Egregious Tournament Cheaters Who Got Caught

When one is really, super-good at something, there can be a natural inclination to put their skills up against others who are similarly awesome, just to see if they can hang — or, better still, if they can dominate. There are tournaments to be found for virtually every skill set and discipline, and competition can be a healthy thing; it helps us to test our boundaries and limitations, to expand our knowledge and skills, and ultimately, perhaps, to know ourselves better. That journey of self-discovery, however, can sometimes lead to the knowledge that you are a dirty, scheming cheater.

For every good sport willing to put their skills on the line against the best of the best in their chosen field, there is at least one terrible, awful sport who just wants to stand in the winner's circle, sportsmanship be damned, and will do whatever it takes to make that happen whether they deserve it or not. Now, they say that cheaters never prosper, and while that is totally not always true (they do prosper, early and often), the ones we'll be looking at today proved that sometimes, the adage does hold. They came, they saw, they cheated, they conquered — and they got busted like a toy from the dollar store.

We've all seen Irish dancers at least a time or two; you know, the ones who dress in kilts and really uncomfortable-looking shoes, and keep their upper bodies stock-still while doing things with their feet that seem to defy the laws of physics. It's a quaint, old-timey activity that is also apparently quite cutthroat on the competitive circuit, as a series of recent scandals have illustrated.

In 2022, The Irish Times reported on records filed with Ireland's High Court that outlined a broad culture of hardcore cheating in the Irish dancing community. The Irish Dancing Commission, it seems, had received intel that several instructors were colluding with judges to arrange favorable treatment for certain competitors, and even to fix entire competitions — and they were doing so by text message, thereby brilliantly leaving a bright, honking digital paper trail broadcasting ironclad evidence of wrongdoing. In perhaps the most egregious example, a male instructor and a male judge were busted very specifically laying out an arrangement whereby the latter would award a certain student stellar scores in exchange for favors of the hardcore sexual variety from the former, in a text convo peppered with cute emojis and eye-wateringly explicit language. The blow-up resulted in a new set of adjudicating rules being implemented by the Commission, which are quite unsurprisingly focused on limiting digital communications between the judges and outside parties during competitions.

The 2011 National Cheerleading Association Collegiate Championships was a display of utter dominance by one squad: the Cal State Long Beach 49ers, who tossed, flipped, and cheered their way to glory. The squad took home the national championship trophy, but there was a little snag. You see, the NCA has simple but clear guidelines for who is allowed to compete, having to do with the number of hours of coursework one must be in enrolled in, depending upon whether or not one is an undergraduate, graduating senior, or graduate student. The reason these details are relevant is because the 49ers won their title with help from a male member of the squad who was enrolled in exactly zero hours of coursework, because he was no longer a student.

A 49ers official recognized the dude, and it was determined that the entire squad — up to and including coach Eric Anderson, a winner of 30 national championships over his career, and the 49ers' coach for the last decade — had been fully aware of his ineligibility, but had chosen to keep their lips zipped in pursuit of that trophy. Their possession of it was short-lived; the squad was forced to forfeit their title, and Anderson was summarily canned.

There are high-stakes tournaments, and then there is the World Series of Poker, where competitors have to be flush with cash just to buy in for the chance to lose it all. In June 2023, pro player Martin Kabrhel ponied up a quarter-million dollars to buy in to the Super High Roller No-Limit Hold 'Em event, an act that would make anyone feel like a complete badass; he finished in third place and won $2.3 million, which would make anyone feel like a super badass. According to fellow competitor Andrew Robl, though, Kabrhel had a secret — a dirty, totally non-badass secret. 

Robl called Kabrhel out on X (formerly Twitter) in the middle of the event. "How is Martin Kabrhel not banned from the WSOP?" he tweeted. "He makes any tournament no fun for anyone and on top of it I've seen him mark cards in every tournament I've ever played with him." Robl followed that up with another post, this one an image of Kabrhel appearing to engage in shady activity during the competition, with the accompanying text "Reading his card markings or is he just using his X-Ray vision superpower?" Kabrhel categorically denied the allegation, but the WSOP opened an investigation that is still ongoing as of this writing, saying in a statement that it is "taking these allegations very seriously."

Kenyan women's chess tournaments are not ordinarily rife with treachery (we assume), but in 2023, one player in the women's portion of the Kenyan Open — who registered under the name of Millicent Awuor — immediately drew the attention of officials. This individual completely dominated their first two matches, even demolishing a former national champion, before losing to Uganda's highly rated Ampaira Shakira in the third round. Still, "Awuor" qualified to move on — but after the fourth round, the player was pulled aside by officials on account of a slight case of being a dude.

"Awuor" had managed to slip through by wearing a niqab, which completely obscured his face except for his glasses, and literally not speaking to anyone for the duration of his participation. For the first few rounds, officials were wary of raising any suspicion, as forcing an Orthodox Muslim woman to remove her headwear is a huge no-no, a fact of which "Awuor" was certainly aware. But when fellow players and officials began noting the player's odd, masculine gait and the fact that they wore shoes specifically made for guys, they called foul. The player, who was not named, was a highly rated international competitor who, he said, simply needed the prize money, which would have equated to about $4,000 USD for first place. Rather than a payday, though, he earned himself a three-year ban from competition and a place in the Kenyan Women's (or maybe Men's) Chess Hall of Shame.

Billed as the oldest trophy in international sporting, the America's Cup has been awarded to the dopest yacht racing team on the seven seas since 1851. In 2003, super-billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison did what super-billionaires will do, and created Oracle Team USA with the intention of bringing home that big old trophy. The team accomplished that in 2010, but in 2013, during the "World Series" lead-up to the America's Cup, the team hit a snag on their way to yachting glory when it was found that their yacht had been modified with improperly placed weights, which would have given them a distinct advantage. In response, the team was slapped with the harshest penalties in the history of the sport: they were docked one point for each match in which the modified yachts were used and fined a quarter-million dollars, and three members were kicked off the team.

Of course, Ellison was quick to wipe the egg off his face in grand style when it came time to race for the 2013 America's Cup. Down 8-1 late in the series, Team Oracle won eight straight races to claim the cup over Emirates Team New Zealand, completing the greatest comeback the race had ever seen — heck, it's even been called the greatest comeback in sports history. 

Red Bull's 3Style is billed as "the world's largest global DJ competition," and since 2010, it has hosted some of the best to ever stand behind the turntables. In 2016, though, controversy struck the competition. The Australian version of the event was won by DJ G Smooth, who blew away the judges with a technique known as a "roll," in which triggering pads on the mixer induce a drum roll-type effect on the record being played. G Smooth's speed and precision on the technique was impressive, indeed — and not long after his victory, DJs who caught clips of the performance online began pointing out that it also appeared to have been faked.

In the clip, it is pretty evident that G Smooth is miming at least that portion of his routine to a recorded track, as the motion of his hands simply don't line up with the sound; it was also noted that some of the settings on his mixer appeared to be a bit off, with the volume gains on his turntables down low while the mixer's onboard sampler was pumped up. G Smooth had his victory nullified, and while he insisted in a Facebook post that he had performed the entirety of his set live, it's tough to believe that the video is lying.