lol, thanks for your permission bud

The most egregious example of Martin ‘marking’/digging his nails into cards that I saw was when he had 93o and folded preflop to Brewer’s open at the final table.

That suggests, to me, that it’s most likely a random digging opposed to marking/cheating.

Unless he’s such a savant that he has unique nail markings for all 52 cards

Nah, it's standard - all the top card markers know the actual cards they have to mark... it's to stop anyone bluffing them with 9 high like a boss

Should I be allowed to pretend to mark cards as much as I want? When you examine the cards, there will be no markings, so therefore it couldn't possibly be cheating.

People are suggesting there are two moments from 10 hours of live coverage that they deem to look like marking cards

But it you watched any one of the people on the final table over the full 10 hours they will do weird movements/looks/etc at least once of twice over 10 hours

The idea he was pretending to mark cards is just a modern invention, once it became obvious he hadn't marked any cards.

Now you are taking that and making it sound like he was pretending and pretending/doing it all the time. Hmm.

This is a desperate attempt to muddy the waters...

You can read back to the start of the thread where people have said the same from the beginning, myself included. "Modern invention" means nothing in this context. I think you mean "recent development", which would be false.

Yes, obviously. Also obvious: the floor should be allowed to stop you from doing this if you cause them genuine concern.

But until the floor forces me to stop, any advantage I gain by doing it is fine by you? What if the guy folds because he's worried I know his cards? Also the players haven't all seen the closeup video of clearly digging into cards, then the example of him standing and leaning 45deg to the guy seated right beside him, and him joking about there being a mark on the card. So they don't realize they should have called the floor sooner.

I don’t know, probably not, but what I do know is that cheating and bad table behavior, whether pretending to mark cards or otherwise being an ass, are two very different things. And what really muddied things, imo, is Robl and Smith coming out and saying “guy is unpleasant to play with…oh AND >> major cheating accusation.” If you’re gonna accuse someone of something, you need to be clear about what that is, otherwise it just comes across petty. It feels like these pros’ frustrations with Martin had been brewing for a while and all just kind of came out in a deluge of different accusations.
BTW, does anyone know the status of the investigation? Haven’t seen updates posted here and don’t use twitter

Is Martin actually sponsored?? By whom?? WHY??

The only product I could imagine him inspiring people to buy is noise cancelling headphones.

Martin Ka-Braille.

a lot of first level thinking in this thread like he is 'marking'/digging his nail into cards = he is cheating. context like that it is a 9 and a 3 is irrelevant or why he is doing it in a way that it is hard not to notice it. i see this with specialists at work all the time, they see a datapoint and go with it, no matter the context and don't stop to consider how reasonable it is

Welcome to poker, glhf

Quoted for cleverness.

Cheers, bud. But you wouldn't say that if you saw me play!

Huh?!?!?!

I have played thousands of hours of poker with tens of thousands of people, none of whom handled cards such that they were "randomly digging nails into cards".

That is not a normal poker behavior. Not even a rare poker behavior. No human being does that "randomly".

It is strange to see the pretzels people twist themselves into in this thread.

There are absolutely zero circumstances where as a poker player it is ok to dig your nail into a card hard enough to leave a mark. None.

There is literally no rational reason for doing so. It doesn't matter if you are cheating or trolling people pretending to cheat.

It amazes me that there are somehow, someway people here will see someone digging their nail into cards hard enough to leave a mark is somehow acceptable.

Do they actually believe the words coming out of their own mouths or are they arguing just to argue.

But "other people made weird movements too" lol. These excuses are absolutely hilarious.

and it is a strange reply to a post not not mentioning anything about if it is acceptable or not to dig nails into cards. there are probably better posts in the thread to quote for this

Only Kabrhel knows it's 93. Everybody else at the table just sees him doing it. It's like saying that guy held up a liquor store but come on man, the gun had no bullets.

Yes I understand you lose some EV to cheaters in poker. That's why when someone is caught either "cheating" or "repeatedly creating an unfair advantage for themselves by their own fault" or whatever you want to call it, they should be banned to make the game more fair.

If it's on stream won't everyone know he had 93 a few minutes laters?

But in any case is sounds like you are saying he is deliberately trying to make people think he's marking cards without actually marking them? Which while it shouldn't be allowed, isn't cheating.

Has it been confirmed that he did leave a mark?

For the question of banning him, I don't think it matters. He's creating a situation where other players have to worry about game integrity, as part of an overall pattern of behavior that is detrimental to the game.

For solving the mystery, was he actually cheating or not, there just isn't enough info. Though, if he were cheating, brazenly marking the 93 or pretending to brazenly mark the 93 and not doing it would both serve the same function of creating noise so it was hard to figure out what was really happening.