The poker world is engulfed with the Postle poker scandal

The Game Room
1

Somewhat surprised to see that this isn’t being discussed. Stones Gambling Hall has live streams of cash hold 'em games. About a year or so ago, a low/mid-stakes player called Mike Postle started running over the game, despite playing a ridiculously high percentage of hands - like 40-50%, a stupidly high level that essentially guarantees high variance and eventual busto. Despite this Postle kept winning…and winning…and winning. “God Mode” comments were common. Crush Live Poker instructors made training videos calling him a clown and discussing how to beat stupid lag-tards playing 50% of hands, which were all spot-on, problem being Postle was making insane reads in every single hand, and never ever being wrong.

I remember watching some streams and just not understanding how he wasn’t sometimes blasting into the stone cold nuts. He’d shut it down when behind. Put in massive bluffs with complete air, but only when his opponents could never call. It was insane. Garrett Adelstein, a regular on the Live at the Bike streams, is one of the best players I’ve ever seen, and he often makes the wrong fold, or triple-barrel bluffs into the nuts. Postle? Never.

It turns out that a number of players (including some of the Crush Live Poker instructors) raised concerns at the highly unusual style + never losing combination. Stones basically came back with ‘we looked into it, nothing to see here’. Fast forward a few months later, and a player/commentator at Stones finally had enough after this hand.

A few tweets later, some poker vloggers started digging in, particularly Joey Ingram, live-streaming hours and hours of simply going over videos of Postle’s play on the Stones feeds, and uncovering hand after hand of god-like play. Basically, Postle is God descended from the heavens to play $1/3 hold 'em in Sacramento, or he’s cheating.
Doug Polk and other vloggers have joined in, the thread on 2+2 has exploded, and it’s become this black hole of time sink as people look back at hands with a ‘omg why didn’t more people spot this earlier’, coupled with speculation as to how he cheated and whether he acted alone (seems certain he had to have at least one accomplice. We now have a stoned Mike Matusow doing a podcast with Postle. Entertainment gold.

For me, the most insane thing is that the guy won a few hundred thousand dollars (at most) over the course of a year, that he probably had to split with someone - not a massive payout, but basically free money, and he was only caught because he was stupid and greedy. Blast off into the nuts here and there, lose a couple of big pots, have some losing sessions here and there, and literally nobody ever every suspects a thing. Doing all of his cheating ON CAMERA and then doing it in a way that is literally guaranteed to raise eyebrows…what a stupid way to get caught.

2

I didn’t follow all the links in your post, but has he been definitely caught? It sounds like he was ridiculously successful, and made plays that suggest he knew more than he should. That certainly sounds like he’s cheating, but is there any direct evidence that he cheated, and how?

3

Funny you post this today - just this afternoon I watched a Doug Polk video about this scandal. As a lot of the commenters were saying, Postle hides his phone in his lap about as subtly as a high schooler texting in algebra class.

4

How the fuck does the house and other players let you have your phone in your lap AND your hand below the table? Some cardrooms I’ve played in, that would get you shot.

5

Are live feeds for $1/$3 tables common? I didn’t follow every link, but how long was his run? I can’t imagine he could have gotten away with it very long. I guess he stayed at the low dollar tables, since amateurs are less likely to catch on to what was going on.

6

Wasn’t this basically how the AbsolutePoker cheating scandal, or the collusion problem at Stud tables at Stars got solved: guys having win rates ridiculously ahead of normal rates (12 BB/100, was what I thought the guy at Absolute was running, and that when he decided to slow down.), where if they’d just moderated their greed, it would’ve been easily explained as just another guy sun-running? Easier to show, with the vastly greater number of hands to look at online, of course.

Have they figured out his angle yet? And if I understand you correctly, this is cheating at 1/3?!. Not 25/50 or some greater nosebleed game?

(I LOL’d at the triple barrel bluff into the nuts line.)

7

I’ve read upthread about the phone in the lap. My question is, what is that supposed to gain him? He’s getting texts from someone who can see what’s been dealt or burned?

8

Last post, but this graph from the 2+2 thread DragonAsh linked, should convey just how ridiculous this run was that this guy had: https://i.gyazo.com/9640d7665da6f5fbc37ad6c935334fbb.png

LOL at a near 1000 bb/100 win rate over any significant length of time, whatever his VPIP. The 2+2 thread makes it sound like he had an accomplice feeding him everyone else’s hand from the livestream control room. Which would then be conveyed to his phone.

9

this reminds me of when a year or two ago this black jack table had a few shoes where the cards were in exact order and these fools won something like 125 hands in a row and wondered how the dealer and pit boss noticed it

But yeah that guy was betting on everyone thinking no one would bother to cheat on the cheap tables …

10

It’s not like they have video evidence showing him seeing opponents’ hole cards on his phone, but it’s pretty much 100% confirmed he cheated, basically his win rate is mathematically/ statistically impossible. If you threw a six-sided die 34 times, and someone correctly guessed the outcome 32 times, which is more likely, the person can correctly guess the outcome of a six-sided die 95% of the time, or he’s using a loaded die?

The main question now is confirming *how *he cheated, not whether he cheated.

Not that common, certainly Stones is one of the few sites I know that regularly stream 1/3 (but see below on how big the game played). Live at the Bike is another site that streams almost every weekday, often bigger games. A couple of months ago there was a $400,000+ pot, absolute cooler (top full house vs quads).

I’d say his run started in mid-2018 or so. I think part of the reason he got away with it so long is that nobody was necessarily sitting and watching every single stream start to finish. There were definitely people that early on thought something was fishy, but it wasn’t until people starting watching multiple sessions at a go that they started to see the entire picture.

The stream is on a 30-minute delay for viewers and commentators - and, of course, players at the table, so there was no need to ban phones. However, the main theory at present is that he had access to the -live- stream (possibly fed to him from the show’s producer).

I mean, everyone’s done it - based on preflop action and board runout, you fire all three streets, and it should always work unless your opponent as at the absolute high end of his range…and sometimes, that’s what they have LOL.
Put another way - if you don’t sometimes shove all in to the nuts, you’re absolutely a losing player.

Well - yes technically a lot of the games were 1/3, but these definitely were not low-stakes games. There were almost always straddles and such, mainly played like a 5/5/10. Plus, it was a ‘match the stack’ game (if someone doubled up, anyone at the table could add on to match the highest stack at the table), so you’d get a lot of money on the table fairly quickly. Not nosebleed by any means, but definitely not ‘low-stakes 1/3’. But of course if you were so good, there’s no way in hell you’d be playing a 1/3 even if it plays like a 5/5 or 5/10, you’d go sit in Bobby’s Room where everyone is buying in for a quarter of a million dollars or more and make real coin.

11

Would someone who really is an excellent poker player, and has his opponents’ hole cards fed to him from a casino employee, be able to win in such a way that he’d never get caught? It seems Postle only got caught due to the ridiculous percentage of wins. Perhaps someone sharper would be able to sacrifice more hands, make intentional mis-reads, etc. and get away with it for a long time, or forever.

12

I absolutely think so. If Postle had played, say, a 25-30% VPIP - slightly higher than usual but not outrageously so - and had 70% winning sessions where he won quite a bit, and 30% losing sessions where he lost a little (which is the kind of sessions most good players have), and had made plays that he ‘would never do’ if he knew what his opponent had, I don’t think anyone would ever suspect he was cheating. He’d look like a typical ‘excellent’ player.

Of course, if you -are- an excellent player, you don’t really need to cheat. The only real benefit to cheating would be eliminating variance; I imagine it’d be harder trying to ‘fake’ variance…

13

According to the Doug Polk video I watched, the cards are RFID tagged, with readers at each player’s seat and in the flop area, so the commentators are able to identify every card immediately. The presumption is that someone behind the scenes is texting Postle the other players’ hole cards.

14

In that huge thread I even saw a post about a hand where he noticed that someone had their cards outside of the area, and asked him to place his cards where the RFID could read them. If true, that’s pretty telling.

15

Who knows, perhaps someone is doing that right now. All the more reason to figure out how Postle did it, so that someone else doesn’t exploit the same loophole and get away with it.

16

I’ve read the thread as best I can but the jargon is completely alien to me as I know the game blackjack but none of the terminology that goes with it. (I don’t even know what a “hole card” is)

Is there a stats breakdown for the layperson that shows the maths behind the assertion of cheating? It doesn’t seem like he’s actually been caught and I can’t follow the logic of it.

17

What does this idiom mean? [idly curious]

18

It’s not blackjack, it’s poker. The short explanation is that Postle has been playing in a way that makes sense only if he knows what cards the other players have. And he’s been doing it long enough, and consistently enough, that it’s not just an occasional lucky guess on his part.

19

The nuts is the best hand available including 3 of the visible cards on the table. Blasting off into them means betting that the hand you make with your two pocket cards (the cards only you see) is the best hand (the nuts). However it isn’t, someone else is eagerly waiting for your bet with better pocket cards.

20

“the nuts” refers to the best possible hand in a given situation. A player holding the nuts knows that he can’t possibly be beaten on a particular hand.

Poker players will sometimes bluff; holding a poor hand but placing a bet in the hope that the other players will all fold. Occasionally, you’ll pick the wrong time to bluff. If another player has a great hand, maybe even “the nuts”, then they won’t fold and the bluffer loses. Postle, from what I gather reading the OP, has been extremely fortunate in when he has chosen to bluff. All of his bluffs have been when the other players had poor hands that they had to fold.