WSOP Suspends Michigan Online POY Following Bracelet Win as Pros Allege RTA
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Reigning WSOP Online Michigan (formerly WSOP.com) Player of the Year Kevin “GR4ND_THEFT” Ruscitti has been suspended from the poker site in the wake of real-time assistance (RTA) allegations against him, which he denied to PokerNews.
Ruscitti won his first bracelet this weekend in the online $500 No-Limit Hold'em PKO as he defeated 2022 GPI Female Player of the Year Cherish Andrews. Days later, the multi-World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) ring winner and 2023 WSOP MI POY learned that his account had been suspended after fellow Michigan poker players "accused me of using RTA."
PokerNews spoke with Andrews, Ruscitti and multiple poker players who say they'd suspected for weeks that Ruscitti was using RTA and had submitted solver checks to WSOP that they allege point to cheating.
Suspected of RTA
Michigan's Ryan "MagicJohnson" Hiller first became suspicious of Ruscitti a few months ago when he "basically bragged about RTA use" to some fellow Michigan players. Hiller began running Fair Play Checks, a GTOWizard tool that lets players see if solver outputs were looked up during real-time situations, on Ruscitti. He quickly found outputs that seemed to align with tournament hands Ruscitti had played on WSOP.
"Now that he was on my radar I would play hands with him where he would break from his normal behavior," Hiller told PokerNews. "Instead of snap acting like he usually does he’d put in a 30 second time bank on the river and find a 150p overbet in a checked down pot. I started running him through fair play check and he would often fail when he did this."
Hiller alerted other Michigan poker players, who began doing their own Fair Play Checks. Rather than confront Ruscitti, the group kept their detective work "under wraps for a time until enough evidence was compiled that we thought WSOP would have no other option but to ban his account," said Mario Arribas, another Michigan grinder who shared a handful of Fair Play Check screenshots on X.
"And it seems that's the direction this is heading, I suspect," he said.
Matt Berkey and other poker players noted that some of the screenshots shared were not "consistent w/positive hits (of RTA use) & shouldn't be used to publicly persecute someone," also noting that Fair Play Checks can produce false positives. Hiller shared additional Fair Play Check screenshots with PokerNews.
"I'm A Wild Player"
Ruscitti learned this week his WSOP account had been frozen and was "under investigation."
Speaking to PokerNews, the new bracelet winner denied using RTA and dismissed the Fair Play Checks against him as false positives.
"Remember when you were younger and you’d beat someone in a board game or something and you can’t accept the truth that maybe you’re not good at the game what’s the first thing someone claims…. He’s cheating!!! That’s what’s happening to me right now. Most of the Michigan players are getting smoked by Vegas since the merge has taken place and I’m one of the few that found success and immediately they wanna put me on blast saying I’m cheating. It’s ridiculous."
"I’m a wild player. I make big calls I run big bluffs but one thing I’m not is a cheater."
Ruscitti won the 2023 WSOP.com MI POY race with 46,100 points, beating out the next closest players "mkstr" (36,723 points), "Mcleskey" (34,727 points) and "BMFS33" (30,250 points).
Ruscitti confirmed that his WSOP account was suspended and said he is in the process of submitting documentation to get it reinstated.
Note: WSOP Online Michigan merged with New Jersey and Nevada into a shared network in April 2024.
Missing Out on a Bracelet?
Cherish Andrews didn't think there was anything suspicious about the play of the opponent who beat her for a WSOP bracelet on Oct. 19. She had battled with Ruscitti before, including in this summer's Online Bracelet Event #30: $888 Crazy Eights Encore that both final tabled.
When Michigan poker players alerted her that they believed Ruscitti may have been using RTA, however, Andrews, who took to X after learning about the RTA allegations, thought back to "a couple hands that were kind of sus" and ran her own Fair Play Checks from the bracelet event, which didn't return any hits.
"I don't know for sure that this guy is cheating. But my post (on X) was more to drive WSOP (into action), because it literally took someone winning a bracelet for them to pause his account and investigate. Which is crazy. If regs that play on your site all the time are coming to your for weeks with what they deem as proof, then you need to do something about it right away."
If she and other players were indeed cheated out of bracelets, podium finishes or cash prizes, the former GPI Female POY said she believed they should be compensated.
"If it is proven that he is guilty and that he did cheat, then that money should be confiscated and it should be distributed appropriately," she said. "He should not get the bracelet, and everyone should ladder up a spot, because that is what is right. Even if he cheated one hand in that tournament ... then he should be disqualified. That to me is the appropriate action that should be taken."
PokerNews will continue to monitor the situation and will report on any major developments.
