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
I believe this observation doesn't make cheating less likely.
If you're bad enough to play like that without cheating, you're bad enough to cheat like that.