Justin or Mike (or anyone),

could you please explain the Martingale system as applied to poker?

Some of the detractors are trying to strawman by keeping attention on stuff like the exact $ amounts won and what not.

Ok let's say all the stack info is way off. and he only won like a third of what's been reported.

My issue is that nobody can make the exact right decision in insane spots that many times in a row without a single error.

The man played like he knew his opponents cards. That's the only model that align/explains with how he played.

I'm guessing they mean that in theory, atc can win eventually.

So as long as you keep covering everyone at the table you will eventually get their stack. So play crazy and as long as no one leaves the table and you have infinite money I guess you will come out ahead? That's my guess anyways.

Yeah that's the gist of it. Just keep buying in and covering the largest stack. That's probably what Justin meant when he said that. But obviously in practice that doesn't work.

There's another way to play the martingale in poker online. Which is to buy into a larger game once you bust. Bust at 25NL and buy into 50NL etc.

rumor has it he applied the martingale strategy

u lose one buy in, u buy in the double amount in the game.

you can also do the anti martingale, lose one buy in, buy in half.

To me it never worked and I tried enough let me tell you.

But the thing is, in order to have to apply this strategy you have to make a wrong decision and lose your stack.

That never happened. Except in like 2 instances where people made insane hero calls because he miscalculated that they wouldn't call with 3rd/4th pair or whatever.

So I don't buy the martingale argument even though it is stupid on it's own accord.

I was recently the recipient of three class-action lawsuits.

I received:

1. $6
2. $8
3. $84

I am also eligible for another class-action suit that has something to do with some of my data that was leaked somehow, somewhere or whatever, but I declined to even bother with it if the above three settlements are any indication of the payouts.

The $84 payout was a multi-million dollar lawsuit. (Actually they all were, but there were a lot fewer participants in the last one.)

In all cases the lawyers got rich.

If you look at his first post, from a few days ago, he has been playing online for the last 4 months.

The often-cited teacher's message to students is apt here:

what if someone bet enough to put Mike all-in on the flop? Mike knew the cards and knew his equity was near 70% - don't you think he would have called? and if he called and lost, would it have been a wrong decision?

I still think there was some trojan added to the server controlling the table that allowed Mike to see all cards real time via wi-fi to his phone. Having someone keying in everyone's cards somewhere would be problematic especially if they were an employee and working at the time.

Who said anything about someone keying in the cards? That’s not what people think the insider’s role was.

I agree with this. I listened to Veronica state that she believed JFK was the brains behind the operation and that he provided the information through his lapel mic (paraphrased) but it does not make sense to me that JFK would receive the info visually by watching the live stream, verbalized the info into the lapel mic and Postle would receive it visually. Too complicated a process when he could just share the screen data.

More likely that was a decoy.

"I know it's a brand new account that is very passionate about defending Mike so it'll be obvious that it's me unless I first post just once about something else to appear instead to just be another random guy"

This is the only other post from Paydat ... in a thread on ACR.

Where's the original Haseeb thread with that scandal? Haseeb making a name for himself in crypto now.

What do people feel the insider's role was?

I was under the impression many felt someone was actively involved with relaying information to Mike.

On the other hand, the people who did wrong didn't get to keep it.

The system stinks, but as it is and all else being equal I'd rather the lawyers have the money.

I don't know much about it specifically, but have some software background, and something like that should be easy to do automatically. It seems unlikely anyone was involved in relaying to him everyone's cards.

Paydat's only other post was attacking ACR for bots. Seems strange, and seems like Mike or someone working with Mike and Justin.

Easily worst take ever made on this forum.

I'm mostly interested in the psychology of all of this. How a person can rationalize cheating and shooting angles. As well as the difficulty many people have in accepting what appears to be so obvious.

At one time I was also curious as to why casinos, game runners, affiliates, and dealers are not interested in having open discussions about cheating. I've convinced myself that it is because they think it is bad for business. The only alternative i can come up with is that they are all shady and are willing to take advantage of customers whenever they can. Just don't want to go there.

But, back to your point. His initial post can explain some of his psychology. A person who thinks he has been cheated, or that cheating is widespread, could be more likely to use cheating as a way to survive in what they think is an unfair system.

His post to Veronica fits with this psychology as well. Talking about faith and God is interesting. If you set aside the God part, and just focus on faith, it is possible that he is attacking her based on her perceived (and ours as well) naivety and faith that the game is fair. Again, providing justification for his cheating.

To bring it back to God, for a second. A new Christian once said that he didn't need God to do good for people. He found that he needed God to not do bad things. Again, why some people like Mike are capable of making friends, being helpful, and possibly doing a lot of good for others at times in their lives and also be complete low lifes and hurt people deliberately at other times.

In Texas Mike and Justin would be strung up by now. Wait, nevermind. When Lawyer Tony did this to us in Austin we just cried to each other about it. At least y'all are knocking on his door with a stack of paper in hand.

The insider was thought to have set up the stream from the poker graphics software (Poker GFX) that reads and displays the cards from their RFID devices so that Mike could see it on his phone. The software is set up to easily do that, as Matt Berkey demonstrates below. As Matt mentions, the stream was supposedly known to be set up as a couple high-level people at Stones were able to view the live stream of the graphics, so the insider would just need to get the URL for the stream to Mike.



Further evidence of this is when we see Mike repeatedly re-scanning his cards and re-checking his phone when he's playing Omaha but the software is only relaying two cards because it's still set for Hold'em hands:



After they banned phones and he's listening through bone-conducting headphones in his hat, they still don't need an insider telling him the cards. The insider would still set up the stream, and one of Mike's friends (a non-employee, such as his brother) could be watching the stream on his phone somewhere, relaying what he sees to Mike through the headphones.

There still probably would have been times when the insider and Mike would need to communicate, like when there is a glitch or something, but it wouldn't be a constant communication on every hand.

And? WTF does one do with the other? Do you play on ACR? No? Then why does it matter?

Well said CactusJack.