Steve O'Dwyer Gets Gonzalez Banned After Accusing Him Of Soft Playing & Colluding

Another day, another falling out in the high-stakes poker world, and this time it’s quite a serious one, with news that Uruguay’s best-ever player Fabrizio “SixthSenSe19” Gonzalez has been banned from PokerStars after fellow high-roller legend Steve O’Dwyer apparently accused Gonzalez of soft-playing and collusion.

The story came to light a couple of months after the ban was imposed, a Valentines Day ‘present’ of sorts from the Amaya-owned site after the Irishman reportedly contacted PokerStars to complain.

A series of tweets between two of the biggest names in the game seems to confirm that something has been going on, Codigopoker.com breaking the news yesterday…

@pokerstars hey! can I get a good luck retweet? tough spot here for me! I'm chipleader, but don't like my chances... 😒 pic.twitter.com/BFQpQAesCQ

— steveodwyer (@steveodwyer) February 13, 2017

This was followed by clear confirmation that O’Dwyer was unhappy about Gonzalez and his fairly well-known antics.

@aletz99 nope just curious why @pokerstars still lets this colluder play satellites

— steveodwyer (@steveodwyer) February 13, 2017

Gonzalez, who has multiple WSOP cashes and over $1.3million in live cashes on top of his online millions, was not slow to respond, tweeting back several times in response to O’Dwyer’s accusations…

@steveodwyer@PokerStars@svzff i saw u in Bahamas and u didnt have the balls to say anything to my face

— Fabrizio Gonzalez (@sixthsense19) February 17, 2017

Although the length of the Uruguayan’s ban has not been confirmed, Gonzalez has previous for similar dubious actions in the online game. Back in 2013 Daniel Colman claimed that Gonzalez was the man playing under fellow Uruguayan Leo Fernandez’s account, for which the former soccer international was also banned for breaking the T&C’s of PokerStars.

At the time, Fernandez was a Team PokerStars players, and Colman stated in an interview with HUSNG.com he was nearly “100% certain” that Fernandez had been caught allowing another user to multi-account with his screen name, the player in question being Fabrizio “SixthSenSe19” Gonzalez. 

The American’s suspicions were raised ‘when Fernandez was seen playing a widely different style, losing $400k in the process’, reports stated at the time.

“I don’t believe it is Leo playing on his account,” stated Colman, adding: “Close to 100% positive it is Fabrizio "sixthsense19" Gonzalez.  He is banned on Stars and I believe this is the new account he is playing on.  He is not terrible, but he isn’t going to be a winner.”

The length of the new ban has not been confirmed nor made public by PokerStars, and questions have already been asked on various poker forums about how Gonzalez is able to compete in the currently running SCOOP. It may be that ban has been lifted already, but the lack of transparency is somewhat worrying.

Although there is nothing to confirm Gonzalez’s guilt in this case, players new to the game should know that collusion, multi-accounting, soft-playing and various other forms of cheating have a long history in online poker, with many famous cases making their way onto PokerTube’s pages over the years.

Collusion is probably the most common form of cheating you are likely to face and it can happen in both live and online settings. The most bare-faced effort of this kind was seen in the 2009 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event final table, when Jean-Paul Pasqualini and Cedric Rossi were accused of using hand signals to collude.

An 8-minute video, compiled by the French poker-playing author Nordine Bouya, was produced to show exactly how they were supposedly doing it.

Basically, it was claimed that the players had devised a code of signals which involved touching various parts of their bodies to signal their holding. An example being, if one of them held an ace, they would touch the top of their head; two hands on their head would indicate pocket aces!

Without wishing to scare new players to the game away, my Halloween Horror Story from a year or two ago covers many of the ways in which you can be cheated, as well as how to avoid such things happening.