The 10 most infamous cheaters in poker history Part 2

With the Jose “Girah” Macedo scandal winding down, I thought it would be a good idea to see where Macedo and his counterparts, Haseeb “DogisHead” Qureshi and Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates rank on the all-time list of poker players who have been caught cheating, or have a reputation as being cheats.

So without further adieu, here are the top 5 most infamous cheaters in poker in descending order finishing with #1, which are ranked not only by the severity of the offenses, but also by their current reputation:

5.       Men “The Master” Nguyen

Men has a longstanding reputation for cheating, bending the rules, and basically unethical play at the poker tables. To Men’s credit, he basically dismisses all of these allegations -there is very little in the way of hard evidence to Men’s malfeasance-and takes it all in stride. The fact that he has a really good personality seems to help as well. But still, there are many long-time poker pros who consider Men to possess one of the worst characters in poker.

4.       Josh “JJProdigy” Fields

Now we start scraping the bottom of the barrel. Fields first offenses against the poker world were the same as Justin Bonomo’s, multi-accounting. But unlike Bonomo, who admitted his errors, rehabbed his image, and has been a model citizen in the poker world ever since, Fields has decided to go the other way and has been banned from just about every online poker site in existence.

While the old-time players may not recognize him at live tournaments, the younger players do, which has led to a few occasions where Fields has been cussed out.

3.       Jose Macedo

Our newest cheater on the list (and the youngest) is the one-time “Portuguese Poker Prodigy” Jose Macedo, who managed to pull one of the best con jobs since the guy running around claiming to be Sidney Poitier’s son.

Macedo not only duped the online poker world, but he then ran one of the most ridiculous scams in the history of poker as he hole-carded players he had befriended by “sweating” their sessions with TeamViewer and relaying the information to their handpicked opponent -which was either Macedo himself or a friend of his.

2.       Ali Tekintamgac

Tekintamgac is another player who discovered a way to blatantly cheat during live tournaments. Tekintamgac allegedly used the ruse of having a television crew filming a documentary on his life to get a number of people press credentials -there are also rumors of phony bloggers-who would then use their credentials to peek at Tekintamgac’s opponents’ card and relay the information to Ali through a number of crude hand signals.

Tekintamgac’s actions caused him a number of problems at the WPT Championship where he was called out by Scott Seiver and Daniel Negreanu at one point.

1.       Russ Hamilton

Hamilton is by far the most hated man in poker thanks to his role in the Ultimate Bet Super-User scandal where he allegedly stole millions of dollars from unsuspecting players. Hamilton is one of only a handful of poker players ever blackballed from the WSOP -a pretty impressive feat considering he was the 1994 WSOP Main Event Champion!