WSOP.com Investigation Proves Battenfield Did Not Cheat And Use RTA

Summary:

• WSOP.com investigation clears Chris Battenfield of cheating allegations.
• Battenfield can once again start playing at WSOP.com.
• GTOWizard Fair Play Check may be a weak tool to identify cheaters.

Chris Battenfield has returned to WSOP.com after the operator’s investigations proved he did not cheat in a recent online poker bracelet event.

On October 3, 2023, Mike “BrockLesnar” Holtz posted on Twitter/X that Battenfield used Real Time Assistance (RTA) to win the online $2,000 bracelet event hosted on WSOP.com in New Jersey and Nevada.

Christopher Battenfield is an RTA cheat.

He recently won a ring (Beat Jeff Platt HU) and when playing in the 2k bracelet with him I became suspicious of his play.

After I was eliminated I used GTO wizard fair play tool and found 5 spots he solved in real time. pic.twitter.com/5NpAEguBki

— Mike Holtz (BrockLesnar) (@MikeHoltzPoker) October 3, 2023

Holtz used GTOWizard Fair Play Check, a poker training tool enabling poker players to analyze hand histories in seconds and make the most lucrative decisions, to identify five spots where Battenfield may have used RTA. He revealed his findings to WSOP.com, which temporarily suspended Battefield’s account pending investigation.

WSOP.com Clears Battenfield

WSOP.com worked with GTOWizard to prove he did not use RTA to win the bracelet event. Convinced that Battenfield did not cheat, WSOP.com revoked the ban on his account on Oct 17, 2023.

The incident shows that GTOWizard Fair Play Check may not be the ideal tool to identify cheaters in poker tournaments. The tool responds to users’ queries about whether a particular hand was solved during a time frame.

Users have to enter the board they want to analyze and the time of play. The tool displays a positive if the board was solved within the given time. The result indicates that their opponents may have used RTA to play the hand.

However, the result does not reveal the identity of the player who may have been using RTA at the time, which means that GTOWizard and the operators have to investigate further to determine whether the player was really cheating.

GTOWizard Fair Play May Fail to Identify Cheaters

Although GTOWizard recently updated its Fair Play tool to minimize false positives, the tool is still not good at identifying cheaters. Although it indicates that someone may have used RTA, it continues to have problems with false positives.

As US poker pro Matt Berkey puts it in the Solve for Why podcast, one cannot know how many people are actively using GTOWizard at a given time. Also, one cannot know the tool’s false positives rate before and after the update, which makes it unreliable.

Discussions about the tool also reveal problems related to cheating accusations and how operators investigate them, especially considering the disconnect existing between operators and players.