Ethan "Rampage" Yau has named names again. The high-stakes content creator and WPT Global ambassador posted on Sunday that one of the players from a New York private cash game he livestreamed earlier this year still owes him money, and that the same player is now demanding the public call-out post be deleted as a condition of paying.
Yau opened the thread Sunday afternoon. The post pulled almost 400,000 impressions inside 12 hours and 111 replies, the kind of velocity Rampage's audience produces when he posts a real grievance rather than a vlog teaser.
Another scam of 2026, here we go. A few months ago I uploaded some high stakes private cash games from NYC that the public thought was fake and inflated numbers as stakes ran up to $1/2K blinds and pots worth more than 600k. They were 100% legitimate.
Ethan Yau (@rampagepoker)
The overnight follow-up named the player as Bardia M. "He wants this tweet taken down or else there is no payment," Yau wrote. "Does not seem like the kind of person you want to do business with, I hope this can prevent future scams."
This is the second time in 18 months Rampage has used X to publicly call out someone for non-payment. In November 2024 he named California-based bookie Neema Khazaie, alleging Diamond Sportsbook owed him roughly $134,000 after his account was limited mid-withdrawal. That episode ended with partial repayment and no lasting reputational fallout for Yau, if anything it became one of the higher-engagement posts on his timeline that quarter.
What is different this time is the venue. The NYC private cash game footage Yau posted earlier in the year was already controversial. Several Reddit and Two Plus Two threads at the time argued the stakes, reported as $1,000/$2,000 with pots over $600,000, had to be inflated for content. Rampage's position has been the opposite: the stakes were real, the players are real, and at least one of them has not paid.
For an audience that has watched Yau take six-figure swings on camera for three years, the scam thread fits the established narrative. He is unusually transparent about money he is owed and unusually willing to absorb the social cost of naming the people he says owe him. It is also a reminder of why the public-casino circuit, despite worse rake, is preferred by most professionals over the unregulated private NYC scene.
Yau has not yet said what amount is in dispute. PokerInfluencers Newsdesk will update this piece if either side responds further. In the meantime, follow Rampage's coverage of the situation on his X profile and his YouTube channel.
