It's ok to have a different opinion, except that most that are have nothing to back up their claim, compared to people that are investing hours and days into investigating this.

He is 100% guilty of cheating, but I don't know the law and how things will go from here.

The reputation of Stones Live Poker with current management and staff cannot recover from this.

Polk and Joey live now.

Good work, Lou. Keep pondering and thinking about this and I'm positive in about 4 or 5 more days you will be up to speed with page 20 of this thread.

Why are some so quick to dismiss Mike Postle as the brains behind this operation? He has been referred to as dumb a lot in this thread. However, I see Mike Postle as someone who is not content just being a poker player. He even invented his own poker format: Dream Seat Poker which has been shown on Stones Live. He describes this Dream Seat as "a combination of a cash game and a tournament with some game show elements added to it."


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Dream Seat Example
$5200 Buyin
$3k is on the table in the form of 300,000 in chips
$2k is put into a tournament prize pool
$200 goes to the house.
After a randomly selected hand in level 4 the shortest stack is eliminated and will go to the cage to cash out chips remaining for cash.
I presume this will continue until only 1 player remains.

Players would be able to win a seat into this Dream Seat game which would be live streamed / televised.

Dream Seat can incorporate a 72 aspect whereby if a player wins with 72 they have the opportunity to roll a dice numbered 2 to 7 and whichever number it lands on the player will take that many big blinds from each player at the table.

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Mike Postle says his "creativity just flows at all times." Well, there isn't anything much less creative than grinding live low stakes poker. It seems likely that he has been using all that creativity to think of ways to cheat the game. My guess is that his creativity was focused on Dream Seat Poker circa 2017 and after that didn't take off he focused his creativity towards ways to cheat the live stream.

In describing why he created Dream Seat, Mike Postle said he likes looking for ways to "make something more fun and exciting." It looks like he's been having a ball stealing thousands of dollars from other people. It looks way more fun than just grinding.

The RFID used in poker cards is the passive variety - they can only transmit their contents when power is inducted inside them via the reader. This is why they have to make near direct contact with the reader.

I agree here. The only thing that's suspicious about a hand like that and many of the others being cited is the fact that it's being done by the biggest winner in the game. Like how many times have you seen the random fish in your game put it allin pre with some total garbage and it happened to be a profitable play? Or make some 4bet turn bluff with air that happens to work out. Plenty of fish make those plays and get lucky. The only thing that actually makes any of these hands suspicious is that the type of person to make the kinds of plays he's making would be a losing player long term. Looking at hands in a vacuum is basically 100% useless, imo.

Doug & Joey on a live stream now... Already 4000 people watching.... Insane how huge this is/has become

Hey man congrats on watching a couple videos. You're only like 39 hours behind now

He is incredibly dumb and greedy

I play full time professionally at their sister club in San Diego. I think the guys from Stones bought it about 2? years ago or so... Could this potentially affect me if these guys lose their gaming license over this?

A few things I'd like to say here.

First off, I have a friend in the Sacramento area who has some media contacts, and he's been trying to get the TV stations and newspapers there to cover it. They have shown some moderate interest thus far. I will update you with any further news on this. Keep in mind that mass media coverage is what will blow this up to where real investigations by law enforcement might take place.

The Justin angle really needs to be explored more. If it can be shown that Mike's superuser-like play completely ceases both when Justin is gone AND when Justin is in the booth, then that's pretty damn strong circumstantial evidence that he was the inside guy. The facts that Justin has identified Mike as a personal friend AND his being in charge of everything makes him the #1 suspected accomplice already.

As to why Mike would even bother playing when he doesn't have insider help... I think it's fairly obvious. Let's say Justin and Mike were indeed the ones in cahoots. Mike asks, "Hey what should I do while you're at the WSOP? Stay away?" Justin answers, "Kind of. Don't play as often, but show up a few times and play conservatively, so nothing looks funny. Also, it will help anyway with the optics if you're not crushing the game for a little while."

Regarding any criminal case, forget it unless this blows up huge in the mass media, and enough investigating is done in order to either reveal a smoking gun or one of the conspirators cracks. Juries simply do not like handing down criminal convictions when there appears to be even a small amount of reasonable doubt. As you can see from this thread, even some poker players aren't 100% convinced (even though the vast majority is certain, myself included.)

The stack sizes Mike plays with should also be examined. From what I can tell, Mike likes having a big stack when he's cheating, and a small stack when he's not. There's a good reason for this. You need a big stack to re-bluff when someone re-raises you. Basically you need the table covered to where your bluffs against everyone have fold equity.

Finally, getting access to text message records are not as simple as you might think. This isn't the 2000s where all texts are SMS, and records are kept by phone carriers. Today, many text messages are actually sent via internet, and not handled by the phone carrier at all. For example, when texting iPhone to iPhone, this is usually the case. Even if the phone carrier's data is handling the text, it is treated as an internet request, and not as a text. This is why you can still send "iMessage" type texts even when you have no cell service but a WiFi connection. (For example, last time I flew, I was texting plenty of friends despite being in airplane mode.)

However, a criminal investigation could still be useful. It could still be looking for:

- Cash deposits or unexpected purchases by Justin or other suspected co-conspirators

- Info on devices, if they could be seized without the conspirators destroying or resetting them (I'm guessing that's useless by this point, though)

- Possible text message records and iMessage type records (these would be two separate requests)

Anyway, don't hold your breath. None of this is likely happening.

A civil suit could possibly have legs, though.

Has anyone called Stones to ask about this investigation? It's important that someone leads it other than Justin.

You have like 100 posts in this thread and are not involved in the slightest. You don't know any of the parties involved or anything. Literally nothing to do with any of this. Same information available as people who disagree with you

Also, unfortunately CA Gaming is very weak, and doesn't like getting involved in matters like these.

This is why so many shady things have persisted for so many years at places like Commerce. I mean, take a look into the whole "player banked" gaming situation there and at other CA card rooms. It's a joke, to where a corporation has basically taken over the player banking, and they ban anyone who tries to player bank. And the state simply doesn't give a crap. That's far more provable than all of this.

With that said, I believe if Stones is sufficiently pressured, they will fire Justin and anyone else they feel is involved, in an effort to distance themselves from this mess. I think that's the best we can hope for, aside from a successful civil suit.

WTF
https://twitter.com/stoneslivepoker?lang=en

Technically he is stealing from his family

Chris Glasgow has been actively engaged in the conversation about the affair on the Discord server for the training site Crush Live Poker (which has a dog in this hunt because they have been using Stones streamed games in their training videos).

Joey and Doug live right now.

The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological claim that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present; the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that one of them will help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

someone contacted the california gaming commission right?

Bureau of Gambling Control
P.O. Box 168024
Sacramento, CA 95816-8024
(916) 830-1700 – For Complaints: select option 4, Compliance and Enforcement Section.

http://www.cgcc.ca.gov/?pageID=complaints

This is always the first thought that comes to mind when scandals like this break. At some stage, you have such complete idiots involved in the scam that are so clueless that they basically out themselves. How often both online and live have similar things been undertaken by people with half a brain, a bit of planning and good execution that make it virtually impossible to detect and have drained money going completely unnoticed.

In this particular case, the best argument for him being innocent is that how could someone be so unbelievably dumb in the execution of using this magic money-making machine.

I think we can safely predict the outcome of Stones 2nd internal investigation.

I dare them to implement one rule: no hats.

A phone ban resulted from their first review yet they do not police this.

If Mike has no hat and no phone, his God-mode is deactivated.

After watching Polk's video, it is almost guaranteed this guy is a cheater. He really probably could have gone so much lo ger without being caught if he did in in a more realistic, less greedy, way of occasionally losing, and not always making such amazing hero folds and bluffs.

I may be wrong but I believe only an individual who has lost money to Mike can lodge a complaint. It's disappointing that no one has come forward to say "that was me in the hand where I lost 5k to Mike"

To be fair this is kind of funny.

According to CheckraiseCharles Justin was responsible for bringing players to the game "to get owned"...lamb to slaugher as he said.

thanks. Makes sense for high quality tables you see on major live streams

Any idea which one they used for Stones Stream? what if its custom built table? all the technology is avail off the shelf.

if passive as well, then likely something to do with data hack during transmission or while in graphics/production system?