Did Michael "Gags30" Gagliano and Brian Sherrier pull shenanigans to bank $8500 overlay on $10k guaranteed on Pokerstars New Jersey?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZ29IT4W...g&name=900x900

"LuckySpewy1" (not to be confused with Luckychewy) noticed the above bizarre "$500 High Roller, $10k Guaranteed" tournament on Pokerstars New Jersey.

The tournament completed in 10 minutes, with only 3 players, and the $10k guaranteed pool paid out despite just $1500 in buyins, for a spectacular overaly.

How did they manage that?

It was a perfect storm. Once the tournament gets to 3 players, it's official. If it gets to heads up, there is no more registration, and the third person can't rebuy.

Additionally, LuckySpewy claims that Gags backs the other two payers, making this look very suspicious. How was this over within 10 minutes, if there was honest play?

https://twitter.com/LuckySpewy1/stat...82938552139778


Gags claimed that he wouldn't risk his livelihood from that site just to score four figures:

https://twitter.com/Gags30poker/stat...09564035878912

He seems to be implying that he did a heads-up chop to "save time", and that there was nothing shady.

A bit hard for me to swallow, but I would have to see the hand histories to draw further conclusions.

my first thought is, yeah you'd have to be pretty stupid to pull this bullshit on a regulated site because you are just asking for trouble...but then I remembered a nice chunk of poker players are fucking mongs so it's quite possible...

here's the structure sheet (notice it's an $8K guarantee this week, lol)…



would have to be a fucking helluva cooler within the first level or two for players to get in 200bb in a hand pre-ante when in theory the tournament should be playing very, very slowly since people just aint going to war without an ante in there...

kinda shady that his reasoning for chopping was to "save time"...um yeah, not really...there is only one prize paid out here and that's the whole thing to first as you can see in that screenshot...you aren't saving time by chopping as it's not like there is a first and second place prize and you each are guaranteed something by getting "this far"...it only pays $10K to first...you chop to lock up the free overlay, not to save time...

Some updates.

LuckySpewy1 is named Yong Keun, who is a very successful online New Jersey player.

The third guy (the one who busted super fast to make it heads up) was Daniel Sewnig, aka @RedSoxNets5

Apparently Yong had some existing bad blood between him and Sewnig:

https://twitter.com/LuckySpewy1/stat...23763684306944

https://twitter.com/LuckySpewy1/stat...24482764181510


So it's pretty clear that Yong/Spewy was bringing this up out of desire to make these guys look bad, and not just to be a good poker citizen.

But so what? I don't care about Spewy's motivation -- only whether the accusations are credible, which they seem to be.

Katie Stone -- another NJ player who is apparently friends with Gags, jumped on Spewy for this whole thing.

(Her tweets are protected, so I'll post them here rather than embedding.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Katie Stone

I am sorry Yong but until you see a hh or talk with support, this is very irresponsible and borderline slander.

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https://twitter.com/KatieStonePoker/status/1269407031938756608

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Katie Stone

Lol sure they do. If you see the players still playing that would indicate their accounts were not suspended for anything. If the players disappear from the site, you have your answer there too.

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https://twitter.com/KatieStonePoker/status/1269419359631372288

https://twitter.com/LuckySpewy1/stat...20791013179393


I hate Katie's point here. Basically it's, "If Stars security hasn't closed their accounts, they did nothing wrong."

That's like saying, "Anyone who hasn't been convicted of a crime must be innocent."

Especially in poker, one must use common sense to ascertain the guilt or innocence of people in controversial matters, and not just assume that site security's inaction means innocence.


Another person, James Hundt, brought up the very valid observation that Sewnig wasn't offering to prove his own innocence or present hand histories. Sewnig snapped at him that he was being unfairly accusatory.

https://twitter.com/RedsoxNets5/stat...25633970528257

Then Gags jumped in:

https://twitter.com/Gags30poker/stat...27682057564160

https://twitter.com/Gags30poker/stat...28512051679232


He also seemed overconfident regarding being investigated, presumably because he knows that Stars can't prove anything, and it was their own stupid policy which allowed this to occur. LOL @ "slander" though:

https://twitter.com/Gags30poker/stat...44854242856966


Anyway, I think it's pretty clear they exploited this. You'd have to be really naive to think that all of this is just an unfortunate coincidence.

Sewnig busting out super-fast in a 200BB deep event is the most telling part. If that was legit, he would post the hand history and shut everyone up. Instead, he's taking the indignant, "You have no right to accuse me!" line, which is common when people are caught doing something unethical, but there's no absolute proof.

Since Sewnig could easily post the hand histories and put all of this to bed, and he won't, it's pretty they have something to hide.

With all of that said, this isn't a huge deal. The main victim here is Pokerstars, and the only other potential victims would be those who could have played this overlay and were shut out, but so far nobody has come forward to claim they tried but found it closed.

Still, this entire indignant, mocking attitude being displayed by Gags and Sewnig is very off-putting, and I think less of them after this entire debacle.

i get an aggressive dynamic 3 handed between regs, but like i mentioned in my original post i highly doubt that there is any pro tourney player who is going broke 150-200bb deep pre-ante with AQo...

they got lucky that they found their loophole and exploited it...congrats guys, just what is going to make stars want to put more money into tourney series on a site that is on life support in NJ...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GambleBotsChafedPenis

i get an aggressive dynamic 3 handed between regs, but like i mentioned in my original post i highly doubt that there is any pro tourney player who is going broke 150-200bb deep pre-ante with AQo...

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$500 buyin, 3 handed, $10k to first, and when it gets down to HU nobody else can register.

Assuming your goal is to profit, you should be looking to flip as soon as possible. It's simple math, that's all there is to it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GambleBotsChafedPenis

just what is going to make stars want to put more money into tourney series on a site that is on life support in NJ...

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Stars collected $1.7m in rake for May 2020. (just barely ahead of wsop/888) up from 675k in May 2019. (ty covid-19 obviously)
https://www.nj.gov/oag/ge/docs/Finan...20/May2020.pdf

I believe GBCP understands all of that. He's just saying that the 3rd guy very likely busted on purpose so the other two would get heads up (and all of the money for the tournament), and I agree.

And of course, zero chance this guy does such a thing if he's not also being backed by Gags there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

I believe GBCP understands all of that. He's just saying that the 3rd guy very likely busted on purpose so the other two would get heads up (and all of the money for the tournament), and I agree.

And of course, zero chance this guy does such a thing if he's not also being backed by Gags there.

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Zero chance? Calling off with AQ is fine. Probably even optimal.

If he folds, the chances of a fourth registering increases.

If a fourth registers the ev of a starting stack goes from $3,333 to $2500 immediately and greatly increases the chances of several more entries since now two players need to bust instead of one.

On top of that, all 3 players are regs and understand this, which makes preflop 3b+ ranges super wide.


Gags has a great reputation also, fwiw. I would be very surprised if he was sharing hole cards, if that's what you're implying by busting on purpose.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by duped_samaritan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

I believe GBCP understands all of that. He's just saying that the 3rd guy very likely busted on purpose so the other two would get heads up (and all of the money for the tournament), and I agree.

And of course, zero chance this guy does such a thing if he's not also being backed by Gags there.

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Zero chance? Calling off with AQ is fine. Probably even optimal.

If he folds, the chances of a fourth registering increases.

If a fourth registers the ev of a starting stack goes from $3,333 to $2500 immediately and greatly increases the chances of several more entries since now two players need to bust instead of one.

On top of that, all 3 players are regs and understand this, which makes preflop 3b+ ranges super wide.


Gags has a great reputation also, fwiw. I would be very surprised if he was sharing hole cards, if that's what you're implying by busting on purpose.

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It is very likely that, at the very least, they had an agreement to all play recklessly in order to bust one of the three of them.

I doubt it was just a matter of the 3rd guy calling off lighter than normal in order to lock up a nice payment from quickly knocking out one of the other two guys.

There's a huge difference between an agreement beforehand between all 3 players to rapidly try to bust one and all share the profits, than 3 separate guys realizing that it's +EV to play looser than normal in this spot.

Similarly, if I am at a WSOP event, and it's me, a good pro, and 7 fish/semi-fish at the table, it's totally fine for both of us to independently decide to stay out of each other's way. It's not fine for us to agree beforehand that we will be softplaying each other. It would be even worse if we were backed by the same money AND came to this agreement.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Quote:

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Originally Posted by duped_samaritan

Zero chance? Calling off with AQ is fine. Probably even optimal.

If he folds, the chances of a fourth registering increases.

If a fourth registers the ev of a starting stack goes from $3,333 to $2500 immediately and greatly increases the chances of several more entries since now two players need to bust instead of one.

On top of that, all 3 players are regs and understand this, which makes preflop 3b+ ranges super wide.


Gags has a great reputation also, fwiw. I would be very surprised if he was sharing hole cards, if that's what you're implying by busting on purpose.

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It is very likely that, at the very least, they had an agreement to all play recklessly in order to bust one of the three of them.

I doubt it was just a matter of the 3rd guy calling off lighter than normal in order to lock up a nice payment from quickly knocking out one of the other two guys.

There's a huge difference between an agreement beforehand between all 3 players to rapidly try to bust one and all share the profits, than 3 separate guys realizing that it's +EV to play looser than normal in this spot.

Similarly, if I am at a WSOP event, and it's me, a good pro, and 7 fish/semi-fish at the table, it's totally fine for both of us to independently decide to stay out of each other's way. It's not fine for us to agree beforehand that we will be softplaying each other. It would be even worse if we were backed by the same money AND came to this agreement.

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A WSOP table with someone you know and 7 randoms at your table and a thousand randoms at 100 other tables is not remotely the same.

Imagine you sit down and it's 3 handed - the other 2 guys at your table you've played thousands of hours together over the past 5+ years.

It's a small local casino with a weird house rule, if one person busts before a fourth person registers, nobody else can enter and $8,500 will be added to the prize pool to cover the guarantee. This happens every once in a while at this casino - the regulars all understand how it works. Recently the same tournament got 30 players after just starting with just a few - so a fourth person registering would be a massive ev downswing.

What do you think would happen?

Do you think there would be a lot of 4bet folding?

My take is that this is kind of like the raptors looking for vulnerabilities in the fence in Jurassic Park. It all just worked out too conveniently for these three for it all to be a coincidence. If I had to guess they were not going to do something silly but if the chance for one of them to bust 3 handed availed itself, even if it was a little thin, it would be taken. Again, I don’t blame them for a second this is on Stars. You can’t prove intent and they have to stick to their story. IMHO they found that vulnerability in that fence and ran through it. I can’t blame them.