WCOOP Winner Disqualified

Two weeks ago, PokerStars player “TheV0id” won the World Championship of Online Poker, hauling in over $1.2 million.  Almost immediately after his victory, rumors started flying about possible cheating.  Now, after a lengthy investigation, PokerStars has announced that TheV0id has been found guilty of cheating and has been disqualified from the tournament. 

TheV0id is reported to be London’s Mark Teltscher, who, while he has not had a long run of success on the live tournament circuit, has had a couple very big scores.  He won the Main Event at the European Poker Tour’s Grosvenor World Masters in 2005 (£280,000), the $5,000 event at the Fourth Annual Five Diamond World Poker Classic a couple months later ($374,965), and most recently placed second at the EPT Barcelona Open (€673,000). 

The first rumors that swirled involved the possibility of Teltscher and his sister playing from the same IP address in the WCOOP Main Event.  This is not in and of itself against the rules, but the talk was that it was an indicator of some larger improprieties.  Later, it was rumored that Teltscher may have been using up to five different accounts in the same tournament, which is clearly against the rules.   

Before the investigation was completed, PokerStars did say that nobody from Teltscher’s IP address was playing the tournament and that Teltscher played from that IP throughout the entire event.  Thus, rumor number one was shot down (barring any technical workarounds by Teltscher).   

In the end, PokerStars did not say what exactly Teltscher did to merit disqualification, only that they “determined, based on the totality of evidence, that the tournament winner “TheV0id” was in breach of the PokerStars Terms of Service.” 

PokerStars will adjust the standings and redistribute Teltscher’s winnings accordingly.