Popular poker pro Tony ‘Ren’ Lin — a player with over $16 million in live tournament winnings — has been disqualified from the World Series of Poker Super Circuit Cyprus Main Event on Day 2.
His stack was removed from the $5,300 buy-in tournament by WSOP Tournament Director Andy Tillman, who cited a “violation of the Poker Integrity Policy on GGPoker.”
The news was announced on the Merit Poker X account on Saturday afternoon.
Lin accused of real-time coaching on GGPoker
Lin wasn’t disqualified for cheating at the $5 million guaranteed tournament but for alleged offenses online on GGPoker. GGPoker now owns the WSOP brand and this is the highest-profile case of the operator banning a player from a live event for online violations.
Adding to the controversy, Lin is currently a GGPoker ambassador — at least for now. It remains to be seen whether Lin will suffer further consequences of his alleged online issues.
Lin’s problems started when a GGPoker player, ‘Buzzcut’ (known as ‘yl3i’ on X), alleged that Lin had admitted to coaching a player — ‘RealOA’ — in real-time at the final table of the GGMillion$ tournament on October 14. ‘Buzzcut’ finished third in the tournament, and ‘RealOA’ went on to win it for $346,903.
‘Buzzcut’ published images that showed ‘RealOA’ thanking Lin for his help during the tournament and messages allegedly from Lin apologizing to ‘Buzzcut’ and promising not to coach other players in real time again.
One message from Lin read, “Maybe in the current poker scene, this is all very normal — 99.99% of players encounter this, either asking others for help or offering advice. But it really isn’t fair. That’s why I want to apologize to you — maybe if I hadn’t advised him, you might have busted earlier or won the championship. Whatever the outcome, it wasn’t right. So from now on, I definitely won’t help anyone analyze hands while play is ongoing. Sorry again.” (This message was originally written in Chinese and translated into English.)
You can see all the messages and the allegations through the X post below.
GGPoker’s Security & Ecology policy states very clearly that “every decision made at the poker table should be made free of any external assistance.”
Any transgressions could result in a permanent ban from the site, and it appears that there can be real-world implications as well.
PokerOrg reached out to 'Buzzcut' for comment. We will bring you any new developments as they happen.
