xjx388 listed 1:292 million chance of winning the lottery as proof that even long odds can happen since someone still wins the lottery.

The quoted probability of a false-positive DNA match against a suspect has been as low as 1:1 million in some criminal cases.

Turns out my analogy is even better than I first thought.

Btw, you didn't hear my analogy, you read it. That is unless you're blind and have an accessibility tool on your computer that reads onscreen text to you.

Any Postle sightings recently? What is this guy doing for income these days?

Would be extremely difficult to show his face at a live card room. But then again, Russ Hamilton, Full Tilt owners, etc have done it so not impossible for this to happen.

It would probably be good for the game, and the cardroom, however. I would bet a lot of people would like to play with him... trying to bluff him and show, call down light, etc

not even close. i'm a size 2 and she looks like a size 8

do better next time trolls

Just a hypothetical .... If Postle admitted guilt today (or next week, or next month, etc.) could the plantiffs who already settled, sue again?

And, couldn't he actually get with the plantiffs and ask for a % of their settlement with stones, in return for him admitting guilt?

Depends what he admitted too doing precisely, but for the cheating at poker thing, no. Read the decision. It was pretty clear that California law doesn't allow legal disputes over gambling ... somehow rake was exempt from that prohibition, so evidently they settled for some amount to avoid a conflict over the rake that could involve legal fees.

But that's not probability it's wrong. It's probability that there is one other match.

You might be right that it's hard to convince a jury, but statistical analysis should be perfectly valid. DNA evidence never means "this person 100% did it." DNA evidence is often given like "the odds that this dna doesn't match this person is 1 in 200 billion" or something similar. DNA is using the very same types of techniques as statistical analysis. In a normal trial, DNA is almost never used as the sole piece of evidence. Even cases with almost no evidence, it's usually DNA + the fact that you lived near the crime scene at the time (so you're pulling from a small population instead of global population) means it's basically 100% accurate. So in a criminal prosecution, it should be "statistically absurd winrate" + "never bluffing into nuts out of X attempts when the best in the world are only like 60% accurate or whatever" + "plays that make 0 sense from a winning players perspective" + "unique insider knowledge of how these broadcasting systems work" + "suspicious use of phone during hands" + "one of the biggest win rates of all time not choosing to move up in stakes and instead only play lowstakes televised games" and I don't see why it's not "beyond a reasonable doubt." I think a competent lawyer can explain how statistical analysis is actually very similar to dna in terms or probabilities.

"Beyond a reasonable doubt" doesn't mean 0% doubt, it means would a reasonable person think there's an alternate set of facts that seem plausible to explain what happened? And if you polled 100 poker experts and presented the facts of the case, I'd say 100% would think he's cheating beyond a reasonable doubt.

Imagine if the court system works "guilty until proven innocent." Thankfully it is not like this, just imagine if it was.

Mike Postle would have no way to prove his innocence. In fact, he's not claiming he got lucky. He's always, as far as I know, claimed to be very good at poker.

An actual good player would, hypothetically, come up with some reasons to make such and such call or fold, especially if his innocence was at stake. He might give away some secret live tells that he picks up on.

The best I've seen Postle come up with is "well I was drunk."

True enough, except that DNA is physical evidence in and of itself. My larger point is that it would be very hard to convict Postle purely on statistical analysis absent physical evidence or co-conspirators coming forward.

It is valid, as far as it goes. SA is just not evidence in and of itself. IOW, if I flip a coin 100 times and get 100 heads, SA would tell us the odds of that happening are 1 in 30 million. But it just happened. You might strongly suspect cheating, but the mere odds themselves are not definitive proof of cheating.

The fact that Postle's results are highly improbable is not definitive proof of cheating.

DNA is physical evidence, recovered from the crime scene. While it's true that statistical analysis is used to match a sample to a person, the math itself is meaningless without the physicality of the DNA itself.

"Statistically absurd" is not really a thing, though. There's no precise definition of what would be absurd and absurd things happen all the time. Good luck getting a jury to understand why that's significant. And if I'm the defense attorney, I'm going to be pressing the "hot streaks are common in poker, his just lasted longer," angle. I can get a math professor to testify that over millions of poker hands, you are going to see streaks that seem anomalous. If this were considered direct evidence of cheating, it would be chaos in poker rooms. Players make plays that make 0 sense all the time. This is something concrete. I think it's the best actual evidence against him. Meh.
Everyone uses their phones and there is no direct evidence that anything untoward was going on with the phone. It could be argued that he was doing so well at this game that he didn't feel he needed to play at higher stakes or at any other game. But the jury is 12 random people. The alternative set of facts is rather simple: Postle found a game that fit his wild style of play and hit an incredible -extremely unlikely but not impossible- streak of luck. Now, maybe a jury of poker experts wouldn't buy that story, but absent definitive proof, I can see how a jury of 12 regular people might.

A lot of minorities in America already have a sense of this every time they get stopped by the police.

They are forced to go through this dance of "prove to me you're not a criminal and don't have drugs/weapons on you/in your car" before they are let go.

Someone wins powerball because many millions of tickets are sold. If you put the entire world's population into a single elimination coin flipping tournament, you'll produce a winner that got 33 flips in a row in their favor. To get 100 in a row you need ~ 100 billion billion Earths. Not 30 million lol. If you prosecute hundreds of billions of cases based on the DNA evidence alone, you might convict an innocent person. That's what is meant by statistical absurdity. Juries are not 12 random people, they are selected by the attorneys, partly based on their ability to understand the type of evidence to be presented in the case. You would not be picked.

Just listening Phil Galfond. He explain, that he do statistical analysis to conclude if Postle cheated or not. So it is official, that live reads even from amateur players is not possible.

Charlie Carrell is a cheater as well?

Yes. But that's missing the point which is that statistically unlikely things happen all the time. Flip a coin 100 times. Whatever string of results you get was as unlikely to occur as a string of all heads. Every 100 coin flip is a statistical impossibility improbability.

Yeah, I flubbed the stats on that one. But the point remains the same.

Lawyers select jurors from a random pool of community members. Most community members have no interest in poker and even fewer of them would have any expertise. In fact, the defense would likely strike any juror who was a poker pro. Postle, if he's ever brought up on criminal proceedings, is not going to be facing a jury of poker players. He'll be facing the average member of the Sacramento community times 12.

The court case would go nowhere without a smoking gun to a jury of non poker players

Try to image showing hands like 54off vs ak and ak. And betting off ak vs ak Bc postle knows he will fold after missing.... jury will be like wtf?

Then postles lawyers will show graphs of ppl like gus, dwan and isildur1 to show it’s just variance....how many hands did he godmode for a couple thousand?

They really f***d up when didn’t confront him on stream and grab hat or phone

It's worse than that. Even if Galfond can effective explain to layperson how unlikely it is that Postle wasn't cheating, if an analysis by him indeed shows that, he might not be believed. The reason for that is that he may have shown bias against Postle, and a skilled lawyer will certainly make an issue out of that. One instance where a lawyer can cite is a twitter post in which Galfond is apparently irritated with JFK because he is "taunting" the "victims". The use of the word "victims" suggests he has already formed an opinion of the matter before doing an analysis. Here's an article where the tweet is cited:

https://www.highstakesdb.com/10568-p...legations.aspx

Another instance a lawyer can cite is something that was said by Veronica Brill in an interview in a Run It Once YouTube video. In it, Ms. Brill claims she was threatened with a lawsuit and wants to use the results of a Galfond analysis in that potential lawsuit. She further claims that she interacted with Mr. Galfond through his wife and that it was communicated back to Ms. Brill from Mr. Galfond a response paraphrased as, "Okay, we'll get 'em." If Galfond indeed made such a statement and is forced to admit it, his credibility will certainly be attacked by apposing counsel. Here's a link to that video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu1i696wSpU&t=3088s

Any analysis by Galfond used in a lawsuit or criminal case has to pass several hurdles: It has to show what everyone here thinks it will show--that Postle cheated; Galfond's bona fides to do such an analysis has to be established to the satisfaction of the court and laypeople on a jury; Galfond has to be able to explain it in such a way that laypeople will understand; and, His credibility as an unbiased witness has to be established. It's not impossible, but Galfond has some explaining to do regarding his tweet and the alleged "Okay, we'll get 'em" statement.

You are remarkably daft. They wouldn't show that one hand and be like "Case closed!"... They would show the behavior before and after the cheating, and bring in a behavioral expert to explain those changes. The JT float, hit top pair and fold. They'd show the omaha hand that only reads two cards. They'd show all the obvious crotch staring. They'd show the brother admitting his brother is a cheater. Who on earth puts there phone in their crotch and stares at it like that ever???? They'd show the clip where he explains how he reads people to make plays and then show how he literally never looks at the opponent before a big play. They'd put Postle on the stand (You know he's arrogant enough to go up there), and grill his stupid ass. You don't have to be a poker expert to see clear cut cheating. But god help us if 2p2ers get called to jury duty.

Sometimes they don't even get that chance.

This. A court case in front of a jury of average people is a gamble in and of itself. A prosecutor has to decide whether or not to pursue the case (which means other cases won't be pursued). They pick cases they think they have a good chance of winning. This case -as it stands solely on statistical analysis- just has too many wild cards in it to make it a +EV play in the eyes of a prosecutor.

It would be an ugly mess. Most jurors wouldn't be able to follow the logic and Postle could just claim he had "tells" on his opponents. The only way to win a case like this is if someone flips or they get hard evidence like a copy of his texts or downloads (however he did it).

I was watching the documentary of Scott Peterson trial on Hulu, it’s interesting because in this thread people are saying that the legal system can’t convict without a smoking gun but that guy got death row with far less damning evidence than the evidence against Postle. I think that both are guilty but I actually have much more doubt over Scott Peterson.

I don’t think the issue is that the evidence is circumstantial, I think the issue is that the judges and juries won’t understand poker well enough. General public thinks soul reading is more of a thing than it is. The thread on Hacker News (tech startup forums) exemplified that because there was a lot of skepticism over Postle being guilty in a otherwise intelligent crowd. Postle obviously guilty, but I’m not sure there’s an easier path to understanding why other than actually playing poker for years and having a deep enough understanding of the game to understand his defense is ridiculous .

Civil suit is dead.
Criminal suit never going to happen because too much headaches and too little upside for the Sactown DA.
State Gaming doesn't get involved in these matters.


Not sure what all this "convincing the jury" is about.

True. If they try and stand up for their rights often times it escalates into a murder.

Obviously it's a hypothetical... Postle and whoever else was in on this more or less got away with it. Doubt it's the end of Postle's scheming though. Hopefully next time he gets his comeuppance.

A murder case is very different from a financial crime case. Laci Peterson was a pretty pregnant woman who was found dead. There's an in-built sympathy factor there that had people screaming for justice. The public needed to find who brutally killed her and Scott Peterson was acting a little weird and the prosecutors built a convincing enough circumstantial case against him. In the Postle case, there is no in-built sympathy factor. The victims of his cheating are poker players and nobody outside the poker world cares about bringing him to justice. I'd be willing to bet that much of the public low-key thinks that poker players are degenerate gamblers anyway and, hey: Stupid games; stupid prizes.