He can't. It's a 1/3 game.

If he cheats in a higher limit game, it has to be one with a stream and where there are security breaches in the stream. And he's going to face better players who are (1) more likely to detect his cheating and (2) more likely to play better against him, even if they don't suspect cheating, just from observing tells about his bet sizing in different situations.

Now, since he is limited to low stakes and streamed poker (a few hours a few times a week), the only way he can make an hourly rate that allows him to pay off co-conspirators and make reasonable money is to exploit every opportunity, including the stuff that gives him away as a cheater. That also allows him to outrun variance quicker- the more you lower your winrate, the greater your risk of actually losing significant sums if you hit some runbad.

I am never going to accuse any specific player of cheating without evidence. As far as I am concerned, everyone really is innocent until proven guilty.

Without in any way making such accusations though, I would certainly recommend that people scrutinize all poker streams. If this could be done at Stones, that means it's possible it could have been done elsewhere. And it could be done by a player better at covering his or her tracks than Postle. People should certainly have second thoughts about playing in live streamed games until we find out exactly what happened here and how it can be prevented in the future.

One thing to remember is that no case is perfect. It's entirely possible that while MP has spewed plenty of BS in his defense, that he isn't wrong about the inaccuracies of card graphics. It certainly doesn't seem like Stones' system was completely accurate, and it's possible that, while he WAS cheating, that there are innocent explanations for a handful of hands because of incorrect graphics.

So, to quote Oliver Wendall Douglas, "You're saying there's a chance ?"

Not really.

I am saying that it's possible for two things to be true at once:

1. He cheated, big time.
2. On a few hands, graphics errors that were not his responsibility made him look worse than he was.

Give up on the keys already. They have nothing to do with his cheating. This thread grows so fast, this is probably 3 pages ago, but c'mon.

Here are my thoughts as a lawyer/poker player on the Mike Postle lawsuit. My aim was to to keep it accessible and give people an idea of what to expect. If you have any questions leave a comment on the video (or ITT although good chance I would miss it here) and maybe I'll make a Pt. 2.

The reality is that scrutinizing poker streams does very little to nothing at all. A player doesn't have to be good at covering their tracks they just don't have to play like an idiot. You see the mountain of evidence that is needed against Postle to make these accusations even when he deviated almost as far as humanly possible to win all the money and made it as obvious as hell.

Give a good player the same advantage in a higher stakes game and you have .001% chance of catching them.

I don't know why it is such a big deal to have the commentators on a delay and have the stream encoded prior to that delay and that solves all the issues. It is going to be far too hard to regulate and have trust in live streams going forward.

This may be the only case, but it does raise questions not just about live streams, but televised poker in general.

so, do you guys think Mike will confess and maybe rat on some other players?

Good job. With respect to damages, I'll just add that it sounds like they want them divided proportionally, see complaint at 25, 31, 32, among the plaintiffs for each minute they spent playing on the stream ("pari passu").

Agree this will take a long time to litigate, even longer if criminal charges are filed in the meantime which could delay/stay the civil suit.

What was the hand you lost against him? Was it pre- or post-CTO?

The post I was responding to was someone wondering how hard it would be to detect someone who was more discrete, in which case the winrate would not fall that far outside of what could reasonably be expected by a hot run.


FWIW I don’t think it’s particularly likely he’s cheating but the parallels are enough to arouse suspicion. He’s a notoriously loose crusher - far looser than the vast majority of winning players who’s known for making soul reads. If I was a regulator and appropriately incentivized to catch people cheating I would definitely want to have a sneak peak into all access points of the hole card data to see if the info was being misused. Which is really what is needed. Perhaps also a snitch policy that rewards people for outing co conspirators or providing info that leads to people being caught.

Agreed, I was curious as to what mike postles true win-rate was, people were saying that it is irrelevant and it does not matter if it's 900bb/100 or 300bb/100. My point was that it's important to understand all the facts, and if his true win-rate is not 900bb/100 that's is something we should figure out. BuT wE kNoW hEs AlReAdY gUiLTy

Nice video man, it explains everything clearly and in simple terms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQujzYc-lrk
20/07/2019

https://youtu.be/uQujzYc-lrk?t=1960
Starting off with a human river call.

https://youtu.be/uQujzYc-lrk?t=5076
Mike getting snap rekt on the river again.

https://youtu.be/uQujzYc-lrk?t=9360
And getting again called bluffing 3 streets.

No god at this table here, only a solid player playing against a lot of weak players here.
JFK was down on the floor. The phone seems to be in Mike's lap, but i'd say here was no obvious **** going on.

...you picked three terrible examples to illustrate your point.

The first is a hand in which he had to call a $100 river bet to a set because a fold would be far too suspicious, especially given the relative insignificance of the pot size.

The second and third hands illustrate the ONLY way to beat someone like Postle who is being fed information about the opponent's holdings--simply do not fold when you have a weak hand and are being pressured. Someone who is superusing has the ability to do many things at the table, but guaranteeing an opponent will fold is not one of them.

Show me ONE example of Postle raising into the nuts (or the second/third nuts) on the river. Just one. In 60+ sessions, this should not be very hard to do.

At this point, the question is not if he is guilty, but who else was in on this.

Joey is awesome, 100%. The thing is, he has a platform, and years of public credibility. So when he highlights issues, people listen.

If you want to talk about someone doing this single handedly, the obvious choice is Veronica Brill - a complete boss and hero. She followed her conviction without any platform, against a huge amount of pushback from Stones - which also included personal attacks on her intelligence and poker ability.

The fact that she stayed the course is a total endboss move. Mad props to Veronica!

One thing I think a competent defense might point out is that a winrate in a game like this is an artificial construct.

If I told you "I make 9bb an hour at 1-3 at my local cardroom", you'd basically imagine a game with a $1 small blind, a $3 big blind, and usually a whole bunch of limpers with bad hands. Typical low stakes live game.

But that's not this game at all. Most hands were straddled, most hands were opened for a raise, and many hands were 3-bet light. All of that means that the game plays far far bigger than typical 1-3. And that makes far bigger winrates possible.

(Bear in mind, I don't think it makes Postle's winrate possible, especially given his style of play. But people are saying things like "he made $300,000 in a 1-3 game" without regard for the fact that this was actually a far higher stakes game than typical 1-3.)

Proving Mike Postles Guilt In Two Sessions.

I decided to go through two of Mikes cheating sessions and record my findings. I understand there are a lot of people in here that are not poker players so im going to try my best to explain how this works in the easiest way I can think of.

I went through each hand individually to make sure I accounted for any bomb pots or straddles.


Harlan and Victims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AADIsPTsxc
Jan15th 2019




Harlan & Victims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIRIOwcB2CA
Mar 9 2019



Total Hands Recorded: 174
Total Profit: 1653.5bb
bb/100 = 950bb/100

Standard Deviation:
In poker we know that standard deviation increases or decreases depending on how many players are seated at the table. This Is because more opponents means you have to play tighter ranges on average pre flop in order to maintain your edge, thus decreasing your overall variance. Knowing this we can safely assume that the highest std dev players will be found in heads up(1v1) poker this is where the swings are at its peak. After doing some research I decided to list the average std deviations for each table type below to give people an idea of whats realistic. Data is based on winning players, numbers may vary slightly.

9 max: 80-110bb/100
6 max: 90-120bb/100
Headsup: 110-150 (https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/5...g-hem-1153499/)

Given these numbers I decided to give Mike a std dev of 150 to increase his variance as much as realistically possible, thus increasing his chance at hitting a massive heater. Keep in mind Mikes sessions are usually played with a full table so his true std dev should be much lower than this. Again, I tried my best to be as lenient as possible with these numbers.

Win Rates:
The average live cash game crusher can probably beat the game for 20bb/100(give or take a few bb) if they are good enough and this is considered a very high win rate. I decided to give Mike a Win Rate of 3x that at 60bb/100 for the hell of it. Now with all that said, assuming Mike is the best player in the world by far and he can actually sustain a win rate of 60bb/100, lets calculate his odds of hitting a heater this hot(950bb/100) in 174 hands(two full sessions)

https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/



After running the simulation we come to the conclusion that it is in fact Mathematically Impossible for anybody to hit these sorts of heaters, even with numbers in his favour.

Some Highlights from the hands above:
https://youtu.be/-AADIsPTsxc?t=12001
https://youtu.be/-AADIsPTsxc?t=15501
https://youtu.be/-AADIsPTsxc?t=15183

Very well done. I found the the parts on the RICO claim, damages, and what will be happening next to be especially informative. I would like to see updates as the case proceeds as you suggested.

I understand what you are actually saying, but I don't think you should use this terminology (or at least you should never use it in a court proceeding).

All of the statistics that are brought to bear on Postle's winrate are probabilistic. Now, some of them have absolutely fantastic probabilities, billions or trillions or quadrillions to one.

But they are still probabilistic. Is it "mathematically impossible" to flip an unloaded coin 70 times in a row and have it come up "heads" all 70 times? That isn't the terminology I would use. I would say something closer to "the probability is so miniscule that the only reasonable conclusion if it happened was that the coin was loaded". But there's nothing in the universe that guarantees that incredibly improbable statistical events can never happen. "Impossible" is just not the word to use here.

I appreciate your work but your sample size and/or STD deviations are far too low. In live poker it is absolutely possible for a player who isn't cheating to win 1600bb in 175 hands. I've done it twice over a 5000 hour stretch of live play. And I am no where near a 20bb/hr crusher.

Yea decent effort I guess Xenicide but your assumptions are ridiculously off. Your logic is sound, but your inputs are just potato. Think about it, mathematically impossible to win 16 buyins in 170 hands? I mean... No.

It is mathematically impossible if you use normal standard deviations for like, a regular aggressive 200bb deep game. Wild live games are not that.

And to be more technical with my critique: standard deviation is not an effect of playing fullring or HU or 6max or even what game you're playing (though standard deviation usually changes depending on those variables). Standard deviation is a statistical concept of how much from the mean that the observations swing: in poker a high standard deviation is the result of winning or losing a lot of very big pots. Which Postle does. Which would put his standard deviation a lot higher than 150bb/100.

I guess you do prove that it is impossible to have a 1600bb upswing in 170 hands off of a 150bb/100 standard deviation. Which it is. But the hand sample you used to reach that conclusion is hell of a lot swingier than 150bb/100 hands on average (remember, the swing he had is 1600bb/170hands. Of course a 1600bb/170 swing is incompatible with 150bb/100 assumption almost no matter what winrate you plug in)

Just to confirm explicitly, when you say you accounted for straddles, that means you considered the straddle the BB for that hand. So a win of $30 would be 6bb with the a $5 straddle?


This is very interesting data, and exactly what we need to see more of ITT to figure this out.

What's the standard deviation of the sample?

(Can't copy the data so I'm not doing it myself.)