I think zero chance Martin is cheating, he’s way too smart to even try it on the most surveilled, televised stage. My read is it’s nothing but a bunch of butthurt high-stakes regs who are socially ill-equipped to handle Martin’s outgoing persona and banter, so they are simply trying to expel him from “the community”. Bunch of loser crybabies if you ask me.

All of the scammers/cheaters still playing in live televised cash games and tournaments would disagree.

I think that is the point. All of these things we are accusing Martin of are not illegal, and warrent a response. However, where were the responses? Passive aggressive statements, telling the floor. That's what I hear was done.
The outcome of this is that the people we have put on the pedestal of poker are great poker players. And we have only seen them in their controlled environment of playing poker.
Martin exposed them to the wild, and they weren't prepared. When I was coming up in poker, and listening to some hyped up promos for tournaments poker is psychological warfare, and don't play the cards, play the man. This guy went to the big bad high rollers and beat them with some poker gorilla warfare . And they didn't like it.
They got beat, and they cried. Give them a participation trophy and put them back in their safe place in the Poker Go studio.

Kabrhel damaged his own reputation with his own actions. The most charitable thing anyone could say about Kabrhel is that he's so obnoxious that his opponents are trying to frame him for cheating just so they don't have to endure his presence any more.

The guy oozes nervous crook energy.

There are some angry, bitter people posting on this forum, who seem to have tremendous contempt for some successful high stakes pros, calling them losers and other pejoratives. Silly, because those pros they criticize have probably made exponentially more money at poker than the average internet critic. More often than not, this type of vitriolic criticism is a sign of low self esteem and narcissism, as people unsatisfied with their own circumstances, and lacking in self awareness and empathy, try to make themselves feel better by putting down others, often irrationally. This is a root of the toxicity inherent in internet forums, which turns off a lot of people. Most people who post here are cool, smart, and relatively well adjusted emotionally, but the ones with toxic anger and self esteem issues tend to suck up a lot of the good energy and take up a disproportionate share of space.

This place was always full of kooks but in my ~17 years here I've noticed a significant uptick in the number and confidence of basement-dwelling incels, who of course are in favour of people like Kahbrel.

I think there is some confusion with what the word empathy means.
To have empathy is to simply observe something, not to let that observation dictate your actions.

I did not see a lot of people attempting empathy for Martin's circumstances. Is strange behavior only had one explanation, he was cheating. That doesn't like there was a lot of empathy in those reactions.

Now that there is a non tin foil hat reason for his antic, are any of the overly empathetic people that called him a cheater retracting or apologizing for their statements?

I have not seen them. Maybe the reason there is such a balash to this group of people is because they were wrong, and they have a double standard.

See things from my point of view, but I am not going to show you the same respect is by definition hypocritical. And all people over time do not like a double standards or being expected to conduct ourselves by a double standard.

This is the best point made (37:55):



How so?

Right, carry-on with your mob-rules pitchfork vigilante witch hunt. No doubt you put your finger in the wind to make sure you were on the same side as the “pros who’ve made more money than you”.

Please, expand on people like Martin?

He post say that people don't have empathy for the high roller.
Where is the empathy for what might be setting off this large group of people?

I can appreciate what all of these people are saying. I even have empathy for there feelings. I don't however think that anything that was done to the was wrong or deserving of any further action than what was taken at the tournament. (If actionable evidence is presented that he is a cheater than that is a different story)

I have empathy for the elite high rollers, I simple don't agree. From my point of view this is a mob that has become a bully. And because of who the people were that spoke up we said **** empathy for Martin, let's get him.

The polarity of this discussion is fascinating.it seems like the mobs says We should all have empathy for the high roller and make the sacrifice to make them happy. Martin simply said **** your comfort and happiness. I am going to play my tournament in my way with in the rules, and I am going to challenge your boundaries while doing it.

It is simple your feelings are not more important than mine.

The poker players simple have more irrational people to rally behind them. To make their feelings seem more important

I don't think most of them are losers (seriously don't know how Dan Smith gets through a day in the real world though.)
But a great deal of them are complete narcissists and torture to watch play. Some like Bonomo are insufferable human beings and his high and mighty act is comical considering his cheating history during the heyday of online poker. Unfortunately he is also a great player.

A great deal of them have swaps with each other in the same small field events and are backed by the same people. To me that's pretty unethical.
I've never played staked or staked anyone- but i think it's shady as hell when people have pieces of each other in the same cash game for example.
It's one thing for someone to swap with a friend in something like the main event where you'll probably never be at the same table at all and have almost a 0 percent chance of being at the same table when they money matters. it's another entirely for people to do so in 50-100 person events when you'll be at the same final table as each other multiple times over the course of a few years.

Like I said Martin's behavior is extremely suspicious. Maybe he really was trolling who knows. But it's pretty gutlett that many players in this event

1)thought he was cheating
2)were too scared to confront him or tell the floor about it after the event
3)ran to twitter to post about him cheating after the event was over
4)in some cases lied about the constant deck changes which NEVER HAPPENED

I'm sure most of them make a good deal of money (largely through markup) but most aren't worth as much as people think.
I do think basically all of them are extremely hard working.

But overall the entire high roller scene is fake as hell.

ya we call them the air ballers

The people who defend martin and say he plays within the rules need to understand that if EVERYONE starts to act/play like that, poker would be an unplayable and dead game.

Yes he maybe not cheated and those highrollers act like an entitled bunch but the guy is still as intolerable as possible period.

Yes he maybe plays within the rules but he is about to cross the line all the time. And at some point this deserves a ban.

In the end its his own fault that now cheater stands next to his name. Play stupid games, win stupid prices.

if he cheated he should be arrested.

possible cheating aside - as for the bolded you're 100 percent correct. But that goes for a lot of other guys in these high rollers as well.

Yea haven't seen many people defending Martin without throwing in something along the lines of the high-stakes guys just not being socially equipped to handles Martins outgoing personality (lol).

Guys like Dan Smith do come across extremely fragile but who cares when virtually every other person (pro or rec) who has played with Martin has had the same negative opinion of playing with him. If your going to piss off a guy like Brandon Steven then ya its ban worthy if your not willing to clean up your act.

If everyone plays like that it won't be the exception, or if enough people or mad the a rule will be made.

Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Martin acted strange and some people called him a cheater
Dan Smith acted out and people called him a baby.

Saying "if everyone did it.." is an irrational statement. Could you play like that? Not to mention the argument against is action was "I would never act like..."

So are you really pulling out the mommy cards... if everyone jump off a bridge argument?

It is interesting how most people who are arguing the side of the high rollers dismiss the fact that they do things that are offensive to other people. What is the reason that when the play in the WSOP everyone need to have empathy for them, but they don't need to have empathy to anyone else?

Empathy is similar to respect. You have to give some to get some.

What was done to make this person mad?

You're suggesting that there be a no ******* rule? Only the people that you deem to be pleasant to play with should be allowed to play?


Small leap until we only the the players that we know can't beat us play.
Seems like people want to have a personality censorship rule.

I think your confusing high roller events with regular wsop event. A $250k buy in will not run without rec players. Their opinions matter more then the pros. Dan Smith cries about a lot of things so sure lets just ignore his opinion and Bonomos.

I'm not suggesting you simply ban the player based on a few people complaining, but if the majority of the field complains and specifically mention things like excessive tanking, standing up during the hand, etc and then Martin chooses to continue to do what he wants then yes it reaches a breaking point. Notice I'm not even bringing the possibly of marking cards into the discussion.

And fwiw, Doug and others have stated online games would build around Martin. I have no first hand information if that is true, but this certainly doesn't seem to be about pro players trying to get rid of a perceived threat.

Why should i care about the opinion of a martin gimmick account? But the name fits u well i respect that.

Borg who is a very good and well respected poster already said that im right. U could save urself that wall uf text.

Yes everyone is responsible for their own actions but there is also something called table etiquette and basic respect if u ever heard of that (u dont need to answer).

You shouldn't care what anyone things. That is the point. Hear different perspectives and create your own opinion.

Etiquette and respect are not rules. People violate Etiquette all of the time.

Phil Helmuth comes to mind.

Sharing a popular opinion doesn't mean you're right. See 2020 for a plethora of examples of that.

the take that made the most sense to me was a random lodge player that polk interviewed pretty early between "important" figures. his take was that martin was just a weird guy and somewhere in the outskirts of the spectrum and didn't think he was cheating or trying to act like he was cheating. his reasoning for this was that when people have a schtick they usually go for it in bursts, for 15 mins, 30 mins or whatever and then they reel in a bit before they go for it again since it is pretty energy draining to constantly keep it up. martin kept on going from start to finish no matter how long they played. gimme this lodge guy over any trained professionals opinion, it made sense to me.

Well said sir....well said

You sound fun to play with.

I have a lot of people that enjoy playing with me, dealers and floor people mostly enjoy me.

But there are many people that find me annoying and have asked the floor the make me leave.

I play poker to have fun. I have empathy for most everyone. A very low tolerance for double standards though

Yes and? Thats the same impression one gets when watching the hour with doug, no lodge guy needed. Guy is a sociopath and has no self awareness at all, he even said "he was never ever disrespectfull to others at a poker table" which is a complete ROFLMAO.

So in ur opinion we should give people who might be on the spectrum a free pass for every possible behaviour, is that correct?