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For people who are not familiar with poker and dont understand why people are 100% sure this person is cheating, allow me to explain. This player continously m

For people who are not familiar with poker and dont understand why people are 100% sure this person is cheating, allow me to explain. This player continously makes decisions playing poker that are theoretically unsound and manages to always win the maximum and lose the minimum amount of money possible. So not only are his plays theoretically unsound, there is no observable underlying strategy to his play. He plays conservatively when the player he is playing has the best hand and he plays aggressively when the player he is playing has a worse hand. The only thing consistent about his play is that his decision is the perfect play he could make if he had access to the other players cards. This kind of play is possible in a very small sample but this person has been playing this way consistently for a year now.

paggle 7y ago
How do you falsify his claim that he can read his opponent's faces and tell what cards they have? Isn't that a common skill in high level poker?
- cryptoz 7y ago
  > How do you falsify his claim that he can read his opponent's faces and tell what cards they have? This would be super easy to test. Since the cards are RFID spied-upon by the House, a player simply has to pretend to look at their cards while never actually seeing them. The RFID chips are still active and the likely source of the leak. So just don't look at your cards, he'll still know what your cards are even though you don't! Personally, that's not poker to me. Removing my ability to control the information about my cards - specifically letting the House know my cards before I do! - seems to violate the basic tenets of what makes poker poker. Shouldn't a player be allowed to fold and drop that information into a black hole? It's not poker if you can't do that! Key player strategies have always included selecting which information to reveal to other players. Removing this ability from the players changes the game, dramatically, as seen here. The control of information has been wrestled from the player and forced into the hands of the House. Any amount of cheating should be expected in such a weird system of convoluted rules and specific data leaks planted into the system on purpose.
  - ddingus 7y ago
    RFID on the cards? You are right. That is not poker. There is no reason for the house, or anyone, but the player to have the data on the cards. I just caught wind of this here on a lark. The house knowing the cards is extremely, highly suspect. Great comment. I agree across the board.
    - Mtinie 7y ago
      This isn’t the case of a casino tagging cards without the players knowing it’s happening. RFID’d cards are used because these are publicly streamed games. To provide a high-quality experience for the viewer requires someone (or something, in the case of a piece of software) to know the table state to build display graphics and compute in-hand odds. I haven’t seen a copy of the video and audio usage release form _Stones Live_ uses but I find it extremely unlikely a player would be unaware their game is being streamed. A properly locked down network vastly reduces the potential for external actors using the game state information maliciously. It does not prevent insiders from abusing their legitimately granted credentials but that’s a separate consideration.
      - ddingus 7y ago
        I don't care. The games can be streamed without the cards data also being public. No self respecting player should agree to that. There is no real security that way. Everybody knows that. What we can get is good, but never perfect. Poker has been plagued by bots already. Prior to that, a family member, who can play at top ranks, made insane money online. Bill Frist made that difficult where I live, so we transitioned to table play. Medical issues made that tough... I put that there because we have played this game. (I am solid, by their teaching and do play on occasion today) There is the player choice to tell. Sometimes it makes sense not to, and nobody else needs to know. Publishing card data devalues the game. Makes it less. A game streamed old school tells anyone watching all they really need to know. From there, start to play. That tells them more. I do not like the card data being published. Yes, players consent. They shouldn't, but their call. Same as I get to talk it down. I wonder what Brunson would think about this. I bet not much. We all have our reasons.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  It's not high level or high stakes. It's a $1/$3 game--the games Vegas weekend warriors and tourists play. If he really has this superpower, why isn't he playing 100-1000x those stakes in Macau?
  - debatem1 7y ago
    Isn't that possibly self-explanatory? He could play the lower level because it maximizes his profits. Better players might bluff better or mask their tells.
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      Sure. There are "whales" at every stakes level, but maybe he's decided that this particular $1/$3 game at this particular casino [using those particular RFID cards] is the combination that maximizes his profits. It's an amazing story and I can't wait to see the run-out.
- cepth 7y ago
  A couple of responses here: First, the issue is that he's winning at a rate that is 10+ standard deviations above what the typical winning/profitable player is achieving. These results are accomplished across a significant sample of sessions (39 live streamed ones), and across almost a year. If you consider some of the players considered the best "live readers" in the history of the game (Ivey, Negreanu, etc.), none have won at the rate that he has. Secondly, he's playing $1/3 and $5/5 poker in a city (Sacramento) that is not exactly a gambling mecca. You would expect someone who is as good as he is to play higher stakes games. $1/3 and $5/5 are stakes offered at nearly any casino. Third, he's performed well against some elite pros. Matt Berkey (who regularly plays the highest stakes in Vegas) was in a streamed game against Postle, and Postle performed extremely well in heads-up hands. Given that Berkey is playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars on a nightly basis in Vegas, and seems to be a profitable player in those games, are we supposed to believe that Postle somehow has identified body language tells that no one else has discovered? This is not even considering other facts like: * Postle used to consult for the production team behind the streaming for the casino * Postle used to claim to run some kind of app development company, and has since deleted his LinkedIn * The extreme winning sessions seem to only have taken place during streamed games Sure, it's possible that there's a benign explanation here, but it's looking far and far more unlikely.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Not definitive by itself, but the hat is very suspect: https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/mike-postle-hat-montage-1024x566.jpg https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp-content/uploads/201...
    - EForEndeavour 7y ago
      I find it astounding that personal accessories like hats and sunglasses are not only allowed but apparently not adequately inspected in a game where the subtlest body language and facial tics can affect who ends up winning thousands to millions of dollars. (My poker experience amounts to two years' worth of high-school lunch hours, so admittedly, I'm commenting on something I don't know much about)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mruts 7y ago
  If that was the case, why isn’t he playing with the big boys? If he was this good, he should be making millions and millions a year. Even if he doesn’t have the money, someone should be willing to sponsor him for millions or even tens of millions. While no concrete evidence has been provided, there is a lot of statistical evidence (he’s on a practically impossible part of the bell curve), Occam’s Razor implies that he’s cheating. Moreover he only plays when twitch is rolling. The most likely explanation is that he’s giving a percentage of his winnings to some tech guy processing the feed, probably more than 50%.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  He only plays in the specific circumstances that are set up for this particular streamed event. He could easily prove himself innocent by playing and winning similarly in literally any other poker venue.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- DavidWoof 7y ago
  There are hands that make this virtually impossible. In one well-known hand where both his opponents have AKo and Postle goes all in. AKo is a very good hand, but it's a much worse hand if two people hold it. Even if Postle had magic face-reading abilities that allow him to always discern good and bad hands, it's absurd to claim he can read exact rank and suit from faces.
  - vast 7y ago
    This argument makes no sense. People throw away quads because they sense something or get scared. By a small fraction cards aren't the winning factor in poker.
    - DavidWoof 7y ago
      We're talking about pre-flop actions. It's literally impossible to throw away quads pre-flop in hold-em. You may be thinking about a different form of poker.
      - vast 7y ago
        Sorry no previous poster talked specifically about pre-flop actions.
        hunter2_ 7y ago
        Maybe saying "opponents have [2 cards not 5]" indicates pre-flop? The communal cards are often referred to as what someone "has" despite being communal.
        DavidWoof 7y ago
        np, I was probably sloppy in my description. In the hand, two players hold AKo, there's another deadcard king in a folded hand, and Postle calls a all-in pre-flop with 54o. That's a +EV call, but only because of the exact combination of cards held by multiple players. There's no way a tell can give him this information.
      - 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lordnacho 7y ago
  Imagine if you had a video of every player (a huge dataset across players and events), along with just the information that you're supposed to have. Now you code up a neural net or whatever fancy algorithm you can think of. How much do you think that extra data is actually going to help? If your answer is very little, you agree he's cheating. Like me. If it's a lot, then you're saying looking at faces is critical to poker. And yet how much do poker players say about reading faces? There would be other people who'd also discovered that reading tells is useful, and they would be somewhere in between the naive people just reading the cards and this guy, who seems to play optimally given all information, even that which isn't normally public.
- mattmaroon 7y ago
  No, it's not. It's just something that happens in the movies. Real people at high stakes poker tables don't exhibit tells, especially not ones that allow you to be 100% accurate.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Personally I'd be willing to believe that he has some extraordinary ability, as humans sometimes do. But only if he could win anywhere, not just in a particular streaming venue with RFID in the cards.
    - mattmaroon 7y ago
      I played poker professionally for years. Nobody has the ability he'd have to have. Extraordinary ability in poker means you win like 55% of the time. Not 100.
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  The easiest way to tell would be to compare his performance at games with cameras vs without
m4tthumphrey 7y ago
Looks like it's been figured out [0]. [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/1179892447142449153?s=09 https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/11798924471424491...
- jandrese 7y ago
  That's just more speculation.
- bonestamp2 7y ago
  There are some interesting ideas here. It seems extra risky to involve a second person. Does a second person always show up with him? Maybe he built an app that allows him to read that data on his phone without needing a second person.
- whoisthemachine 7y ago
  Whether this is true or not, if Stone Live's systems are unsecured, it's an easy security hole to plug.
vast 7y ago
Can you point out those magic plays with yt links (on the full vis)?

paggle 7y ago

How do you falsify his claim that he can read his opponent's faces and tell what cards they have? Isn't that a common skill in high level poker?

cryptoz 7y ago
> How do you falsify his claim that he can read his opponent's faces and tell what cards they have? This would be super easy to test. Since the cards are RFID spied-upon by the House, a player simply has to pretend to look at their cards while never actually seeing them. The RFID chips are still active and the likely source of the leak. So just don't look at your cards, he'll still know what your cards are even though you don't! Personally, that's not poker to me. Removing my ability to control the information about my cards - specifically letting the House know my cards before I do! - seems to violate the basic tenets of what makes poker poker. Shouldn't a player be allowed to fold and drop that information into a black hole? It's not poker if you can't do that! Key player strategies have always included selecting which information to reveal to other players. Removing this ability from the players changes the game, dramatically, as seen here. The control of information has been wrestled from the player and forced into the hands of the House. Any amount of cheating should be expected in such a weird system of convoluted rules and specific data leaks planted into the system on purpose.
- ddingus 7y ago
  RFID on the cards? You are right. That is not poker. There is no reason for the house, or anyone, but the player to have the data on the cards. I just caught wind of this here on a lark. The house knowing the cards is extremely, highly suspect. Great comment. I agree across the board.
  - Mtinie 7y ago
    This isn’t the case of a casino tagging cards without the players knowing it’s happening. RFID’d cards are used because these are publicly streamed games. To provide a high-quality experience for the viewer requires someone (or something, in the case of a piece of software) to know the table state to build display graphics and compute in-hand odds. I haven’t seen a copy of the video and audio usage release form _Stones Live_ uses but I find it extremely unlikely a player would be unaware their game is being streamed. A properly locked down network vastly reduces the potential for external actors using the game state information maliciously. It does not prevent insiders from abusing their legitimately granted credentials but that’s a separate consideration.
    - ddingus 7y ago
      I don't care. The games can be streamed without the cards data also being public. No self respecting player should agree to that. There is no real security that way. Everybody knows that. What we can get is good, but never perfect. Poker has been plagued by bots already. Prior to that, a family member, who can play at top ranks, made insane money online. Bill Frist made that difficult where I live, so we transitioned to table play. Medical issues made that tough... I put that there because we have played this game. (I am solid, by their teaching and do play on occasion today) There is the player choice to tell. Sometimes it makes sense not to, and nobody else needs to know. Publishing card data devalues the game. Makes it less. A game streamed old school tells anyone watching all they really need to know. From there, start to play. That tells them more. I do not like the card data being published. Yes, players consent. They shouldn't, but their call. Same as I get to talk it down. I wonder what Brunson would think about this. I bet not much. We all have our reasons.
ryandrake 7y ago
It's not high level or high stakes. It's a $1/$3 game--the games Vegas weekend warriors and tourists play. If he really has this superpower, why isn't he playing 100-1000x those stakes in Macau?
- debatem1 7y ago
  Isn't that possibly self-explanatory? He could play the lower level because it maximizes his profits. Better players might bluff better or mask their tells.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    Sure. There are "whales" at every stakes level, but maybe he's decided that this particular $1/$3 game at this particular casino [using those particular RFID cards] is the combination that maximizes his profits. It's an amazing story and I can't wait to see the run-out.
cepth 7y ago
A couple of responses here: First, the issue is that he's winning at a rate that is 10+ standard deviations above what the typical winning/profitable player is achieving. These results are accomplished across a significant sample of sessions (39 live streamed ones), and across almost a year. If you consider some of the players considered the best "live readers" in the history of the game (Ivey, Negreanu, etc.), none have won at the rate that he has. Secondly, he's playing $1/3 and $5/5 poker in a city (Sacramento) that is not exactly a gambling mecca. You would expect someone who is as good as he is to play higher stakes games. $1/3 and $5/5 are stakes offered at nearly any casino. Third, he's performed well against some elite pros. Matt Berkey (who regularly plays the highest stakes in Vegas) was in a streamed game against Postle, and Postle performed extremely well in heads-up hands. Given that Berkey is playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars on a nightly basis in Vegas, and seems to be a profitable player in those games, are we supposed to believe that Postle somehow has identified body language tells that no one else has discovered? This is not even considering other facts like: * Postle used to consult for the production team behind the streaming for the casino * Postle used to claim to run some kind of app development company, and has since deleted his LinkedIn * The extreme winning sessions seem to only have taken place during streamed games Sure, it's possible that there's a benign explanation here, but it's looking far and far more unlikely.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Not definitive by itself, but the hat is very suspect: https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/mike-postle-hat-montage-1024x566.jpg https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp-content/uploads/201...
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    I find it astounding that personal accessories like hats and sunglasses are not only allowed but apparently not adequately inspected in a game where the subtlest body language and facial tics can affect who ends up winning thousands to millions of dollars. (My poker experience amounts to two years' worth of high-school lunch hours, so admittedly, I'm commenting on something I don't know much about)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mruts 7y ago
If that was the case, why isn’t he playing with the big boys? If he was this good, he should be making millions and millions a year. Even if he doesn’t have the money, someone should be willing to sponsor him for millions or even tens of millions. While no concrete evidence has been provided, there is a lot of statistical evidence (he’s on a practically impossible part of the bell curve), Occam’s Razor implies that he’s cheating. Moreover he only plays when twitch is rolling. The most likely explanation is that he’s giving a percentage of his winnings to some tech guy processing the feed, probably more than 50%.
jessaustin 7y ago
He only plays in the specific circumstances that are set up for this particular streamed event. He could easily prove himself innocent by playing and winning similarly in literally any other poker venue.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
DavidWoof 7y ago
There are hands that make this virtually impossible. In one well-known hand where both his opponents have AKo and Postle goes all in. AKo is a very good hand, but it's a much worse hand if two people hold it. Even if Postle had magic face-reading abilities that allow him to always discern good and bad hands, it's absurd to claim he can read exact rank and suit from faces.
- vast 7y ago
  This argument makes no sense. People throw away quads because they sense something or get scared. By a small fraction cards aren't the winning factor in poker.
  - DavidWoof 7y ago
    We're talking about pre-flop actions. It's literally impossible to throw away quads pre-flop in hold-em. You may be thinking about a different form of poker.
    - vast 7y ago
      Sorry no previous poster talked specifically about pre-flop actions.
      - hunter2_ 7y ago
        Maybe saying "opponents have [2 cards not 5]" indicates pre-flop? The communal cards are often referred to as what someone "has" despite being communal.
      - DavidWoof 7y ago
        np, I was probably sloppy in my description. In the hand, two players hold AKo, there's another deadcard king in a folded hand, and Postle calls a all-in pre-flop with 54o. That's a +EV call, but only because of the exact combination of cards held by multiple players. There's no way a tell can give him this information.
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lordnacho 7y ago
Imagine if you had a video of every player (a huge dataset across players and events), along with just the information that you're supposed to have. Now you code up a neural net or whatever fancy algorithm you can think of. How much do you think that extra data is actually going to help? If your answer is very little, you agree he's cheating. Like me. If it's a lot, then you're saying looking at faces is critical to poker. And yet how much do poker players say about reading faces? There would be other people who'd also discovered that reading tells is useful, and they would be somewhere in between the naive people just reading the cards and this guy, who seems to play optimally given all information, even that which isn't normally public.
mattmaroon 7y ago
No, it's not. It's just something that happens in the movies. Real people at high stakes poker tables don't exhibit tells, especially not ones that allow you to be 100% accurate.
- DennisP 7y ago
  Personally I'd be willing to believe that he has some extraordinary ability, as humans sometimes do. But only if he could win anywhere, not just in a particular streaming venue with RFID in the cards.
  - mattmaroon 7y ago
    I played poker professionally for years. Nobody has the ability he'd have to have. Extraordinary ability in poker means you win like 55% of the time. Not 100.
bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
The easiest way to tell would be to compare his performance at games with cameras vs without

m4tthumphrey 7y ago

Looks like it's been figured out [0]. [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/1179892447142449153?s=09 https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/11798924471424491...

jandrese 7y ago
That's just more speculation.
bonestamp2 7y ago
There are some interesting ideas here. It seems extra risky to involve a second person. Does a second person always show up with him? Maybe he built an app that allows him to read that data on his phone without needing a second person.
whoisthemachine 7y ago
Whether this is true or not, if Stone Live's systems are unsecured, it's an easy security hole to plug.

vast 7y ago

Can you point out those magic plays with yt links (on the full vis)?