Gossip Column: ‘ActionFreak’ Registers Crushing Win Against Galfond & Ingram Tweets Leaked Footage of Asian Poker Grind House

May 11 saw Ioannis ‘ActionFreak’ Kontonatsios finally registering an emphatic win in his ongoing heads-up challenge against Run It Once (RIO) founder Phil Galfond. The 721 hands-long session saw the online pro take €256,044 off Galfond. Though not enough to cut his losses entirely, the big winning day definitely helped Kontonatsios in reducing his deficit significantly.

Fanning another gossip story was poker vlogger Joey Ingram, who recently posted leaked footage showing an Asian grind house wherein several players could be seen multi-tabling on the same poker app from different computers. The tweet led to quite an uproar with various individuals sharing their opinions.

‘ActionFreak’ Makes Powerful Comeback in Galfond Challenge

It took online pro Ioannis ‘ActionFreak’ Kontonatsios eight sessions, but he has finally managed to register a big winning day against the PLO legend Phil Galfond. Day 9 of the Galfond Challenge saw ‘ActionFreak’ put a significant dent in Galfond’s previous €434,000 lead.

The 15,000-hand high-stakes PLO competition is nearing the halfway mark. After the required number of hands at €150/€300 stakes have been played, the winner of the heads-up challenge will receive a €150,000 payment from the other player. Of course, the winner will also collect any profits earned during the Galfond Challenge.

Entering Monday’s (May 11) session, it appeared Galfond was in the driver’s seat to win his second straight challenge, after ‘VeniVedi1993’. The ninth session saw 721 hands being played between the duo, by the end of which, Galfond had lost €256,044 to ‘ActionFreak’.

Despite the significant loss, Galfond retains an overall lead in this challenge. The two have played 6,496 hands of their 15,000-hand challenge so far, and Galfond is up €178,249.27 total.

Challenge Results (To Date)

Galfond and ‘ActionFreak’ plan to be back in action on May 12.

Joey Ingram Shares Leaked Footage of Asian Poker Grind House

Poker vlogger Joey Ingram has been doing quite a bit of exposing since October 2019 when he made a series of investigative videos on the Mike Postle cheating scandal titled ‘Investigating Mike Postle Hand Histories’. In the end, he even went on to win two awards at the second annual Global Poker Awards in the categories of ‘Journalist of the Year’ and ‘Media Content of the Year Video’.

Well, he is back at it again, and this time around, he tweeted leaked footage of a grind house in Asia with players on numerous computers all multi-tabling on the same Asian poker app.

I’ve got a lot of questions about this poker grind house pic.twitter.com/HJRhdiiZSP

— Joey Ingram #passion (@Joeingram1) April 18, 2020

It resulted in quite a storm online. A lot of people commented on how it is possible to collude like this online.

This is the problem with anything online if your educated enough in online businesses this is what’s possible not matter what

— Mark Miller (@markmiller08) April 18, 2020

Online poker is rigged

— Ernesto Alvarez (@ernestodalvarez) April 19, 2020

You can see the first guy multitabling the same table – grind house of app colluders

— Troja (@Trojalol) April 18, 2020

While others made light of the situation.

Are those the Asians @RealKidPoker invited over for a game?

— Brad Stoney (@BradStoney1776) April 18, 2020

That isn’t a poker grind house. It is the control room @StonesGambling

— Richard Parker (@UPSPWNAGE) April 18, 2020

Looks like the @ACR_POKER Security Team

— Jim (@Jim16651731) April 18, 2020

Looks like if you fail to cash, you lose an article of clothing

— Kevin Mathers (@Kevmath) April 18, 2020

Ingram’s tweet did not accuse any particular poker site. Still, over the years, Asian poker apps have garnered a bad reputation for themselves, seemingly due to the lack of security measures and often rampant collusion between players.

Though players are far more tech-savvy nowadays, there is no doubt that online poker sites have also been working hard to amp up their security systems. However, there is still a long way to go before these practices can be entirely eradicated.