Will Kassouf Runs Off with Chips after Losing Cash Game Pot?

11 months ago
Will Kassouf Runs Off with Chips after Losing Cash Game Pot?
12:28
12 Apr

William Kassouf, the controversial loudmouthed English poker pro, is back in the news – this time accused of grabbing his chips and running when drawing dead in a cash game at the Irish Open!

Kassouf is famous for his speech-play, including his “nine-high like a boss!” cry when winning, but according to Leo Worthington-Leese in the video above, he took his PLO losses very badly indeed.

Having already been stacked, the story doing the rounds on poker Twitter says that Kassouf reloaded €400 and proceeded to instantly find himself all-in and drawing dead. While the rest of the table were working out the pot, Worthington-Leese says Kassouf “picks up his chips off the table and runs out of the cardroom!”

Worthington-Leese added:

“He’s literally just trying to scam people in broad daylight in the middle of a cash game at a PokerStars event. The guy’s a fucking idiot...absolute retard...drawing dead.”

Hendon Mobster OG, Barney Boatman, also had eyes on Kassouf’s behaviour at the table, tweeting out that there seems to be no sum small enough for Kassouf to consider fair game...

Kassouf denied the allegations today, telling PokerNews:
“Contrary to the vicious rumours and allegations against me, neither did I take any chips from the table nor did I run out of the poker room...I did absolutely nothing wrong, and the allegations are completely false."
Kassouf claimed that:
“If any mistake was made, it was either made by the dealer in not splitting the pots correctly or by a player miscounting their stack or (unintentionally) taking my short stack from the pot as they’d won the hand. I have been very unfairly and wrongly accused of doing something which I definitely did not do. It’s absolutely absurd even to suggest that I grabbed chips from the pot and ran out of the poker room, even more so for just €200.”
Kassouf’s version includes the statement:
“I have never cheated and never will in a game I love so much and have played for most of my life.”
It’s far from the first time Kassouf has acted in such a way, the Rickmansworth pro performing a similar ‘trick’ back in 2018, one that cost him his Grosvenor Poker sponsorship.

In that incident, a drunken night out in Leeds during the GUKPT saw him steal $100 chips from a friend at a roulette table. Pocketing the chips then denying it, the ensuing argument almost ended in fisticuffs.


Kassouf later apologised and released a public statement, although the mealy-mouthed wording of it didn’t impress everyone...

Although Kassouf has more than $1.5million in recorded cashes, it is generally his table antics that have made him headline news over the years.

What he calls “speech play” and others have described variously as “verbal diarrhoea”, “verbal abuse”, “bullying” and much worse, erupted at the 2016 World Series of Poker.

Having already been spoken to by tournament director Jack Effel for verbally harassing another player, Kassouf was running deep when he ran into Griffin Benger in one of the most infamous hands the WSOP Main Event has ever seen.


Benger eventually lost his patience with Kassouf’s interminable talking:

“You’re a bully, it’s rude, it’s mean – it’s not called speech-play, it’s called being a bad person! You should really check yourself, check your privilege!”

PokerTube have reached out to William Kassouf for his side of the most recent controversy.


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Andrew from Edinburgh, Scotland, is a professional journalist, international-titled chess master, and avid poker player.Read more

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