Quote:
Originally Posted by huadpe
Question for Lawdude:
Could the damages exceed Postle's winnings by a good amount? I could see a court finding every single hand he won on stream to be fraudulent and require him to repay the winnings. That is, you would go through the streams and every pot that was scooped to him is damages to all the other players in the amount they put in the pot.
Is that implausible?
Would there need to be an offset for hands he lost/folded?
The problem is that the plaintiffs are not out of pocket for amounts that Postle would have won anyway. For instance, sometimes he was dealt the best hand, would have obviously played it, and would have obviously won. Or maybe Postle was in a hand where he had an obvious reasonable bluff spot and would have bluffed anyway.
So not every hand is fraudulent. And even on hands that are fraudulent, the players wouldn't necessarily have received all the money Postle put into those pots. For instance, there are hands where Postle had the best hand but wouldn't have checked the river to induce a bluff. So in that situation, perhaps only the river bet is money the person would have lost.
It's a gigantic can of worms. And it would require expert testimony, and in some sense the amount people really would have won/lost if Postle played honestly is unknowable.
The $250,000 is basically the only plausible approach to damages here. Anything else gets you down a very expensive rabbit hole in terms of legal fees and expert costs.