This is super interesting, but honestly it was clear from the video immediately that it was sour grapes. Part of being a pro poker player is having an intuitive sense when someone is bluffing. The guy bluffed and was called on it. That he then came up with an elaborate accusation and even cornered her for the money is pretty crappy behavior. Even if she just got lucky with a jack high, it's not unheard of for people to shove in poker with absolutely nothing.
Now that this report came out, I'd say she has a clear avenue for a libel suit against him.
I've been following this case and I'm definitely on the no-cheating side, but it should be mentioned that what made this case weird and polarizing was that the employee of the production team was caught stealing $15k of her chips on the same day. So, you had two big coincidences, a possibility of somebody on the inside being crooked, the player returning the money, and this somewhat understandably caused a lot of conspiracy theories to emerge. It also emerged (noted in the report) that the production booth had live access to hole cards.
Also, note that shoving != calling, so it was definitely an unusual hand. And poker players are very wary of cheating - there was a famous case of Mike Postle in livestreamed games.
It's not enough to know that someone is bluffing; you actually have to have a better hand to win the pot when calling an all-in bet. Even if you were given the information "Adelstein does not have a pair" by an oracle, statistically, J4 is behind a randomly-chosen non-paired hand here.
This arguably makes cheating less likely. If someone in production knew both players’ hole cards, which was the theory, this would be a nonsensical place to cheat. It was still a coin flip to either lose everything or, best case scenario, win a hand with a remarkable call that was sure to draw scrutiny.
If they were that unbelievably reckless, this wouldn’t be the only hand they cheated in. Yet there weren’t other examples of notable calls or folds that indicated cheating.
The simplest explanation in my mind is that this rather inexperienced player made a very loose call and got lucky. I can’t rule out the possibility of cheating, but there’s not enough evidence to make it more than a conspiracy theory.
Yes, there were enough coincidences to at least make cheating a possibility, but without any credible evidence I don’t think the “100% guilty” people should be taken seriously.
Additionally to me it makes much more sense as a cheat than as a legitimate play.
Notice that people allegedly involved in the cheating aren't good poker players. And that as shown by some comments in this hn thread there are people who think that reasoning "I think he bluffs so I call" makes sense.
The whole evening she was setting it up taking how she is gonna read him and call his bluffs, etc. She was fishing for the spot like that. It can come once or twice during the evening or not at all. Of course it makes sense that she goes for it rather than waiting for a better spot that might never happen.
She could have got e.g. a binary signal that her hand is good and didn't bother to rethink if it makes poker sense or maybe she thought it did.
FWIW, after doing a quick scan through the forum post, I could be convinced that Robbi and RIP where using signals to coordinate hands. There did appear to be a fair bit of subtle communication between the two throughout the game.
Of course, if the only cheating they were doing was signaling between each other (i.e. no fancy electronic gadgets), then they would not have had an advantage on the J4 hand. So it is possible that that hand was just plain luck. But because the session was being recorded, and because they were signaling, they decided to give the money back on that hand to try and ward off any accusations.
You’re linking to the “report” by the accuser that consisted entirely of character attacks and borderline paranoid speculation. It contained none of the evidence he had promised.
Similarly, nothing we’ve said is any more than speculation. That’s fine, but that’s all this is.
Yes, he believed the covert cheating device was an industrial-strength vibrator powerful enough to visibly shake the chair she was sitting in. Because that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. Truly a brilliant theory by Doug.
You have to give the "lawnmower engine vibrator" hypothesis some credit for its sheer hilarity. Imagine Lew sitting there getting signals loud enough for the entire table to hear, see, and feel, like the water cup in Jurassic Park
You can't use the fact that she returned some of the money as an indication of cheating, because it doesn't make sense to ever return the money, even if you were cheating.
It does make sense if you have a guilty conscious and think you just got caught. Giving it back eliminates the financial gain. Now there’s much less of a crime since there was no profit.
There’s also motivation to give someone money if you were honest, like trying to make them happy or go away, but it’s an expensive way to accomplish that and probably less common.
The hand is relevant on the calling side. Poker doesn't work on the principle of "I called your bluff and so I win!". If you call a bluff with a worse hand, you still lose the pot.
If you call an "all in", you will have to beat the hand of your opponent. So the fact that she had a TERRIBLE hand is definitely relevant here. No sane person, let alone a PRO player, would call an all in with such an horrible hand as she had, since even if he was bluffing, a simple 22 pair would beat her nothing hand. She was cheating 100%, the fact that she returned the money and didn't call the theft of another 15k, from the guy that probably was her accomplice, is just the icing on the cake, it's the "ok whatever you guys want, just leave me alone and let's not talk about it anymore".
Now that this report came out, I'd say she has a clear avenue for a libel suit against him.