There was a controversial situation in the 55th edition of the World Series of Poker $300 No Limit Hold’em – Gladiators of Poker event when three players were in an all-in preflop hand. One of the players involved in the hand is infamous for having been involved in controversial hands in the past; it was Men “The Master” Nguyen.
Smith went all-in from UTG with J♠5♠ for 4.5 big blinds, Foutty 3-bet to ten big blinds with A♥K♥ from BTN, And Nguyen went all-in for 25.2 big blinds. Foutty, who was covering both of them, called. The board ran 10♥6♣4♠2♥5♣, and Smith, who was holding J♠5♠, had the best hand and should have tripled his stack, ending up with around 15 big blinds.
But after some counting, the dealer just pushed around 11 big blinds to him, and right away, Smith noticed that he got fewer chips than he expected. Smith called the floor, and after a check-up, the floor decided to take one big blind from each player involved in the hand and give it to Smith. Smith was still not satisfied, but he busted in 26th place before there was time for the situation to be resolved.
One day after the incident, the video popped up, and it’s visible that Nguyen pulled back stacks of chips while Smith was celebrating his hand win.
Foutty also said for PokerNews, “I’m not accusing Men of anything, but he has a history of this sort of thing. I know how much I put in. I was drinking and having a good time, but I know what I put in.”
Patrick “Pads” Leonard also posted on his X about the “weird” situation he had with Nguyen.
Nguyen’s History of Cheating
One of the earliest controversies surrounding Nguyen started in the late 90s and early 2000s when he was accused of colluding with other Vietnamese poker players. Not much hard evidence was found, but the accusations continued and expanded from colluding to also chip dumping. All these accusations forced tournament organizers to enforce harder regulations and monitoring.
After the most recent incident PokerNews made interview with Nguyen where he apologized for the incident, and said it was not on purpose if it even happened.
Video interview courtesy of PokerNews.
