For some time in the 2000s and early 2010s, Anthony Zinno was just a middle-stakes tournament grinder who nobody knew.
He had his first pretty good score in June 2013, cashing $86k at the $5k Main Event at Palazzo. Then he popped off an $825k win at the $3500 event at Borgata in September of that same year, and he never looked back. Since then, he's been a force at the tournament tables, accumulating over $11m worth of cashes, and 4 WSOP bracelets.
Zinno is 42, and there is some talk about electing him to the Poker HOF. Prior to last month, he had a good reputation, and was never involved in any scandals. I have played with him a number of times at the WSOP. He always said hello to me, was pleasant, and seemed like a nice guy.
Here's a picture of him from 2024, where he had a $202k 4th place score at Borgata:
Here is his Hendon Mob tournament cash list: https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=82053
However, if the current allegations against him are true, his good reputation will forever be tarnished, and his possible HOF election in the future might be in jeopardy.
On Facebook, a guy named Willie Wiggins posted the following allegation about Anthony Zinno:
The alleged victim, "Corel", is not well known in poker.
There were two interesting posts in a 2+2 thread about the matter.
One of them was from a little-used account registered in 2012, with a very generic screen name. It reads as follows:
I know the victim, Corel. He's an Incredibly nice guy, and a true gentleman, fwiw. He's a businessman, not a grinder, but he has some decent results, not that that matters in a case for theft. He's played a few high rollers too, so anyone who knew him might surmise that his bag would have significant cash.
I haven't spoken to him directly, but I did speak to a good friend of his, and I believe the allegations to be 100% true. Corel left his bag at (under) the table, Zinno took it to the bathroom, and emptied it of all, or nearly all, of the $ - approx 19-20k. Wynn caught him red-handed on the cameras, and they questioned him. A police report was filed. I believe Zinno admitted taking the bag (kind of hard to argue against the camera evidence), but denied the amount. As a law school graduate (according to his wikipedia entry), he probably knew the threshold for petit larceny vs a felony:
[NRS § 205.220 defines the Nevada crime of (felony) grand larceny as intentionally stealing someone else's property worth $1,200.00 or more. If the value of the property is less than $1,200.00, the offense would be the lesser crime of misdemeanor petit (petty) larceny.]
A second interesting 2+2 post came from someone named "gamble". This guy has 479 posts dating back 15 years on 2+2, and says he can confirm the story:
I'm not sure what this guy means by, "Zinno has a history of this." This is the first allegation of theft (or anything shady) I've seen brought against Zinno.I can confirm the story is true, Zinno is banned, there was $20k in the bag and of course Berkey’s take/skimming over the issue was horrible per usual (likely due to his personal relationship with Zinno). Stealing a bag in the casino has to be one of the more desperate if not outright stupid things an individual can do.
Zinno has a history of this so I’m glad he’s being outed. At the very least, his reputation will be seriously harmed and he will ideally lose eligibility to play at other venues once the case begins. Hopefully, the charges will lead to way more than petty theft (ie the casinos can look at Corel buying into events that day and see cash being taken out / put in bag at the cage, etc).
It's also important to understand that none of this has yet been verified by anyone well known, neutral, and reliable in the poker world. The two main informational posts come from two random 2+2 users (one who seems to be a dupe account), and they're referencing something recently said on Facebook. This Willie Wiggins seems to be a poker player, but I've never heard of him before.
However, I have to say that this doesn't look good for Zinno.
Zinno has a Twitter account, though he doesn't use it actively, and hasn't tweeted since 2022. But the silence is deafening. On his OnlyFriends show, Berkey spoke very warmly of him, and in fact seemed very reluctant to cover this, calling him a "great guy" before going into the allegation:
(go to the 16:52 mark of the show to see the clip)
While I give Berkey credit for being the first in poker media to bring this matter public, I didn't really like the segment. He spent too much time praising Zinno and blaming the victim, and not enough time discussing this brazen crime allegedly committed by one of the most successful tournament pros in the past decade.
But I have to think that if this weren't true, Zinno would have spoken to Berkey by now and cleared it up -- or at least spoken to SOMEONE and cleared it up. It's been over 2 days, and we aren't hearing anything.
If I had to guess, I would say that this story is either completely true or mostly true. And if it is true, it's bizarre, given Zinno's apparent success on the felt over the past 11 years.
So why might this have happened? I will discuss it in the next post...
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