that it doesn't just come down to whether Barbero was using RTA or not.
And Ghilley, the original poster, made a similar point: "I also would assume that there was no actual RTA usage, but the problem is having the software visibly open while it at least looks like he is playing / the site is open.
"As an ambassador that reaches at least tens of thousands of people, this normalizes the idea of RTA usage. I'm sure that almost every reg has left software on accidentally here and there, but this just sets a really bad precedent. We need some real action on it from both the sites and the software providers sooner rather than later."
Dan 'Jungleman' Cates summed it up well.
It's been another bad week for online poker after Brian Hastings posted videos showing what he called obvious collusion in a $1,055 tournament on Ignition Casino.
