Die hard Yinzer. Founder and lead instructor of Solve for Why Poker Training Academy (@solveforwhytv), Former host of the @onlyfriends_pod
I left my heart in Pittsburgh
Joined May 2010
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The #WSOP is the truest grind we experience as live pros. I have so many memories from the past 16, but none as vivid as finding out my mom OD'd. I can't explain why it comes to mind as the Main approaches, but I find myself, again, revisiting that moment.
thevoicewithin.me/2015/06/09…
Matt Berkey retweeted
🤖 Made with AI
Bot rings, Super Users, a @Nick_Palma1010 sex tape and a casual stabbing all before Friday.
A bat signal would have been less subtle #BRB
Matt Berkey retweeted
When I started promoting coin I did so with the following stance
- Ecology is crucial, I wrote a huge email (attached blurred version, but infinite words) saying what I thought was the best way to go about things and sent it to everybody in management, a vision that I believed would create "win-wins" and would be ethical/fair to the userbase
- I will never promote something that I wouldn't play myself. I think thats a pretty good stance to have as an ambassador, when Coin have good tournaments, I play them and I promote them. If I randomly feel like punting an accumulator on soccer then I'll place a bet, if I'm betting on the world cup, I'll place a bet. I don't promote slots or casino even though we have them and are a big part of the business, because I don't play them. Everything I've ever played/posted/showed on coin is things I'd genuinely be interested in.
- I will continue to push, promote other sites. Despite Stars and GG being rivals to Coin I've posted thousands and thousands of videos of them, I have over 100m views from non coin stuff, during big series I show more stars/scoop/wcoop/ than I do coin, because I'm showing what I would normally do. I also 8 figures of rake staking people across all platforms and trying to help liquidity. My goal in poker is for no monopolization and the entire industry growing, at the same time I'll call out 10m bot farms, poor security etc. When nacho was using RTA on acr, whilst they were a huge competitor to coin at the time I went through the entire hand history from all his tournaments that Sunday and cleared him for "not playing gto" that wasn't in my interests to do, it was in pokers.
To be called a shill when pushing scoop/wcoop more than almost any stars ambassador whilst no acr/gg/stars ambassador has ever said a single positive word about coin is extremely bizarre to me.
While I agree with the sentiment that walk-ins will rarely play public games due to a coordinated efforts between poker rooms & hosts, we should stop pretending this is nefarious or limited to high stakes cash.
People mostly frame this as a cash game problem, but there's no part of this industry that is immune.
High rollers are driven up by the exact same economics dressed up as open events. Fact is, it's absolutely necessary if we want them to exist.
Game runners & tour operators are both in charge of building barriers that give VIPS niche experiences where short term winning is possible.
In high rollers this is achieved through high buy ins & turbo structures, drastically capping win rate for pros.
In cash it's through lineup curation, drastically restricting access for pros.
Hell, even online this occurs through high rake & how the site offers rewards.
Sites like GG and Coin have long since moved away from the $3 rake cap and now charge a special "VIP" rake for all their nose bleed games, often upwards of 1bb+ & redistribution (rewards) is mostly all given to the recs.
It's all structured to maximize the longevity of the rec, which is a good thing. The grinders, of course, suffer as a consequence.
At the end of the day that's an exchange the industry committed to long ago.
The second the dead money fully vacates any of these arenas is precisely when high stakes will collapse.
Matt Berkey retweeted
Poker Client Update:
We identified a software bug in the poker client that created a potential security vulnerability and deployed a live patch within an hour of identifying the issue. The vulnerability has been fixed.
Some players experienced brief connectivity issues and minor gameplay disruption. Our review has found no evidence of player account compromise or unauthorized access to account information.
We apologize for the disruption. Players with questions or who received an antivirus alert should contact ACR Poker Support.
@AcrPokerSupport
📧 [email protected]
📌 acrpoker.eu/software-update/…
Matt Berkey retweeted
Ok final details before I go back to enjoying my family vacay-
/ ⚠️ ACR/WPN players: on Oct 15 a table-chat exploit let malicious messages run code on desktop-client users' PCs, no click needed. It's now patched, but anything stolen or installed is still there.
2/ Were you exposed?
3/ Check 1: Windows Security → Protection history. Look for Trojan:Win32/Commando.A!ml or anything flagged on Oct 15.
4/ Check 2: Look for PowerShell running when you didn't open it. Also look for startup entries or scheduled tasks that launch PowerShell or a URL you don't recognize.
5/ Check 3: Search your DNS and PowerShell logs for pinggy-free[.]link and trycloudflare[.]com. Then check your email for login or reset alerts you didn't trigger, and review your cashier history.
6/ Any hit: disconnect the PC. From a clean device, change your ACR and email passwords, turn on 2FA, and contact support, then reinstall Windows. Played Oct 15 but came up clean? Change your password anyway.
Matt Berkey retweeted
Instructions to look Using Claude code:
1. backup any powershell logs that could contain evidence of command execution
2. Search for encoded powershell commands that ran as a child of the wpn client
3. Look for any connection to the following: fotav-…pinggy-free[.]link:34829/wps 11 142.249.144[.]197
asjgx-…pinggy-free[.]link:37805/wps 5 142.249.144[.]197
fvgrb-…pinggy-free[.]link:32889/wps 2 142.249.144[.]197
yipov-…pinggy-free[.]link:34291/wps 2 142.249.144[.]197
playlist-…-tcp.trycloudflare[.]com/wps 8 hidden (Cloudflare)
Matt Berkey retweeted
Poker sites need to remove dead/old code, sanitize ANY input options, and conduct real security reviews. This type of vulnerability is very similar to the ones I reported to @CoinPoker_OFF back when they launched their new client!
Matt Berkey retweeted
From @WPN_CEO @ACR_POKER
Keep in mind this does not mean that players computers were not compromised. Recommend everyone does their own security check via the instructions I posted
Matt Berkey retweeted
WPN REMOTE CODE EXECUTION:
Like I said, I am on vacation so really have limited service and ability to do analysis - from what I’ve seen, it looks like WPN clients have/had a vuln in some old code that enabled attacker to push remote commands to players.
WPN is aware of this and pushed out fixing updates, unsure of effectiveness.
Many players received encoded powershell commands that were blocked by some antivirus software. It reached out to a number of servers and IPs to download the actual malware
I’ll try to get as much reported as possible today. A number of guys are reaching out to me right now showing that they too were hacked.
Wolfie really putting in work as 2026 MVP
Matt Berkey retweeted
WPN / ACR was compromised in some way to the point that it started serving many players malware. Anyone that’s played on WPN or any of its skins over the last week need to be aware that they may have been popped.
This is still early in the investigation and I’m on vacation (1/2)
Matt Berkey retweeted
Shane Hennen, the Las Vegas gambler who pleaded guilty to charges related to betting schemes involving the NBA, college basketball and the Chinese Basketball Association, faces a maximum sentence of 125 years in prison.
Matt Berkey retweeted
Bot rings, Super Users, a @Nick_Palma1010 sex tape and a casual stabbing all before Friday.
A bat signal would have been less subtle #BRB
Matt Berkey retweeted
Checking who wins at impossible rates is the most basic integrity test there is. Players did it with mined hands and caught superusers, twice. GG, with every hand and every hole card, is announcing it as new in 2026.
Embarassing.
GGPoker Security Update
We’re introducing new measures to protect our community, including new client security features and a ban on all third-party poker software and automation tools.
Full details here 👇
gg.gl/new-security
His lazy writing is the biggest crime of this joke. This article is hilarious and what the joke could have been if someone more talented had taken a crack at it.
The “joke” was about how women dress at the gym. I know it was about me, because everything is. So I did what any survivor would do. I went to my car and filmed myself crying. It took 11 takes, because the lighting in a Range Rover is unforgiving, and grief is no excuse for a bad shot. In the final cut, you can see a single tear land on my sports bra right over the logo, which clicks through to an affiliate link. My caption: “I’m literally shaking.”
✍️ @BridgetPhetasy
Article: spectator.com/article/shane-…
Matt Berkey retweeted
The “joke” was about how women dress at the gym. I know it was about me, because everything is. So I did what any survivor would do. I went to my car and filmed myself crying. It took 11 takes, because the lighting in a Range Rover is unforgiving, and grief is no excuse for a bad shot. In the final cut, you can see a single tear land on my sports bra right over the logo, which clicks through to an affiliate link. My caption: “I’m literally shaking.”
✍️ @BridgetPhetasy
Article: spectator.com/article/shane-…
Appears @VenetianPoker is the first major room (South point was the first off the strip room) to fully convert to the slide deal.
18 months ago I was told this could NEVER happen & that it would do more harm than good.
Day 2 and there is at least one example of this going well.
Appears as though Venetian switched to speed felt, have a shoe to pull from, & no major hinderances to interfere with the deal.
Huge kudos to the operators that listen and take game integrity seriously!
Matt Berkey retweeted
Thanks to @mobiuspoker and others in the community for the feedback:
We pushed an update to our open-source superuser detection repo over the weekend. It fixes the multiway issue and adds new features
github.com/quintace-external…
I read AceGuardian's open-source superuser detection article and went through the code. There are some good ideas in it, but I was surprised to find it's much narrower than the article suggests.
First, it only scores hands dealt to exactly 2 players. Not heads-up pots in 6-max -- just heads-up tables. Most of the MeshAgent victims play 6-max, so the published code doesn't cover the incident the article is framed around.
Second, the core tests only look at turn and river decisions facing a bet, and preflop is off by default. In the 6-max case we've been analyzing, preflop 4-bet and 5-bet success was IMO the strongest behavioral signal. If you're open sourcing a detection algorithm, you wouldn't want it to be this easy to evade.
Third, the one real validation case (757 HU hands) was obtained after the Sept 29 disclosure, with the suspect already identified by the site. This is not the same as finding the cheater before the fact. Also, no false-positive rate on real players is reported.
Credit where it is due: the pair test (controls for both players' baselines and corrects for testing many pairs) is a good idea. But high-volume superusers show up in their win rate primarily.
The hard part is getting sites to look, and this is my biggest issue with the article. It frames detection as the missing piece, when the bigger problem was that nobody acted. Most of us in the high stakes community are baffled that this went on so long, with the superuser being reported repeatedly and winning at rates that are clearly impossible.