The Five Greatest Poker Controversies of 2025

One Big Beautiful Bill Act vs. Poker Industry + Sweepstakes Ban

For the U.S. players 2025 became a year of unexpected announcements from the government, a lot of which were focused on one upcoming law named by Donald Trump “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”.

This document changes the way deductions are calculated for players’ profits or lack thereof, and states the following:

In General — For purposes of losses from wagering transactions, the amount allowed as a deduction for any taxable year —

• (A) shall be equal to 90 percent of the amount of such losses during such taxable year, and
• (B) shall be allowed only to the extent of the gains from such transactions during such taxable year.

In the layman terms, it means that when this document comes into force — on January 1st, 2026 — the player’s taxable base will be calculated by the formula: X of winnings minus 90% of Y of losses — implying that, up to a certain win-to-loss ratio, players will pay taxes in a losing year on top of their losses. We discussed this in detail in our review of Big Beautiful Bill.

As it wasn’t enough to make players pessimistic, Californian governors decided to add another grain of salt on this open wound by signing Bill AB 831 into law that made organising, promoting and supporting sweepstakes in any way literally illegal in the state.

All of these changes set the tone for 2026, which became a year that didn’t promise anything good for poker players long before it actually arrived — at least in the USA.

Collusion at the WSOP MIllionaire Maker Event

When the $1,500 Millionaire Maker event started on WSOP 2025, everyone was excited.

In the end it brought a record-breaking field of 11,996 entries and decent coverage with a lot of highlights but also — maybe the biggest scandal in WSOP history as well.

One of the players who reached the final table of this event was Jesse Yaginuma — the holder of ClubWPT Gold Ticket that guaranteed the $1,000,000 bonus for him for winning this event — who was widely supported by the community on his way to the extra million.

Up to the heads-up, the dynamic at the table was not remarkable but when Yaginuma left alone with James Carroll, things shifted rapidly — the latter obviously started chip dumping in favor of Jesse right on air until the very end.

The viewers of the coverage were furious — they wrote to WSOP on social media demanding to stop the game and investigate what’s going on but the brand took too long to react, and Yaginuma managed to finish the tournament as a winner, receiving the WSOP bracelet and taking a victory photo with it.

However, his triumph wasn’t long: WSOP investigated the heads-up after all, concluded that Yaginuma and Carroll colluded to secure the bonus for Jesse — and banned both of them permanently without a chance of parole. The organisers also did something unprecedented for WSOP — they awarded both players second place without choosing a winner or awarding a bracelet.

In the end Yaginuma took his extra million from ClubWPT Gold — but reaching it costs him much more.

Nachogate 2025 aka GTO WIzard + ACR Poker Drama

There is no year in poker when someone isn’t breaking rules in rooms. But 2025 was exceptional even in this way because this time the lawbreaker was none other than ACR ambassador Nacho Barbero. And he did it right at the start of the year.

The case is simple in its nature: Nacho published stories on Instagram where solver GTO WIzard was open behind the active tables on ACR Poker.

It was screenshotted and posted on X by Gilles Simon who wanted to check with ACR Poker on the legitimacy of using GTO Wizard while playing in their client. Nacho reacted with a peculiar message, stating that he just was coaching 4 of his horses on a Discord call and he doesn’t even play online — despite literally stating in the stories “today we playing”.

It started a debacle so big that ACR Poker issued the statement…just to call their ambassador a goofball who is also not a GTO-style player.

When the brand got backlash for an incoherent response, the post was deleted and replaced with a new one promising an investigation of this issue. The investigation later cleared Nacho out because “at no point did he use real-time assistance (RTA) to aid his or any other player’s decision-making during live hands”. Almost simultaneously the same conclusion was shared publicly by Patrick Leonard, who conducted his own “independent” research.

Nacho remained an ACR Poker sponsored pro until he was unexpectedly fired following his public statements expressing doubts about the site’s security. Phil Nagy, brand’s CEO, personally signed announcement of contract termination, stating:

Despite such an unpleasant public exit, Nacho did not remain without a patch for long. In August 2025, WPT Global added him to its team, albeit without any public announcement.

Ren Lin Was Banned for Being RTA at the GGMillion$ Final Table

Another now ex-ambassador (but for GGPoker) who has tainted himself in 2025 was Ren “Tony” Lin — Chinese high roller and beloved character of any poker broadcast due to his radiant smile and cheerful personality. However, having charisma wasn’t enough to save him from troubles when his breach of GGPoker rules became public.

It turned out that on October 17th, 2025 Lin played the role of real-time assistant (RTA) for his friend from China nicknamed RealOA.

Ren was contacted by him during the WSOP Super Circuit Main Event break and asked for advice on how to play at the final table of $10,300 GGMillion$ on GGPoker. Later RealOA won his tournament and thanked Tony in their group where also was a third-place winner from Japan nicknamed Buzzcut.

The latter made this information public and accused RealOA of using Ren Lin as an RTA that was later confirmed by Tony himself.

The tournament director of WSOPC, where Lin was playing Day 2 of the Main Event at that time, decided to disqualify him immediately as a punishment for breaching the rules of GGPoker, the WSOP brand owner. Ren agreed without a fuss and then publicly apologised admitting his mistake and saying that he and his friend had returned the money to GGPoker, with an extra payment from Lin’s pocket, to be distributed among the affected players.

GGPoker also reacted to this disaster by permanently banning RealOA and indefinitely suspending Ren Lin from all GGPoker, WSOP and partner platforms.

However, Lin’s ban lasted for just a moment — in December 2025 he was already seen on Triton Paradise and WSOP Paradise both sponsored by GGPoker. The only change for him this time was a lack of patches because he represented no one but himself.

Fake AI Quotes in WSOP “NO LIMIT” Docuseries 

In the year of AI becoming one of the most tiresome yet impossible to avoid things in the world, documentaries stayed among the last creative products in which you would expect to see something artificial due to their purpose. However, poker managed to distinguish itself here too thanks to “NO LIMIT” docuseries where some of Alan Keating voice lines were AI-generated without his permission or even notification.

When he made information about at least two fake quotes public, Dustin Iannotti — the creator of docuseries who half a year before accused poker industry of being “creatively bankrupt” and announced his intention to change it — confirmed using AI with one of the most rage-provoking post you can imagine justifying these “editorial choices” by the audience response:

People were confused and enraged because for them creating AI fakes of someone’s words, especially using this person’s voice without authorization, was just unacceptable. But not for Dustin who continued justifying the use of AI in postproduction. The more he shared his opinion, the bigger the issue became, culminating in WSOP’s decision to remove and redo all “NO LIMIT” episodes until “the final product reflects our standards”. And as of December 16th, 2025 they have not been returned to YouTube yet.

It’s remarkable though that even after this decision was made Iannotti continued to stand his ground and miss the point people tried to deliver him. One of his notorious tweets even stated: