The Muck Daily

Daily Brief

09/18/26  ·  Day 013 - The Rounding Error Edition

ACR Poker banned an account for running GTO software in real time, and the investigation turned up a player who deposited $14.13 and lost $13.12 of it across 111 hands. Seven people are getting refunds. Elsewhere the oldest casino on earth booked a one million euro guarantee into a palace where Wagner died, tribal gaming told Congress a crypto bill is the biggest threat to its sovereignty in a generation, and a boxer folded the best flush face up on a livestream.

Today's Big Question

He Ran GTO Software For 111 Hands And Lost $13.12

What happened

ACR Poker permanently banned the account UGLYRETD on September 17 after a video circulated on social media showing the real time assistance tool TrenirusGTO running live alongside the ACR client. The site's security and game integrity team said the account was created on August 2, deposited $14.13, and played for a single day: 65 hands at $0.05/$0.10, 27 hands at $0.02/$0.05 and 19 hands at $0.01/$0.02. Across all 111 of them it recorded a net loss of $13.12, finishing a dollar short of break even with a machine telling it what to do. Seven players who lost money directly to the account will be refunded for the affected hands and notified within 24 hours.

Why it matters

ACR's first statement of the day promised that funds held in an offending account would be confiscated and redistributed to affected players. The account had deposited $14.13 and lost $13.12 of it. The same statement noted that the operator works with GTO Wizard on game-integrity technology, one GTO company now enlisted against another, on terms the statement never specifies. The speed is the part worth marking. Video surfaced, account identified, hands reviewed, refunds ordered, all inside a single day. ACR has been through RTA controversies before and none of them ended with a stat line and a refund list.

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In the Spotlight

Wagner Died In This Palace. It Now Guarantees A Million Euros.

What happened

La Notte Degli Assi returns to the Casino di Venezia from October 11 to 19 with a 1,000,000 euro guaranteed Main Event. The house opened in 1638 and is the oldest casino in the world. The cards get dealt in its second home, a 15th century Renaissance palace on the Grand Canal that housed Venetian Doges and where Richard Wagner spent his final days. Entry starts at 400 euros across four early flights and rises to 600 euros for five later ones, every one of them dealing a 200,000 starting stack on a 30 minute clock. The schedule also carries a 1,500 euro High Roller, a 60 euro mega satellite awarding 25 seats, and a freeroll satellite giving away 12 tickets with optional 20 euro rebuys.

Why it matters

Venice is not new to this. WPT stopped here from 2009 to 2013 and the PokerGO Tour brought high rollers through more recently. The guarantee is the part that scaled. Covering 1,000,000 euros off entries of 400 and 600 takes a field in the thousands. Those thousands have to reach a palace on a canal, in a city with no cars, no parking structure and no 900 room hotel tower bolted to the side of the poker room.

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The Explainer

$46.2 Billion In Tribal Gaming Is Arguing With A Crypto Bill

What happened

The Indian Gaming Association has urged Congress to vote down the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, the crypto bill sponsored by Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming that would hand the CFTC authority over parts of the digital asset market. IGA chair David Z. Bean called it the largest expansion of CFTC authority since the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill and said the agency has already been allowing gaming to occur on platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. The association has named its price for dropping the opposition. The text has to say plainly that state law, tribal gaming law and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act are not preempted by federal commodities law, and that designated contract markets may not list contracts on sports betting or casino games. Lummis has said the act mostly legalizes additional crypto trading activity and does not change the current status of prediction markets. Tribal casinos reported $46.2 billion in gross gaming revenue last year, up 5.5 percent.

Why it matters

The fight is over who gets to decide that something is a bet. Tribal gaming runs under a federal framework built specifically for it, and a commodities regulator that treats a wager on a football game as a financial instrument routes around that framework without ever having to repeal it. Bean is calling the bill the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty in a generation. That is a very large claim, and the $46.2 billion is the number that explains why it is being made at this volume.

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Follow the Money

He Shoved A Seven High Flush For Value And Got A Fold

What happened

Nik "Airball" Arcot moved all in on the river during All Star Game week on Hustler Casino Live holding the seven high flush, and Ryan Garcia folded the jack high flush face up. The boxer was in the game because host Ryan Feldman needed a replacement for Alan Keating on night two, and he was up more than $200,000 inside the first hour. Garcia limped under the gun with the jack of hearts and the three of hearts, Feldman raised to $2,000 with the five of diamonds and the five of clubs, and Arcot three bet to $6,000 with the seven and six of hearts. The flop came king of hearts, ten of hearts, nine of hearts. Arcot overbet $25,000, fired $40,000 on the ten of diamonds turn, and shoved the deuce of diamonds river for Garcia's remaining $194,500. Garcia turned his cards face up as he released them and said he had a flush. Arcot showed his and said he had thought he was ahead.

Why it matters

None of that was a bluff, which is what makes it worth watching twice. Three streets of maximum pressure, sized exactly right, put in by a man who believed the whole time he was getting called by worse and was wrong on every street. The best hand in the pot got itself folded and then showed the table what it had been holding, and the worst flush on the board collected without ever finding out it was behind until the cards were face up.

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The Circuit

Eight Of The 33 Bracelets Are Mystery Bounties. Three Are Omaha.

What happened

The WSOP will award 33 gold bracelets between September 27 and November 10 on WSOPOnline.com, open to players in Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania through the shared four state pool. Buy-ins run from $250 to $3,200 and every event starts between 6:30 and 9 p.m. Eastern. Eight of the 33 are mystery bounty tournaments, up from six last year, and three are pot limit Omaha. The largest guarantee on the schedule is $350,000 for the $1,000 Mystery Bounty Championship on October 18. The biggest buy-in is the $3,200 High Roller Championship on November 8, and the $1,000 Online Championship runs November 1.

Why it matters

This is the fifth running of the fall festival and the shape of it has settled all the way down. No limit hold'em, a mystery bounty bolted on wherever one will fit, and a variant schedule that has been sanded to three Omaha events out of 33. Six weeks of play across four states will establish, among other things, that the cheapest bracelet available to an American this autumn costs $250.

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Beyond the Felt

The $80,000 Guarantee Missed By 117 Players. So They Raised It.

What happened

888poker's $109 Mystery Bounty Main Event came up 117 entrants short of covering its $80,000 guarantee on September 14, drawing 683 players in one of the weakest turnouts since the site cut that guarantee from $100,000. Canada's "MrYoungShark" won it for $15,371, of which $8,835 arrived as bounties and $6,536 came out of the regular prize pool. Lithuania's "MantynisNA" took second for $6,027. Six days later the same tournament opens the XL Autumn Series with the guarantee restored to $100,000.

Why it matters

The XL Autumn Series runs September 20 to 29 with 41 events and close to $900,000 in guarantees, 26 of them mystery bounties, headlined by a $250 Mystery Main Event promising $300,000. An operator that just paid an overlay on $80,000 is raising the same number to $100,000 on the theory that a larger promise brings a larger field. That theory gets its first test on Sunday.

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Also Filed

Film Your Worst Poker Table And WPT Might Spend $20,000 On It

What happened

The World Poker Tour is giving one home game a makeover worth up to $20,000, and the entry requirement is a short video demonstrating how bad the setup currently is. Applicants have until September 22, have to be 18 or over, have to live in the United States and have to host the game themselves. A panel will score submissions on story, creativity and the state of the existing room, and finalists will be featured by the tour.

Why it matters

The judging criteria reward the worst room in America, so the incentive runs toward the wobbling folding table, the mismatched chairs and the chip set with three colors in it. Home games are where most poker in this country is actually played and almost none of it is visible to the industry selling to those players. A contest that requires footage of the room is a marketing budget and a field survey wearing the same jacket.

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One More Thing

Howard Feingold Left Poker For Thirty Years And Came Back

What happened

Howard "Howie the Kid" Feingold, a New York tournament regular, has died of complications from a heart condition. Kenna James, the pro who coached him and counted him a friend, confirmed the death to PokerNews and said Feingold donated his organs. Feingold played daily from 1985 to 1990, then stepped away for decades and missed the entire Moneymaker boom before seeing a tournament on television and deciding to come back. His recorded tournament results begin in 2018 and total $507,078, with a career high of $33,440 for 21st in the 2022 WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open Championship.

Why it matters

Most poker obituaries are written for people who never left. Feingold gave the game five years, gave it up for nearly thirty, returned on his own schedule and built half a million dollars in recorded results entirely out of the second run. The nickname he earned in the first stretch followed him into the second one.

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Hardware Won

No new title was filed by any outlet in the window between yesterday's brief and this one. The entry below was decided on September 14 and is carried here because this is the first brief covering the result.

Out

Three of them in a single pot, outside the money, at Level 14 of the Triton $150,000.

On the Watchlist

  • WPT Prime Australia ChampionshipOpened today at The Star Sydney and runs through September 22. No field size or chip counts published yet.
  • Borgata Big Big Series Main Event$3,000,000 guaranteed, starts tomorrow in Atlantic City as part of a series carrying $6,000,000 across 11 events.
  • 888poker XL Autumn SeriesOpens Sunday with the $109 Mystery Opening Event and its restored $100,000 guarantee. Whether it holds is the whole story.
Hardware Watch · Big Stack Energy · Bustout Board · Race Watch See The Full Board →
In The Air Right Now

Stops with cards in the air on this date.

WSOPWSOP Circuit - Grand Casino LiechtensteinLiechtensteinWSOPWSOP Circuit - Texas Card HouseTexas, United StatesBorgata2026 Borgata Big, Big SeriesBorgata Hotel Casino & SpaRGPS2026 Mississippi State Poker ChampionshipHorseshoe TunicaRGPS2026 RGPS Golden Expedition JoplinDownstream Casino ResortRGPS2026 RGPS Golden Expedition ArubaHilton Aruba Caribbean Resort & Casino
♠   ♥   ♦   ♣

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