Million Dollar Bad Beat

What would you say if you sat at the WSOP final table playing Texas Hold'em heads-up against a complete donkey, and after the dinner break, your opponent was replaced with a well-known tournament professional? You'd probably object to that, wouldn't you?

This actually happened in the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) at PokerStars.

THEV0id, a previously unknown online-poker nickname, played great poker, won the whole enchilada and received a first prize worth $1 million. But nobody knew who this player was. The name had never appeared in a large tournament before, and despite that, the player behind it managed to win the largest online poker tournament this year. Everything smelled a bit fishy to say the least.

But now we know how it all went down. THEV0id is actually the sister of a skilled poker player, who has been successful on the European Poker Tour. He participated in WCOOP Poker Stars tournament, but when he busted out, he took over his sister's seat. Unfortunately for the V0id family, PokerStars has now realized this and decided to disqualify the winner.

PokerStars says:
We have determined, based on the totality of evidence, that the tournament winner "TheV0id" was in breach of the PokerStars Terms of Service. In the interests of Game Integrity, "TheV0id" has been disqualified from first place.

Ooops… Nasty beat that one.

But what is cheating in online poker? Asking your friend for advice about poker hands over MSN, have someone next to you by the computer helping you with tricky decisions, using poker software to remember played hands… well, I surely don't know.