Well-known German poker pro Fedor Holz has accused two professional Brazilian poker players of colluding during the final table of the WPT Deepstack main event on 888poker. The two Brazilians, Rodrigo "seijistar1" Seiji and Rodrigo "selouan1991" Selouan, were among the final five players in this major event on 888poker and stood out for a very suspicious move.
What happened?
With only five players left in the final, Seiji raised from first position with A J . On the button, Selouan went all-in with A 9 . All the other players folded back to Seiji. The latter had 27 big blinds and was chip leader, while Selouan had just over 7 big blinds. By virtually all strategic standards, a player with Ace-Jack has a very easy call in this situation. However, Selouan folded his hand and left his Brazilian compatriot with the pot.
Fedor Holz, who was watching the finale, immediately spoke out on Twitter:
A pretty obvious collusion spot including Seijistar on a big 1K FT vs his friend Selouan. They are part of a Brazilian HS group that work together called “9Tales”. Cheating sucks. I think every HS reg that doesn’t cheat should work together to bring up similar situations. pic.twitter.com/TZLT8BoHC7
— Fedor Holz 🐧 (@CrownUpGuy) December 25, 2021
In further tweets, he elaborated:
In case It isn’t clear, AJ folds. They probably weren’t aware it’s live-streamed with cards up.
I don’t think this automatically means they are cheating. There are potential other explanations why he made that fold. I think it is a clear call for basically every HS pro I know and given that he financially profits from it I wanted to raise awareness. I will do so with others
I think it is a very sketchy spot knowing that they share action. To me it looks like he made that fold because he has action and wouldn’t otherwise, that’s why I posted it.
There is a lot of cheating going on in highstakes and I think we need to raise more awareness in general.
A little later, 888poker also spoke out via Twitter and stated that they would start an investigation into the incident:
Any type of collusion is in clear violation of our user agreement.
— 888poker (@888poker) December 25, 2021
We are reviewing this hand and others played between these two players. We are contacting the players to better understand their POV. We will be in touch with the players and act upon our investigation results.
The tournament on 888poker ended for Rodrigo Seiji in third place ($99k) and Rordrigo Selouan finished fourth ($74k). Both players are still active on 888poker and it remains to be seen whether there will be consequences for one or both players.
