Bryn Kenney defended himself against a stack of cheating accusations by a former member
of his online poker stable in 📈 an interview with PokerNews’s Sarah Herring on Tuesday.
But questions remain about his past role with GGPoker as a consultant, 📈 and whether or
not he directed his players to play manipulatively in order to boost tournament numbers
and meet prize-pool 📈 guarantees.
Last week, poker pro Martin Zamani stirred up the poker
world by accusing the world’s biggest poker tournament money winner 📈 of running a poker
stable that would work together, utilize real-time assistance (RTAs), and play in
unethical ways that were 📈 “best for the team.”
Amid the subsequent poker community
uproar, Kenney reached out to Herring, who says she has been a 📈 close friend for about a
decade, and sat with her on Tuesday for the interview, which was streamed live on
📈 YouTube.
Questionable GGPoker partnership
Herring attempts to unpack a lot in the
one-hour, 18-minute interview with Kenney, which focuses on his partnership 📈 with
GGPoker, how Kenney used his stable of players to help meet tournament and satellite
guarantees, and how much Kenney 📈 was paid by GGPoker for his affiliate work.
Zamani
claimed Kenney earned upwards ofR$2 million a week from GGPoker, a matter 📈 Kenney
wouldn’t address.
“I don’t really see that as [having] merit to answer,” Kenney said.
“That’s, like, personal business I have 📈 with someone. I don’t feel like there’s any
reason to answer that.”
Kenney became a GGPoker ambassador in March 2024, but 📈 told
Herring he was with the site from its start in 2024. In November 2024, he quit as
ambassador but 📈 remained as a consultant, saying he helped “grow their site [and] grow
their guarantees to run bigger tournaments” and “helped 📈 them scale their business into
what they were when they started into what they are today.”
That work allegedly
included scheduling 📈 tournaments and satellites, then directing his horses to register
to help GGPoker meet the prize-pool guarantees.
According to Zamani, Kenney told 📈 his
players to alter their play to extend a tournament’s time and allow more people to
enter. He cites an 📈 example of one horse folding aces preflop three-handed to make a
satellite last longer.
CardsChat emailed GGPoker to request an interview, 📈 and did not
hear back prior to publication.
Kenney confirms and denies
Kenney denied several of
Zamani’s allegations, saying that his horses 📈 did not use real-time assistance (RTA)
software and that he never had access to anyone’s screens while they played using 📈 the
program TeamViewer.
He did not deny, however, accusations about team members working
together or ghosting, but said it only happened 📈 a few times over the years.
He did
confirm that he sent Zamani to a Las Vegas shaman who wanted to 📈 dose him with giant
monkey frog poison, but denied he would bust his players down in stakes if they refused
📈 to follow his diet suggestions.
Poker vlogger Matt Berkey gave a “REACTION to Bryn
Kenney Poker News Interview” on his OnlyFriends 📈 podcast, in which he tried to make
sense of what he just heard:
“It has the least amount to do with 📈 cheating, but the most
amount to do with nefarious activity, which is the idea of him, though no longer being
📈 a part of GG, still making a majority of his revenue from GG,” Berkey said. “Allegedly,
he was on the 📈 hook for the prize pools and, allegedly, he was getting a big chunk, if
not all, the rake in those 📈 early days of GG. So obviously, it’s not a traditional
backing deal where your interest lies in them being profitable.”
Although 📈 Kenney was
opaque with a lot of his answers, he made it clear how he sees himself in the
pokerverse.
“I’m 📈 one of the most respected people in the industry for my word, for
following my word,” Kenney said. “I see 📈 myself as the person who loves poker more than
anyone in the world.”
