The 2025 World Series of Poker has completed its second week of action and the multitude of storylines are beginning to pile up. With tournaments in full swing and bracelets being won left and right, it's not easy to stay completely up-to-date with every story coming out of Las Vegas at the moment.
As the larger narratives from the summer emerge, some other stories – like the one covered in the video above – can fall by the wayside.
Thankfully, PokerOrg's Sarah Herring has you covered with all the need-to-know details on the latest episode of The Showdown, available to watch above, right now.
'A long history of real-time assistance'Â
As we learn in Herring's round up, a player was spotted at The Venetian with some form of real-time assistance (RTA) open on his laptop while actively playing in a WSOP Online event. While it's hard to know with certainty that the player's actions were nefarious, the evidence is fairly damning.
It's also difficult to discern the player's identity in the video – and it appears no one has come forward with any clarifying information – making any sort of penalty nearly impossible to enforce.
As Herring points out, it's not the first time an RTA-driven controversy has arisen at the World Series of Poker. It was just last summer that Jonathan Tamayo's title-winning Main Event run became the talk of the poker world as he and members of his supporter's rail utilized a laptop to review decisions in between hands.
Jonathan Tamayo and his coaches, and that laptop on the rail.Herring goes on to cover sections of the ever-growing history of RTA usage in the poker community, both online and live – most notably the recent saga centered around ACR Team Pro member Nacho Barbero.
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