The biggest poker scandals of all time

Poker is a game of psychology and chance, so even the highest levels of play are susceptible to shark attacks, cheaters and other underhanded tactics. For every great player who rises to fame with a string of big wins, there’s another who gets barred from playing in any official events for one atrocious crime or another. 

The poker world moves at an accelerated pace, and with new formats coming onto the scene often. As a result, we have seen more than our fair share of scandals in recent years. Here’s our rundown of the biggest cases ever where cheating threatened the reputation of the game itself.

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The Black Friday scandal

At the start of the 2016-2017 season, many were hoping to see a new dawn for professional poker after the “Black Friday” saw the end of the Professional Poker Tour (PPT). 

That series had been the only professional tournament circuit for American poker players for almost two decades, but the PPT was dogged by accusations of cheating ever since its inception in 2007. 

That same year, a group of online poker players filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, claiming that the government had “fostered and supported” a black market for online poker by allowing access to state-regulated sites. 

The “no limit hold’em pot scandal”

One of the most shocking scandals in poker history occurred at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2013. At the end of the event’s Main Event, two men went head-to-head for the final $31.5 million prize. 

One of them was professional poker player Howard Lederer, who’d been barred from all official events for the previous two years due to a long and sordid list of scandals. With Lederer out, the other final table participant was Tom Hall, who’d won the WSOP Main Event in 2006, 2007 and 2008. 

The contest had begun with a heads-up duel between Hall and Eduardo Sánchez, a Brazilian poker pro who’d never finished lower than second in his WSOP career. The duel came down to the wire, with Sánchez leading the final hand with a higher hand than Hall. 

Hall’s hand was revealed to be a pair of 10’s, which yielded a royal flush. As the house dealer announced a royal flush for Hall, Lederer stood up and protested loudly. “Those are Sánchez’s cards,” Lederer said.

The Poker Stars fake tournament scandal

The “Poker Stars Fake Tournament Scandal” was a high-profile case of fraud at one of the largest poker sites in the world, where the head of the tournament department systematically manipulated the outcome of top tournament events. 

This scam started to unravel back in 2012, when in-game chat records of a tournament at Poker Stars’ Bodog Poker site revealed that senior management had been colluding with team members. “We’re rigging this tournament,” a member of Poker Stars’ Tournament Department told his colleagues in chat. 

The Full Tilt Poker failure scandal

In 2012, the US Department of Justice shut down US online poker sites Full Tilt Poker and Bodog, claiming that the companies had been running an illegal gambling operation. The sites were fined $250 million and threatened with a total shutdown of all poker-related activities in the United States. 

But the owners of Full Tilt Poker were able to raise more than $10 million to keep the company afloat. They ultimately agreed to refund customers and pay a $250 million fine. However, the scandal continued to dog the company as employees claimed in lawsuits that the company had run a Ponzi scheme to pay off the fine.

The Phil Hellmuth/BB King betting scandal

It’s hard to imagine how one of the greatest players in the history of the game could have sunk so low as to cheat in an attempt to improve his play. But that’s exactly what happened when Phil Hellmuth decided to rig $1.3 million in $10,000 chip play at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2005. 

The incident is just one of many controversies surrounding the world’s biggest poker event, which has been dogged by cheating scandals since its inception in 1970. The 2005 WSOP was no different, with a number of incidents highlighting the extensive efforts of unscrupulous players to manipulate the final table outcome of high-stakes games.

Ongoing Playground Fraudulent Wi-Fi scandal

The online poker boom of the 2000s saw many top-level players turn to online gaming in order to make a living. But many of these pros were lured away from the regulated game of poker by the promise of big money to be made in online tournaments. 

But as soon as they turned their attention to online cash games, they found themselves in serious trouble with the law. One of the most high-profile examples of this came from the company Playground Poker, which one of its founders had defrauded in an effort to fund a fake tournament. 

The Flopzilla inflating chips scandal

After a series of high-profile scandals involving cheating at the highest levels of poker, it comes as little surprise to find that the biggest fraud in the history of the game was perpetrated by a professional poker player. But who, exactly, would cheat by inflating the value of chips during a tournament? 

Well, if you posed the question to Phil Hellmuth, you’d get an answer that sets the world of poker back a decade. In a 2005 World Series of Poker (WSOP) event, Hellmuth was forced to pay out $2.1 million due to chip-bet rigging. 

The entire incident was sparked by Hellmuth’s decision to bet against his own hand, which is something he’d later admit was a reckless gamble with his own money. After the WSOP, Hellmuth signed a deal with Caesars Entertainment Corporation to promote their online poker offering. 

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