
A Cheating Scandal Rocking the Poker World - indigodaddy
https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/4/20899034/poker-cheating-mike-postle-stones-gambling-hall-twitch-no-limit-holdem-sacramento-veronica-brill
======
newfangle
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
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?

~~~
cepth
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
Not definitive by itself, but the hat is very suspect:
[https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp-
content/uploads/201...](https://www.vegasslotsonline.com/news/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/mike-postle-hat-montage-1024x566.jpg)

~~~
tim333
Yeah, looks like a high probability of electronics in the hat.

~~~
abductee_hg
well then let's just hope those electronics don't fall out of the hat the way
he moves it around...

[https://youtu.be/Eg34YTF-meA?t=7502](https://youtu.be/Eg34YTF-meA?t=7502)
(yes, url with timecode :) )

------
captncraig
It seems to me that security at the venue is extremely inconsistent. They care
enough about cheating to time-delay the stream (even to the announcers), but
players are allowed to have phones and keys and things at the table? Maybe
don't allow that?

~~~
umvi
Seriously, even a phone without internet seems like a massive opportunity to
cheat. Simply create a custom app that allows you to input all available
information via accelerometer input or volume button clicks which is fed to a
poker engine and the then the app communicates the result of the engine's
decision via vibration pulses.

Even IF you allow phones though, it seems insane not to make players play in
an RF-shielded room so that radio signals can't enter or leave.

~~~
ar_lan
It sounds like your idea is just calculating odds - this is a slight
advantage, but most pro's have learned to do this in their heads already.
Poker math isn't very complicated.

~~~
leetcrew
maybe this is just my ignorance showing, but really? people can just computer
large factorials and binomial coefficients in their heads fast enough to
participate in the game?

I had always thought that knowing the odds exactly just wasn't that useful
because there was a lot of missing information and it was more important to
read one's opponents.

~~~
femto113
It's usually not anywhere near that complicated. To use an example from the
article he folded a QJ against a QT with 89J on the board with no flush
possibilities. In this case there are not very many hands that can be beating
him: the pocket pairs AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 99, 88, stuff that makes two pair like
J9, J8, 98, and the straights QT and T7. Overall this is going to be close to
the chance when holding 77 that your opponent has a higher pair, which most
professional players will "just know" is about 3-4% because they memorize
tables of such facts[1]. This means he should believe he's a pretty
substantial favorite and why the fold was so unexpected.

[1] [https://poker.stackexchange.com/questions/1203/pocket-
pair-s...](https://poker.stackexchange.com/questions/1203/pocket-pair-
starting-hands-vs-probability-of-opponent-having-a-pocket-pair)

~~~
appleshore
It is that complicated if you’re trying to factor accurate ranges, card
removal and bet sizing. He’s obviously not doing this because he’s playing an
exploitative style. In otherwords, he’s guessing perfectly based on his
perceptions.

For the mathematically perfect, they spend hours studying solvers which takes
considerable processing power to generate the trees. A human player can
calculate aspects of it but they can really only memorize what the solver
would do. And some high stakes online players are using custom software to
augment their decisions.

Depending on the bet size, the solver could call the turn a % of times. And
depending on blockers, unblockers and the bet sizing, the solver could
advocate to call/raise/fold.

~~~
newfangle
Unless you are playing at the absolute elite levels you do not need to
perfectly calculate your own range or another persons. But yes, the better you
get the more complicated the math is.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Is it just me, or do others find it disturbing that very serious accusations
are being made and promoted with nothing but very circumstantial evidence.

I read the article expecting to find some solid evidence of cheating, but
instead is just a bunch of speculation and innuendo.

~~~
socialist_coder
Occam's Razor.

They need to rip the RFID tags out and watch his performance completely
suffer.

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
I fired up the last live stream and it seems they put in a "electronic devices
need to be away from the table" rule.
[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/489058455?t=13m51s](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/489058455?t=13m51s)

But it doesn't seem to be a rule they enforce all the time (as one player said
"that would be a good rule to have all the time") but the other players said
they liked the rule simply cause people actually pay attention to the game
instead of their phones now.

If it is how others have suggested in this thread, he has a tap into the
system reading the cards and they if they only have that card reading system
enabled during the live streamed games (Postle only seems to play during the
live games and would be constantly looking at his phone) then that would be
"enough".

If he is using a large reader in a bag or something then surely something
powerful enough to read his opponents cards would also be picking up the cards
in the dealers hands (the rest of the deck) esp if his opponent is on the
other side of the table with the dealer in-between them.

That's just my speculation on the matter.

EDIT: Though he does seem to have his phone in his breast pocket. And if he
really does have a tap into the system it wouldn't take much to create some
easy to conceal device to feed him data via another mean other than a phone
screen.

Some of the other games seem to happily have some of the players wearing
headphones and the like so unless there was an outright ban on electronics
near the table their would still be "issues".

If he does indeed have an "in" to the system then even ripping out the RFID
system and replacing it with cameras (like in other televised poker games
could be a data leak unless they ripped out the WHOLE thing and started a
fresh with another company supplying the tech.

------
bartread
He keeps his phone on the chair between his legs. He glances down at his phone
before making a decision.

Why is that even allowed?

Why is he, or anyone else, allowed a phone in the room at all?

I mean, the mere presence of a phone is just such an obvious vector for
cheating.

~~~
pfortuny
This is so obvious it is not even ridiculous. Like: hey this pupil keeps his
phone under the table while the other ones put it on it during an exam. And he
aces it!!

------
hornd
Taking a look at his BB/100 (big blinds per 100 hands) versus "normal" players
(and against potripper, a known cheater) shows just how out of the ordinary
Postle is playing:
[https://i.imgur.com/66i3Tii.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/66i3Tii.jpg).
Admittedly, the sample size is small (live poker is much slower than online),
but his win rate is outrageous.

For context: against good players (e.g. perhaps NL1000 in the bay area, and
maybe NL50 online), a winrate over 10BB/100 over a long period of time is
considered very good.

~~~
jedberg
Is this the number of Big Blinds that he eventually wins or something else?

~~~
superhuzza
VPIP - Voluntarily put in pot - So % of preflop hands where the player bet
money. How 'active' a player is in terms of betting.

BB/100 is a calculation of how many 'big blinds' the player has won per 100,
where big blinds is a specific $ amount. Effectively it's how profitable the
player is.

As you can see, he's high on VPIP, which means he bets on a high percentage of
hands. At the same time, his play remains highly profitable. It's so far out
of the norm there's only one plausible explanation.

~~~
jedberg
> It's so far out of the norm there's only one plausible explanation.

The greatest poker player that ever lived? :)

------
Nokinside
For those who say there is no conclusive evidence.

CERN considers 5 sigma as the level where they are confident of announcing a
discovery of new scientific result. 7 sigma for Higgs Boson. Statistical
evidence against Mike Postle's game is stronger than that. It also only
happens during streamed games with RFID chips in a single casino.

Either world's best player is playing for peanuts (relatively speaking) in
single venue using high variance style without variance or he is cheating.

~~~
skrebbel
That's the same kind of reasoning that sent a mom of whose babies died to
prison for decades. (I can't remember her name so can't link, sorry - it's a
well known story of a mother getting convicted for double child murder because
a doctor did some shitty statistics in court).

Sure, the chance is high. But if there is no conclusive evidence, then there's
no conclusive evidence.

That might be enough for angry Twitter mobs, but I sure hope that it's not
enough for court.

~~~
Nokinside
Your argument goes as follows:

There has been bad statistics in some completely different case. This argument
uses statistics. We can conclude that this argument is also bad.

~~~
losvedir
No, that's not the argument. The argument is that something that's highly
improbable for _this_ person to do is probable for _someone_ to do.

Consider if you had 1,000,000 people flipping coins. You'd expect one of them
to flip 20 heads in a row. However, if you took the person who did it to
court, you'd argue: it's highly unlikely this person could flip 20 heads in a
row. They must be cheating!

I don't know enough about this case to say if it's correct, but OP is saying
more than "dur people use bad statistics". They're saying it's the same
fallacy. In the woman with the babies case, SIDS is rare, but in a country
with millions of mothers it can happen to the same one twice. In this case,
playing perfect hands is rare, but in a country of millions of players, you'd
expect someone to, _somewhere_ , maybe in a podunk town of small scale games.

Of course, the fallacy doesn't make _forward_ predictions. If he continues to
win improbably after he's been identified, then it's not that.

~~~
LargeWu
It's not a fallacy; it's that using a purely probabilistic approach here is
not warranted. It requires some Bayesian reasoning.

The main difference is in the SIDS case, you have a sample size of 2.

In the Postle case, we have hundreds of hands he is involved in; dozens of
sessions. Multiple instances of where he makes incredibly good reads, contrary
to optimal theoretical play. (the article also notably does not detail any
incorrect reads).

We also have a good understanding of how playing lots (50 %) of hands should
affect his variance, yet he seems to come out of almost every session a
winner. He should be coming away a loser a lot more.

The idea in popular culture that great poker players can "read" other players
like a book is overblown, and a bit obsolete. Modern live players have learned
to conceal their intentions much better than in the past. Yes some players may
still have slight tells, but unless his opponents' eyes are bulging out of
their head like a cartoon wolf when they get a flush, that can only account
for a slight edge.

So sure, if you take a purely probabilistic approach and say "well, somebody
somewhere could go on that sort of run", then it looks like a fallacy. But if
you take the other data: That he doesn't play in other cash games, that he
cashes almost every time despite a high variance style, that he makes
theoretically unsound plays at critical times and they always turn out to be
correct, that other legendary players do not have these sorts of
results...then it seems to me there is a very high likelihood that he is
cheating.

------
bloody-crow
So, there cameras live-shooting the whole thing and another system that
overlays rfid readings over it. The resulting footage than gets stored on some
system and being broadcasted with a 30 minutes delay to twitch.

There's enough opportunity to leak this information in near-realtime via some
previously planted backdoor (Postle is a former employee), or a current
accomplice from within the company.

------
socialist_coder
Wow, putting RFID chips in every card... gee what could go wrong?

How does that idea even get past the whiteboarding stage? Seems so stupid for
any poker house to do that. I mean come on, there is real money at stake and
you are putting RFID TAGS IN EVERY CARD???

~~~
sixstringtheory
Couldn't each RFID tag have a UUID that maps to some in-house database to
decode them to their actual card value? Each card/deck would essentially be
"unique" and if you read the tags all you'd know is that your opponent is
holding cards B8BB148A-1BA4-493D-A9C4-884A2AAA4491 and
1534DE97-B227-4292-817E-01112B9BC1E5.

What am I missing?

~~~
ladberg
Unless you never reuse a single card, then whoever is scanning the cards can
know what a card is if it's played again.

~~~
duskwuff
Could be worked around by rolling the IDs every time cards go through the
shuffler. That's beyond the capability of most commercially available RFID
tags, though.

------
shkkmo
> Soon the thread on TwoPlusTwo resembled a detective’s corkboard with red
> string wound around pushpins, connecting the various dots that revealed the
> definitive answer to the mystery

What definitive answer? All I ever see in the article is speculation,
circumstantial evidence and statistical analysis this indicates something is
probably going on.

This article is very underwhelming and short on actual details.

~~~
sschueller
To me it appears he has access to the system that scans the rfids of the
cards.

Article mentions that he was involved with a company that consulted with the
casino.

Someone should run some tcpdumps on their wifi.

~~~
shkkmo
That seems like a quite likely explanation. It doesn't seem like actual
definitive evidence would be that hard to find (if the relevant people were
actually interested in finding it).

Does it really matter if you have exposed one cheater who over-used the system
when the system still has unknown and unfixed flaws that could be enabling
other, more circumspect cheaters?

------
indigodaddy
Accompanying TwoPlusTwo thread: [https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-
views-gossip/mike...](https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-
gossip/mike-postle-cheating-allegations-faq-first-post-1753388/)

------
dwighttk
I don't understand why they need RFID if the stream is delayed 30 minutes...
Just look at the cards afterwards and backfill the information onto the
stream...

~~~
GoRudy
That wouldn’t be practical. It would slow the game down to a point of being
almost unplayable and the way cards are discarded currently would prevent
that.

~~~
dwighttk
RFID seems like it wouldn't be practical... how do you keep players from
reading the signals?

~~~
BigJono
Close range sensors and secure transmissions.

As long as the reader has to be within a couple of centimetres of the cards
there's really nothing other players at the table can do to get the data that
isn't obvious. It's not like you can lean over the table and scan your
opponent's cards with your phone without raising a few eyebrows.

I'd guess the transmission of the card data from the table to the servers for
the broadcast wasn't secure. Either because someone involved set it up that
way on purpose to cheat, or because they had a 'password123' sort of password
on it without thinking.

------
grizzles
Doug Polk did a funnny YT takedown of this story a few days ago.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA)

He shows a clip with Mike's brother talking about how Mike will do anything he
can to angle shoot (eg. cheat). Funny stuff.

------
m4tthumphrey
Looks like it's been figured out [0].

[0]
[https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/11798924471424491...](https://mobile.twitter.com/vdthemyk/status/1179892447142449153?s=09)

------
Animats
_While his neighbors keep their phones on the table, he always keeps his phone
on his chair between his legs, with his left hand holding it in place beneath
the table._

That casino allows phones at a high-stakes poker table? Duh.

~~~
cududa
I mean last time I was in Vegas was 2013 and couldn’t use my phone playing
black jack

------
sireat
There are way too many red flags here(only playing superhumanly at the RFID
games, in fact not playing elsewhere,etc).

There are some similarities to chess cheating here.

There were defenders to the infamous Borislav Ivanov too
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borislav_Ivanov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borislav_Ivanov))
even though all decent chess players could tell he was cheating.

In the Borislav's case the cheating method was not found although many suspect
it was a vibrating smartphone in his shoes.

Of course there are differences between poker and chess cheating as well.

Pure poker computer without the extra information would not be that much of a
help to a good player.

What is similar is that both of these players make superhuman moves
consistently.

Less greedier cheaters would not be caught so easily.

Like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igors_Rausis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igors_Rausis)
it was very suspicious (mostly because of his age) but until the smoking gun
in the toilet it was still somewhat plausible that he was not cheating.

------
rbrbr
Don’t read the article, it lacks any factual evidence. It’s like a book
without an end, where the murder hasn’t been found yet (if there was any).

~~~
pfortuny
No but it does point out clues: word hay AND phone under the table or not
showing. Left hand not visible.

I would not let any student of mine do any of those things in an exam.

------
todd8
I don't believe in ESP, but I know others that do. I have pointed out to some
friends that Las Vegas wouldn't exist as it does if there were people that
really had ESP. They could use telekinesis to control the outcome of games or
they could use clairvoyance and precognition to predict what was going to
happen or they could use telepathy to read others cards. If ESP existed in a
group of people I believe that many would reside in Vegas living off their
abilities and not performing tricks for gulible researchers.

The fact that Postle doesn't cash in on this remarkable ability by playing in
higher stake games makes his performance suspicious to me just as people that
claim ESP that don't bother to take the casinos for millions makes he
skeptical of their claims.

------
anxman
I think his "hack" is something far simpler than having a co-conspirator. As
he helped setup the live streaming system, he also installed a piece of
software that nicely calculates what to do at every step and simply sends him
his own percentage calculation. This is far more difficult to detect and would
require reverse engineering the entire system end to end to find the culprit.
It could be anything from a backdoor in the RFID system to an AI that reads
the video stream when it gets sent into OBS. There are tons of vectors that
could easily be setup. I very much hope that the resolution here isn't just a
Civil penalty but that the FBI gets involved and he goes to jail.

~~~
jessaustin
The FBI does sometimes take an interest in massive ongoing fraud...

------
TheRealPomax
Can someone give the tl;dr on whether it was actually proven? I tried to read
the article but it's paragraph after paragraph of "As I enjoyed my chocolate
cake on a patio at a Parision bistro, the sun pleasantly warming the table and
people going about their business unaware of the wrongs of the world, my
thoughts turned to the prime numbers and how they related to music" and almost
none of it has any real information.

~~~
bonestamp2
No, it has not been proven. All of the evidence (like his impossible winning
statistics) lean toward cheating, but there's no smoking gun at this time.

------
tempsy
So what is the consensus? He has an accomplice who is watching the stream and
texting info? Does the stream show the players' cards (never seen it)?

~~~
socialist_coder
Read the article dude, it explains it

~~~
tempsy
I did read it. It doesn't actually confirm anything.

~~~
dugditches
>He has an accomplice who is watching the stream and texting info? Does the
stream show the players' cards (never seen it)?

From the 4th sentence of the article:

>and the game was broadcast on a half-hour delay so that viewers couldn’t
relay information from the broadcast to the players during the hands

~~~
bloody-crow
It's entirely possible that as a former employee he has access to the system
that is responsible for introducing the streaming delay and gets a real-time
feed on his phone or some other wearable device.

------
abductee_hg
well, I think this whole thing is going a bit out of proportion. what do we
have so far?

\- a guy is doing something highly unlikely(not impossible, just unlikely)

\- lots of speculation

\- the whole internet seems to be out to get him.

In 2009 German speed skater Claudia Pechstein was banned for 2 years from the
sport based on irregular levels of reticulocytes in her blood. Nobody could
prove that she was doping, however this was the first case of a ban based on
circumstantial evidence alone; no forbidden substances were ever found during
her repeated tests. Later it turend out that she had a rare genetic disorder
called Hereditary spherocytosis. While the court-stuff is still ongoing,
science papers have been written, and the IOC has refined the test. still she
lost 2 years at the top of her game.

I must admit that figuring out this riddle is rather tantalizing, I have been
nerd-sniped by good riddles in the past, however my Cpt. Picard-sense is
tingeling. let's keep the pitchforks at bay, shall we?

------
anonu
What is a plausible technical explanation for how he is cheating?

A phone in between your legs, though suspicious, is not enough evidence.

And who thought it was a good idea to put RFID in playing cards?

~~~
sbarre
Simplest explanation would be an inside job.

The article says he worked for the casino as a consultant at some point in the
past.

So he has a connection that works on the livestream production that has access
to the RFID-provided hole card information in real-time (perhaps through a
software backdoor?)

Then he has some kind of device attached somewhere on his body that receives
some signal that tells him what other players have, sent to him by the insider
setup.

This could be a BLE device connected to his phone that vibrates morse code or
some other signal, etc..

------
bonestamp2
I assume all this heat will bring on an actual law enforcement investigation?
I mean, that has to be some serious fraud if he's actually cheating?

------
abstract7
The only thing this circumstanial evidence justifies is an investigation. The
author is stating he's a cheater like a matter of fact.

~~~
jessaustin
If he weren't cheating, he would be happy to play poker in literally any other
venue besides this one particular streaming program for which he personally
set up the RFID. He would win in those other venues in similar dominant
fashion, and we'd all hail him as a great poker player and not at all a
cheater.

He hasn't done that.

------
arctangent
While I recognise the valid points made elsewhere in this discussion about
this guy’s luck and/or cheating, I can’t help wonder about how we would react
differently to an AI “oracle” that gave useful solutions to problems we can’t
/couldn’t solve. Where is the boundary between experiential evidence and
statistical “proof”?

~~~
beart
I'm not sure I fully understand your comment but I certainly wouldn't wager my
money playing poker against the system you describe.

------
ivanb
So what's the problem here? Just check his magic hat and sue him to hell.

------
haolez
Should be easy to disrupt his numbers: play against him with your cards always
turned down. Do no look at them :)

------
monkeydreams
=w2hhjjjg34tg

------
miles_matthias
TLDR: a poker player has an unusually high win rate, says he’s not cheating,
online sleuths are trying to find cheating evidence. No concrete conclusion.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Take a look at other comments in this thread - I don't see how it could _not_
be cheating.

~~~
miles_matthias
I didn’t say he is or isn’t. Just that no concrete conclusion has happened -
the casino hasn’t agreed that he was cheating and kicked him out. He still
seems to be participating and claiming innocence.

------
vast
Sorry I've just watched a random show with Mike Apostle on yt and I have to
say - by this small sample - bullshit. Assuming he cheats, I don't see how. He
played dominating hands with very classic conservative playstyle, not
unnecessarily asking for value. He made risky pre flop all ins. He bluffed
loosing hands. All sort of stuff that happens in an average poker game. Not
sure why I even watched him playing considering the awful article.

~~~
jessaustin
Focusing on the wrong things is a great way to lose lots of money in poker,
and in life.

~~~
vast
Thanks for the help mate. I will now focus on the right things.

------
Mikeb85
Live higher-stakes but non-professional players have major tells. They're good
enough to play good hands and know the odds, but not good enough to bluff,
make hero calls or folds.

I used to play 10/20 and 25/50 PLO, and while the game is different, the
pattern described is pretty typical. Big multiway pots and speculative hands
are the rule, so if a draw completes and there's 4 players in the hand,
someone has it.

This doesn't sound like cheating, just a typical higher stakes game but on TV.

~~~
umeet
This is one of the worst comments I have seen on HN. I don't think you
actually checked any evidence before commenting.

I have played poker professionally for more than 10 years and I am 100% sure
he was cheating.

It's not that he is playing well and making good reads. Actually often he
plays like shit but happens to make some correct decisions postflop. Decicions
that in long run would be really bad but in those cases were perfect. One nice
example is where he went allin preflop with 45o against two players who both
had AK.

Please check some of the streams and come back here to comment. You can start
from Doug Polk videos. If you don't see that he is cheating then you are not a
winning player and probably never have been.

~~~
Mikeb85
I haven't checked out any of those vids. Maybe it is obvious cheating, maybe
he's a fish on a heater, but until someone has actual proof he's cheated, I'm
not about mob justice.

