Coming clean
Poker pro Ali Imsirovic has confirmed some, but not all, accusations that he has cheated in online poker. In a video he posted to YouTube on Sunday, Imsirovic said that he did, in fact, multi-table in tournaments on GGPoker in 2020.
Imsirovic explained that he multi-tabled for a few months during the COVID pandemic lockdowns when the high stakes online games were jumping. He said that he did it to defend himself against what he believed was rampant cheating on GGPoker. Basically, if someone was going to try to cheat him, he was going to cheat right back. Imsirovic said he stopped because he started feeling bad about what he was doing.
As he started getting bombarded left and right by cheating accusations last year (some of which we now know are definitely true), Imsirovic took to doing it again essentially as a big middle finger to the poker community. He said that if people were going to call him a cheater – which he says until then he only did in 2020 – he might as well do it.
And, as everyone thought, Imsirovic said he was one of the many accounts suspended from GGPoker in the fall of 2020 for both multi-accounting and using real-time assistance (RTA) programs. Some accounts, though apparently not his, have been reinstated, as they were only using pre-flop charts and not programs that actively made decisions for them.
Denies other accusations
Imsirovic did deny some of the cheating allegations. One of the big controversies came last spring when Alex Foxen accused him of looking at Paul Phua’s hole cards during a Triton Poker event. He vehemently denied doing that, saying in so many words that he often just stares at other players’ faces and cards to get reads, pay attention to the action, and so on.
He called the allegation that he has run an online poker cheating ring “fucking ridiculous” and that he never “ghosted” any players he backed in tournaments. Ghosting means instructing another person as they play – one player is that at the controls, the other is actually making the decisions. Imsirovic added that he no longer has any online poker “horses.”
Imsirovic believes that the pain he and his family have gone through during this stretch of cheating allegations has been enough punishment.
“I feel like I’ve paid all of my dues and want to move past this,” Imsirovic said.
He also called out some of his accusers without naming names, saying that those who do not “have their houses in order” should refrain from tossing around allegations, not-so-subtly implying that he knows of other people who have cheated, but who are still throwing shade at him.
