Originally Posted by rickroll
fair enough, thanks for sharing the articles, given that it happened at a regulated environment i would agree he did not cheat, however, I can see him and the other guy softplaying each other ats they are there for the whale's money not to battle each other - but that's just kind of the nature of those games
like i said i have no dog in this fight
but i just want to iterate because my autism won't allow otherwise, that private games are shady af
my career started in a place with no casinos anywhere nearby that had dozens of private games
every single private game I ever played in above 1-2 eventually got busted cheating or had a postle like situation where some guys just never made bad river decisions ever and/or at least 1-2 cold decks each night of someone flopping a boat vs flopped quads but there wasn't proof but it was well beyond the standard variance of the game and literally always the same 2-3 benefactors each time
i've personally witnessed a lot of cheating and seen lots of players who weren't even hosting the game get caught cheating
there's multiple companies that produce cheating equipment disguised as everyday products from kitty cat clocks to microwaves to money counters using tech to cheat in addition to standard sleight of hand and cold deck insertion
even in the mayfair club in nyc, they had a rule that anyone could ask for the deck to cut at any moment, even mid deal, this was because there were so many mechanics in the games, my roomate at the time was the younger brother of a professional magician and thus spent a lot of time growing up being taught card tricks - this guy, who was just a hobbyist but had put in the hours, could shuffle a deck right in front of you, in full sight, telling you he's actively setting a deck so he's going to get aces and you're going to get kings, you're watching his every move and trying to see how and where he does it, you don't see a single thing out of the ordinary, he is shuffling no differently then how anyone else shuffles, even with cutting the deck (which I would do) he would deal AA vs KK every time - it was insane to see how easily he could get away with it
i've even advocated we not ban certain cheats (boy was i dumb and naive back then) because they were such big whales that they lost heavily despite occasionally cheating - i remember how badly i advocated that we not ban a certain movie producer because that guy literally opened 17x every time he played a hand and would then take a check/call stategy post flop where he'd call down super light - he was an absolute money printer for me and without that guy, i genuinely may have never made enough money when i first started playing to realize i could make a living off of doing this
i advocated so hard for that guy "oh well he got caught and learned his lesson, he won't do it again and we now know what to look for" and in hindsight am now very happy i was ignored
even with the unraked and unhosted 1-2 games i played at bars, i had to make a habit of cashing out before the game broke because there was always, and I mean always a chip:bank differential at the end of the night where there would be about $80 or so more chips than money in the pot
at first we thought oh just a 4 beer mistake where someone miscounted, but then it's every night, so then we think perhaps people are sneaking over and adding chips or sneaking money out of the pot or lying about how many chips they had at cashout
so we introduce lockboxes for both the chips and the cash, we make sure all cashouts are verified, the problem still remains, nobody can figure it out at all
it's only after another dozen sessions or so do we realize that the chips at the bar have been increasing over time, we discover this because they no longer fit in all the cases and there's overflow
some enterprising individual went out and bought the same kind of chips used at this bar at the store and each time he played would show up with a few in his pocket and discreetly add them to his stack
so... i'm just saying, in my experience, the longer a private game runs, the likelihood of cheating taking place gets closer to 100%, maybe they weren't even targeting that guy specifically but others, maybe they didn't cheat him at all, or maybe they figured "why allow him to win that 30% of the time a fish will win naturally when we can take him for all he's worth?"
that's the thing about cheating scandals, nearly all the ones that get busted get busted because they got too greedy and took things too far to where it was impossible to not realize what was going on - just look at postle, if he just eased off the gas and earned 2/3 of what he did and didn't exploit for the max each hand he'd still be getting away with cheating today casually bringing in low 6 figures in winnings each year
same with potripper
same with moneytaker69
same with the recent mars la cheating
you can't simply apply logic and wash away accusations because history has shown time and time again that cheaters will defy all logic
the only reason why i can dismiss those allegations are because they happened in a regulated casino, if they happened at a private game then I would instantly believe that roland was cheating
