He made folds no pro could rationally make. Some stacks make your hand stronger too. But no, he just always was right. He wasn't even doing anything except calling huge or folding.

Thanks for digging that out. The post before it explains why nothing happened very clearly, although that obviously wasn't #1PEN's intent...

He's in "God mode". He's not. It's because someone's standing behind him. He made $10K legit, but the other $10K had to be God Mode. How do I know? He's always switching. But I know.

There's a lifetime supply of magical thinking without a shred of actual evidence in that post.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here but if you watch the streams he does to more than calling huge and folding. He also overbets to push players off chops for example. He also isn't always in god mode but the point is that in among quite a lot of normal / reasonable plays he makes there are quite a lot of egregious ones.

You've made a similar claim a few pages back, but this makes no sense.

Who, specifically, is "they"? Obviously Veronica would be one. Who else?

When exactly did these people know that they were being cheated, and how long did they continue to play with Mike, despite knowing?

Veronica had the initial suspicions after announcing several streams and seeing hole cards, but still did not know for sure. It was only after she exposed this cheating on Twitter that it gained steam on the internet and several people started analyzing hands, and then shortly thereafter everyone pretty much knew he was cheating. I recall the Stones stream was shutdown pretty much right after this all broke.

You imply that several people ("they") knew for sure that he was cheating and continued to play with Postle at Stones for days or weeks on end despite knowing he was cheating, thus losing all credibility. This was not the case.

From the FAQ in post 1:

Q: Why is this blowing wide open just now this week?
A: A former employee and commentator of the stream, @Angry_Polak, took to twitter. @joeingram1 took her allegations seriously, as opposed to many others she had previously raised her suspicions to, and then the ball started rolling

From a Brill interview. Suspected six months before it hit the fan.

VB: It was in mid to late March. I think it was March 21 because I texted Bart [Hanson] the next day, which was March 22. I went back and looked at my texts. So, I reached out to Bart before I talked to Justin and I said, “I think there’s some issues. I think that Mike might be cheating. I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t figure out how he would be doing it even if he is.

I can't speak about the filing of a complaint, but I can vouch 100% for the fact that the GC conducted an investigation, including interviews of all the characters named in this thread and a few more that were never mentioned.

Alleged Poker Cheat Mike Postle Files New Motion in Bid to Avoid Involuntary Bankruptcy

"Mike Postle was back in court this week, the alleged poker cheat filing another motion in an attempt to dismiss an involuntary bankruptcy petition that could see him forced to liquidate assets to pay court judgments won by Veronica Brill and Todd Witteles.

Postle owes $55,000 in two almost judgments after he dropped his $330million defamation lawsuits against Brill and Witteles, the money awarded after they filed anti-SLAPP motions.

Postle failed in his attempt to prove his lawsuit wasn’t frivolous, but has so far refused to stump up the money he owes, which has led Brill and Witteles to seek Postle’s involuntary bankruptcy.

Should the involuntary bankruptcy be invoked, it would force a court-appointed solution to his debts, likely including the liquidation of any assets Postle might hold, such as his home.

However, Postle claims that the involuntary bankruptcy process was “filed punitively” by Brill’s lawyer, Marc Randazza, although it was Witteles’ lawyer, Eric Bensamochan, who actually filed the suit."

“During the dates where she claimed that I cheated, my win rate across all hands played was a respectable 79%. However, Ms. Brill and supporters of her claim cherry-picked hands, rejected dozens of hands where I had lost and instead fabricated a 94% win rate.”

https://www.pokertube.com/article/al...ary-bankruptcy

This is goofy. Anyone reviewing the play with moderate to expert knowledge of the game of holdem can see that he does things that are not possible to do without knowledge of his opponents cards. The argument that "you think I cheated some of the time but other times you think I played normally?" is not an argument. It is exactly what he is being accused of.

The attorneys/judges demanding definitive proof is goofy because we already have it, but they don't possess the knowledge of the game to understand that. If they aren't able to see that there is clear evidence of cheating, then they don't possess the prerequisite knowledge of the game to make a judgement in this matter. "Explain this to me in terms that I can understand" is not a good strategy when the matter at hand is too complex for a layman to have explained to them. Do they not defer to medical experts and scientists in cases? Here they should have the sense to do the same, but since gambling is a grey-area and is dominated by casino money/lobbying there is no way to approach this subject. Bringing clear evidence to a person who can't understand it and so is unwilling to believe it is basically what the internet has devolved into, so this shouldn't be surprising, but it's ridiculous.

The concept of cheating includes the answer. You cannot detect clear patterns and evidence as a layperson because that is the intent. Cheating at a game is intended not to be noticed. The poker community should be behind this, because if they hammer away and are able to get somewhere this could be a landmark case that would keep future cheaters from feeling safe in their methods.

It is obvious that Postle cheated, and there is video evidence. The goalposts are being moved(I lost some hands though/I didn't seem to know my opponents cards all the time) and that is the only reason Postle is able to drag this out. Those points are completely moot. If you are caught stealing from your job, do you get to point out the rest of the days where you were not caught? Does video of you putting money into the register cancel out the day you were caught stealing? These are foolish analogies but it is frustrating to see a legal system insisting on authority in these matters when they aren't educated enough/the system is too antequated to properly rule on them.

LOL! He still doesn't get it. This guy is thick. His win rates and cheating have nothing to do with the lawsuit Ms. Brill won. She won the lawsuit because he filed a case that impeded Ms. Brill's first amended rights, and dismissed it voluntarily, thus proving to the court it was frivolous and entitling Ms. Brill's attorneys' to recover attorney's fees.

No. As discussed at length in the last several pages, the reason he will get away with it is because a California law from the 1850s bars the courts from adjudicating gambling debts, and because no DA would file a criminal case for various reasons also discussed. That's it.

This example has nothing to do with an 1850s California law about courts and gambling debts, so any civil litigation would bear no similarity whatsoever to the short-lived civil case involving Postle.

I'll leave it to experts to speculate on whether criminal charges would be pursued in this kind of situation.

Indeed, but the law is the law. Not much you can do about it if someone cheats you at poker in California, apparently.

That is quite an impressive own goal. At least he's as bad at finding good legal advice as he is at ethics or at concealing his misdeeds.

I feel like someone somewhere must have already Photoshopped a pic of Dealer/Judge Mesiwala pushing Postle's $55,000 stack to Witteles and Brill.

This information(thank you for rehashing it though) is why I wrote the post in the first place. The law needs to be updated, and while there is a clear legal barrier, it would be prudent for the poker community to not drop this one. "There's nothing we can do" paints the picture of you as living within some ordained society that needn't evolve over time. The hard part is always updating antiquated systems but it is necessary and will be even more so in the future if Postle's situation is allowed to slide past. The whole "we don't have to hear this complaint because (insert 1850s law)" is lazy, and the "if we hear this complaint then we would get flooded with a ton of frivolous and unsolvable claims" is not a valid excuse but a clear indication that new clear legislation needs to be written. It generally isn't without a metric ton of pushback against people refusing to do their jobs based on legal precedent, so it's even more important to drop anchor here. It would be an exhaustingly fruitless process, yet seems necessary.

You do know you are going to have to sit in the front of the bus of every state to accomplish this goal? Have fun. Good luck.

The law won't change. Indian casinos are super powerful lobbyists in state legislature, especially because they are in lightly populated area where their money goes along way.

Their lobby would never let a law be passed that makes casinos liable for gamblers.

Poker players have no lobby. Someone has to initiate a change and overcome powerful forces, which won't happen.

Only chance would be if California Supreme Court struck down the law, but super long shot at best, will take years if not decade, would take a great case on the facts (clear injustice and not 5 live streamed games over $200k), and hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars.

It's been two years - can anyone link to anything related to this investigation or its outcome?

IF you are correct, given the time elapsed it seems certain the outcome of the investigation was favorable for both Postle and Stones.

Can we bury it? Brill's call-in has 7 viewers.

She could not fill one table.

In every US state the judiciary is separate from the legislative process.

It's California so you can probably get enough petition signers for a ballot initiative to repeal the law in, like, an hour at the Bicycle or Commerce. Seriously, that might be fruitful.

What's not fruitful is ranting about how the courts are "refusing to do their jobs based on legal precedent." As I understand it this isn't even about legal precedent; the courts are following the clear text of the law, which is supposed to be their job.

95% of the time California's very loose initiative process seems like lunacy. This might be the 5% where it makes sense. Here's the process, if anyone's curious: https://oag.ca.gov/initiatives

(I am not a CA resident.)

no justice atm but karma will bite him down the road

Except that karma doesn't exist.

it does

Karma does exist and Postle could get an enforced bankruptcy to pay lawyers fees so that kind of counts

How is ol' Mikey doing? How's his health?

Does he have any form of employment? How's the cash grinding going lately?

I would imagine he is quite exhausted. The court case and defense of himself publicly have avoided mammoth penalties and criminal charges but they have dug him further into a corner that I doubt he ever expected to be in. At work we wear a mask, a work version of ourselves. We expect to only have to wear it at work. For Postle now though, he can only really be honest and at ease at home away from internet/his phone, and the random attacks and accusations can come at any moment via those mediums. Telling a lie until it almost becomes a reflexive thing can build it as a truth in your mind, but it is still exhausting to be defensive all the time, to be some version of yourself that impulsively remembers the story you've decided to foolishly try to impose against reality.

Postle's health is going to suffer from the stress, and the rapid 180 from "crushing a live game and getting attention" to "being ostracized by all of the internet that remotely cares about poker" is a fast flip. "No no no no no" is what we say as things slip through our hands and Postle has had two years of this. The bankruptcy judgement might be the first time he can actually start to move forward in some other direction with his life.

With social media being such a messy spider always weaving ppl to their past, I would doubt he is able to get much income at this point unless it is through a personal friend's network or a favor granted during a tough time by someone unfamiliar with the situation but who knows Postle a long time. This sounds like something perhaps he shouldn't be afforded but it puts him in an even smaller box.

Even if he's just looking to get away with it and feels no remorse, he still has a telltale heart situation on his hands. Living a complete lie as a truth is possible, but it erodes your ability to make decisions that aren't selfish. People who do this tend to back themselves into more and more corners and burn more and more relationships. Since no one is really evil or iron-hearted though, it is more likely that he will feel guilt at some point in the future which will be a tough point for him. Will he admit the things he did and try to become a better person, or will he cling to resentment that the great idea he had was ruined?

Either way, dude did the wrong thing, but dude needs some guidance or he's just going to go down a worse path.

What states allow their courts to be used to resolve gambling transactions?