WSOP suspends bracelet winner and online POY after alleged cheating

Michigan online player Kevin Ruscitti has had his account on WSOP.com suspended just days after he logged his first career bracelet win in a WSOP Online domestic bracelet event. Ruscitti, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, an outer Detroit suburb, confirmed that his account had been suspended after other Michigan players reported in-game playing decisions that matched to inputs found within GTOWizard’s Fair Play tool.

Ruscitti triumphed in the recent Event #15 of the domestic WSOP Online series, $500 NL Hold’em PKO, a tourney where full results have yet to be uploaded into the WSOP’s massive results database. Ruscitti earned a combined $38,482.99 in the event, comprising the $15,125.29 winner’s prize and $23,357.70 in accumulated knockout bounties. Ruscitti eliminated Cherish ‘BluffCharge’ Andrews to complete the win.

Ruscitti denies using any form of RTA

Ruscitti, a seven-time WSOP Circuit ring winner and the reigning WSOP Online Michigan Player of the Year, posted into the Team Michigan Poker Facebook group that his account had been suspended. He also denied using GTO Wizard or any other form of real-time assistance (RTA). Ruscitti’s post read as follows:

“My WSOP account has been temporarily frozen because retired micro stakes grinder Justin Pimpedly accused me of using RTA. Not only do I not use GTOWizard I don’t even use a HUD when I play on PokerStars. You don’t need GTOWizard when you are a wizard. If you know me, you know I’ve been stiffed for upwards of 30-40k in home games; now I’m being accused of cheating online, sometimes I feel like IT NEVER ENDS. Like I’ve been playing poker 12 hours a day every day for the past four years and for whatever reason, it’s hard for some people to accept the fact that maybe I’m just a good player. I don’t need GTO to win all I need are my notes and I’ll be crushing. Anyways once I’m proven innocent I’ll be back.”

Rather than being solely the work of Pimpedly, other Michigan online players quickly came forth to announce that they were part of a large group of players who had been suspicious of Ruscitti’s play for some time and had been testing certain hands he’d played via GTOw’s Fair Play tool. One group poster, Steven Paul Stolzenfeld, explained many of the details involved as the thread began to draw attention, including that the group had submitted evidence of Ruscitti’s claimed RTA use roughly six weeks ago. Stolzenfeld replied to Ruscitti:

‘Just so you know, Justin Pimpedly is not at all responsible for the investigation of alleged RTA use. There is a community of grinders that had been suspicious and have been investigating for a couple of months and forwarded those suspicions to WSOP.com personnel. Unsurprisingly, they have taken roughly six weeks to take any sort of action on the matter. To many of those reading along this thread, a frozen account does not mean Kevin is found guilty by WSOP.com.”

Ruscitti actively traded posts with his accusers, including his blanket denial of RTA use, In a reply to another poster, he wrote:

“I’ve never used GTOWizard before, and when I was accused of RTA, I forgot what it stood for and laughed it off. I didn’t know what a fair play check tool was or even does. This is all foreign to me because I don’t use it. All this software bs is so bad for the game.”

Other players took the cheating claims to Twitter/X, including FB group member Mario Arribas, who also posted some screenshots of alleged positive hits:

Not the first Fair Play-based cheating accusations

The allegations about RTA use and its discovery via the members-only GTOWizard Fair Play tool have been in the news before. A year ago, Mike Holtz accused Chris Battenfield of cheating after conducting similar research of Battenfield’s hands using the then-just-released Fair Play tool.

Battenfield, like Ruscitti, was suspended pending an investigation. However, a couple of weeks later, Battenfield was cleared of the cheating allegations and his account access was restored. It turned out that the brand new Fair Play tool was a work in progress, and upon initial release it was not able to eliminate certain types of false-positive results. The tool quickly underwent renovation and enhancement designed to eliminate some of those false positives, leaving the claims of cheating by Ruscitti an open question at this juncture.

Cherish Andrews, who finished runner-up in the bracelet event, has called for WSOP.com to do the right thing.

Jules Pochy

Andrews jumps gun on Ruscitti’s ‘ban’

An understandably upset Cherish Andrews, runner-up to Ruscitti in the bracelet event, chastized the WSOP for waiting until after Ruscitti had won an online bracelet before taking action:

As other social-media posters such as Stolzenfeld and Matt Berkey pointed out, Ruscitti has been suspended, not banned, and a final decision by the WSOP likely won’t take place for a couple of weeks. Such a decision is also unlikely to be publicized formally if it goes against Ruscitti; instead, such a permanent ban would have to be inferred by Ruscitti no longer playing in WSOP.com tourneys. 

Separately, Andrews also expressed her wish that the WSOP to do “what is right”, including stripping Ruscitti of the bracelet and laddering up all the other players to redistribute prize money. However, the WSOP has never done that for online events. In the sole instance where an event winner was permanently banned, the runner-up reported via social media that the WSOP would not be redistributing funds due to Nevada regulatory concerns.

In a post on X, PokerOrg columnist Patrick Leonard said, “GTOWizard is a readily available weapon that criminals can use. The pressure shouldn’t be on wsop (they won’t change) it has to be on GTOw.”

^{Feature image courtesy of Facebook.}