Absolutely, I Lied - Bluff Editor Responds to Full Tilt Disqualification
Last month, Full Tilt Poker disqualified the winner of the October 21st $1 Million Guarantee tournament. That player was Chris Vaughn, Managing Editor for Bluff Magazine, and the move was made by Full Tilt after the discovery of some form of multi-accounting. Sorel Mizzi had been implicated as the person who took over the account midway through the event, and both players were reportedly banned from Full Tilt.Read more about the details of the scandal here.
Since the incident was exposed by Soren Kongsgaard, the second place finisher in the tournament who was informed by Full Tilt that the winner was disqualified and he was given the $197,984 prize money, Vaughn and Mizzi have said very little in any public forum. They indicated that they would be speaking to a media outlet and answer all of the questions.
PokerNews.com was that news outlet, and John Caldwell posted the first of two parts of the interview with Vaughn and Mizzi today. Both seemed to be candid in their responses to the questions, though there is clearly some difficulty with forming the words that comprise the truth.
First, it was revealed by Vaughn, who played the tournament as “BluffMagCV,” that he was considering changing computers when there were about three tables left. Due to a bad connection, he was proceeding to drive to the offices of Bluff Magazine to use the internet connection there. As he did so, he contacted Mizzi – who plays rather famously as “Imper1um” on various online poker sites – to play for him during the transition.
The conversation between Vaughn and Mizzi via instant messenger led to a discussion of Vaughn selling the account to Mizzi, who would play the rest of the tournament under Vaughn’s screen name. “The reason I sold the account had nothing to do with my connection,” Vaughn admitted. “The reason I initially contacted him probably more so had to do with connection, but selling the account was completely a financial decision and was in no way anything else.”
This is when the rules of Full Tilt Poker were broken, though Mizzi attempted to defend himself and his reputation while realizing the impact it has had on the game. “I’m not a cheater; I’m not a multi-accounter,” Mizzi said. “I acted fast without malice and didn’t intend to hurt Chris and myself, opponents, or the entire poker community… But I want to make it clear that this is something that was an isolated incident and it’s, it’s not something that I’ve done in the past.”
Mizzi admitted that he doesn’t often have the opportunity to go deep in the major Sunday tournaments. The “thrill” of it seemed to convince him that he should take over Vaughn’s account on October 21st.
Vaughn then responded to a question about his radio show interview with Haralabos Voulgaris and Scott Huff on “Big Poker Sundays.” Basically, Voulgaris asked Vaughn directly if he had ever been accused of ghosting – making it deep in an online tournament and having your account taken over and played by your backer. His answer on the show was a blatant denial: “As far as having someone take over, that’s ridiculous.”
In today’s PokerNews interview, Vaughn said that the question threw him off guard. “I didn’t think they would ask it. I probably wouldn’t have done the show, you know… I regretted it the second I got off the air… I mean it was just, it was my instinct to lie, I got caught off guard… I hate that I lied about it. I wish that I could take it back… Yeah, I mean, absolutely I lied. I think everyone knows that now.”
Stay tuned for further developments.
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