As we reported earlier this week, Dylan Linde took down Event #57: $50,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller for $2,146,414 and a third WSOP gold bracelet. What wasn’t covered at the time were accusations that two of the final table players were perhaps being a little too friendly with each other. Danish pro Martin “Imbajimba” Dam claimed play between Ding Biao and Quan Zhou looked like “blatant collusion”.
50k PLO WSOP Final table (1st hand after 60min dinner break) – Ding Biao raises and his Chinese countryman Quan Zhou (who is usually very tight) quickly 3bets J874s with 12bb stack and Ding Biao folds without scanning his cards. This looks like blatant collusion @WSOP @PokerGO pic.twitter.com/PQFId3qhPG
— Imbajimba (@Imbajimbaa) June 23, 2025
Dam added: “For reference, very next orbit: -Flats JT98ds 9bb BBvsMP open -Folds KKJTr 21bb SBvCO open. These are ofc slightly different spots, but they are indicative of his general playing style. He is not a player who randomly 3-bets J874s unless there is something else going on.”
At almost the exact same time, Dirk “venividi1993” Gerritse was claiming the very same:
I just finished 8th in the $50k PLO WSOP event, very happy with the result of course, but when I watched back the stream some very suspicious happened on the first hand after the break that happened before the final table.
— Venividi1993 (@thevenividi1993) June 23, 2025
Ding opens the cutoff and Zhou finds the “creative” 3… pic.twitter.com/ItCC4H2MUL
“I’m not saying with certainty that there is cheating going on here, I just think the hand is very suspicious and it deserves more attention,” wrote Gerritse.
The big names of poker Twitter were quick to add their tuppence-worth to the claims:
- “Very weird…btb I asked ren and they don’t like each other and I don’t see Bing Diao doing anything shady. Is prob nothing.” Nacho Barbero
- “I’ve played a lot with both players (also both in same Cashgames) and this is very out of character, esp from Quan Zhou who is a player that limp calls a lot and is very passive pre.” Alexander Petersen
- “I can’t believe Ding is part of it. And he is not giving away any chips at WSOP FT. But yes, something is very wrong here. Can be graphics, problem with stream, or just 1 player doing something shady.” JoaoSimao
It wasn’t long before Doug Polk cottoned on to the story and produced one of his humorous/annoying/standard (delete as appropriate) videos about the allegations.
Then Martin Zamani got in on the action, throwing in some ‘racisms’ while being almost unintelligible:
“The Chinese cheat in anyway they can. They cheat on streams @PokerDream_Live. Ren basically cheats everytime he plays. Talking during multi-way hands “gamble too much”. During a @tritonpoker 25K bubble China man left @DannyTang2 1Bb after some Chinese words on river X back fullhouse.”
Quan Zhou, as many will recall, was embroiled in a controversy back in 2019 at the EPT Barcelona Main Event. There, he was accused of angleshooting…and his guilt wasn’t even a close-run thing!
This angleshoot is so ridiculous. It gets funnier when you keep rewatching how bad he tries to defend himself with his motions going every direction https://t.co/mAWNj3AFjV
— Randy Lew (@nanonoko) August 29, 2019
For now, at least, the accusations will remain just that, but for Zhou at least the claims will see his actions followed ever more closely.
