Chris Moneymaker Believes ACR Should Have Fired Prominent Ambassadors

ACR Poker has been under intense heat over the past few weeks following the Nacho Barbero GTO Wizard scandal while Ebony Kenney is involved in a similar battle after an old screenshot resurfaced.

Both of the ACR Poker ambassadors were caught having RTA up while playing online poker tournaments on ACR, which is not an approved way to win at Texas Hold’em online.

In both cases, they indicted themselves by posting screenshots that showed the evidence. In Kenney’s case, it was from a year prior, but it was still brought to the attention of the poker world on the heels of the Barbero controversy.

Barbero and Kenney are facing heavy scrutiny and questions, though they were cleared of outright cheating following an internal investigation conducted by ACR.

But did this conclusion satisfy everyone?

Moneymaker’s Thoughts

Chris Moneymaker, arguably the most prominent ACR team pro, revealed in an interview with PokerOrg that he would have handled the situation differently from ACR owner Phil Nagy, who is not one to shy away from controversy in his own right.

”If I owned ACR, I would probably get rid of both of them if I’m being real with myself, but that’s easy for me to say when it’s not my decision to make.

“Again, if they were found to have cheated at all, then I don’t think there’s any way you can do anything but fire them. If someone’s cheating, I think they’re going to be a lot more careful about their screen popping up charts and whatever.

“That’s just my personal view. You’re probably not cheating. You’re probably just an idiot, which, honestly, I really don’t want idiots working for me either. But that’s another story.

“So it’s a tough, tough thing… Phil hates firing people… When he fires somebody, he gets really sick. It really hurts him. So, we always joke, it’s really hard to get fired from ACR. Like, you really got to screw up.

“Phil just doesn’t like letting people go. But they should be held to a higher standard, and they messed up.”

Moneymaker basically believes that Barbero and Kenney should have to pay for their grave mistake considering their role as ACR Poker ambassadors. He understands the difficult choice but also thinks ACR needs to hold up a standard.

He also made sure to make no distinction between the two of them. If one has to go then so does the other, making both equally guilty in his eyes.

This response comes on the heels of Moneymaker himself receiving some criticism as well, with some people in the poker world feeling as though he was too silent when all the drama initially unfolded.