Woefully inadequate

A mea culpa. An unqualified apology. An acknowledgment of wrong-doing. Real remorse. A commitment to pay back the money stolen. A promise to never do it again. Unrepentant poker swindler Ali Imsirovic offered none of these things last night in a 28-minute-long YouTube video that was as insincere as it was nauseatingly boring.

had the temerity to suggest that it is he who is the injured party

Sitting in his trophy room in a house paid for with ill-gotten gains, the self-confessed con man paltered and prevaricated, whinged and whined, painting himself as the victim of scurrilous accusations. The cheater asked the viewer to take his word, the word of a cheater, that he didn’t always cheat in the way that it is alleged. He actually had the temerity to suggest that it is he who is the injured party, his reputation forever maligned for only sometimes breaking the rules.

Needless to say, this “setting the record straight” video went down like a lead balloon as the poker community spoke up in unison to castigate the deceitful scammer. Imsirovic’s statement was not just woefully inadequate, but it bordered on parody, straight out of the Bill Clinton “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” or Donald Trump “locker room talk” playbook.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

The video began with Imsirovic admitting that during the COVID-19 lockdown period of 2020, he made “a really bad mistake and began multi-accounting MTTs.” He said that he cheated for a period of “four to five months” before having a totally genuine moral epiphany which just so happened to coincide with being banned by GGPoker and having $320,000 confiscated.

It is noteworthy, however, that by his own admission, Imsirovic initially fought the ban, so I guess it was after those efforts were ignored that his moral compass kicked into gear. It was then, and only then, that he took stock and thought: “….this is my punishment for what I did, and I deserve it.”

alleged that there was “a lot of shady shit happening in those games”

Later in the video, Imsirovic confessed to multi-accounting again on six occasions in 2022, but not before claiming that other players, including some of his accusers, do not “have their house in order.” With the apparent rationale of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” he alleged that there was “a lot of shady shit happening in those games. I knew there were people card sharing and multi-ing, working as teams.”

Imsirovic defends himself

In between those two acknowledgments of wrong-doing, Imsirovic went on the offensive against his accusers. He referred to the claim that he runs a massive online poker cheating operation as “completely f*g ridiculous,” the allegations of him chip dumping to horses as “such an outrageous claim,” the accusations about RTA use as “mind-boggling,” and Alex Foxen’s posts calling for his blacklisting as a “Twitter temper tantrum.”

By way of defending himself against the accusation of looking at Paul Phua’s cards, Imsirovic waxed lyrically about live-tell etiquette, claiming he was not rubbernecking cards but rather staring at his opponent’s hands so he could act faster when it was his turn. By way of defending himself against accusations of ghosting his horses, he pointed to how he was playing live on a couple of occasions when players he staked were winning online tournaments. By way of defending himself against the accusations of real-time assistant use, he did some whataboutism on the widespread use of pre-solved Monker ranges before going into excruciating detail on why a chip EV RTA would have limited application during the various stages of tournaments.

There were other weak defenses offered, like how suboptimally he played in a heads-up match versus Doug Polk, how he doesn’t have horses with fellow accused cheater Jake Schindler, how ghosting wouldn’t be worth his valuable time and how chip-dumping would have negative EV consequences in various hypothetical examples.

Pewter tat

In summary, the sentiments expressed in the video rang hollow – the “poor me” moans of an impenitent grifter who got caught, the deluded sense of entitlement of a duplicitous huckster who thinks that he can, in his own words, “erase the past… and that perception of me.” Well, he can’t. What’s done cannot he undone. He is a pariah and this video confirms that.

it’s too bad if he doesn’t like what he sees

At one point, he says that he went back to multi-accounting for a couple of months until a friend told him not to become the person that the community was painting him as. On this matter, the community isn’t holding a paintbrush. They have a mirror and it’s too bad if he doesn’t like what he sees.

Imsirovic wrapped up the video by explaining that the cheating allegations have been hard on his family, insisting that: “I’ve paid all of my dues and want to move past this.” If being related to an unprincipled fraudster has brought shame upon them, then that’s the cross he must bear and a 28-minute diatribe isn’t going to change that. Empty words spoken by a hollow man surrounded by pewter tat, for that is all that trophies are when you cheated to win them.

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