Ex-WSOP Exec Calls Players “American Scum” During Twitter Rant

Apart from being an excellent title for a gambling movie or punk rock band, “American scum” is the phrase used by Bill Rini, the head of WSOP.com from 2013-2019 uses to describe Ryan Leng and Chance Kornuth, in a rambling series of Twitter attacks. 

The attacks focus in particular on those players but implicate a number of other poker players in what Rini describes, rather tenuously as “extortion”.

The initial accusations came in the form of a series of screenshots of a group conversation. Unfortunately these were far too low a resolution to read what was going on. 

Subsequent Tweets are clearly conversation logs and appear to largely apply to ACR and concern whether or not players like capped rebuys, but do little to illuminate his point.

Eventually, the picture becomes clear through the tangled web of Twitter replies about forming an informal MTT players’ union. Though ultimately disbanded this union got so far as to propose a “plan of attack” which more or less amounted to asking sites to support them and giving publicity to those that did.

This is what Rini describes as:

“A small group of people were trying to extort a company to modifying a tournament structure to benefit pros.”

Clearly misunderstanding that promoting one company is not the same as threatening another.

Rini has a reputation in the poker community for being thin-skinned, but this absurd rant about a union that never got off the ground and its potential effect on a company he no longer works for has hints of the unhinged about it.

In general, Bill, if you are confident enough to publicly accuse someone of a crime then go to the police, mate. It’s their job.