The biggest scandal in the history of live poker
The Mike Postle cheating scandal is quickly turning into the biggest live poker scandal ever as Stones Live stuff seems to be involved as well. Check out the most comprehensive update on the Mike Postle cheating including new evidence and everything we know so far below!
New evidence and facts in Mike Postle cheating case
We reported last week about the Mike Postle cheating allegations and since that a lot of new evidence and facts have been brought to light.
We have put together the most comprehensive update on the cheating scandal on the whole World Wide Web and present all new evidence and facts below.
The poker community got together on Twitter to fight for its right
The cheating accusations against Mike Postle were originally brought up by Veronica Brill aka “Angry Polak/Veronica 2.0“ on Twitter:
Veronica Brill is a regular at Stones Gambling Hall and on the Stones Live stream and has been playing a lot with Mike Postle as well as even commentating his plays, while being able to see his hole cards.
Mike Postle‘s strange plays and unrealistic win rate of $253,000 in 277 hours of play made her suspicious:
If someone is displaying a probability of cheating on a live stream you don’t make the entire room not be able to use their cellphones in an attempt to reduce everyone’s anxiety and then still promote the player as one of the best.
— Veronica 2.0 (@Angry_Polak) September 28, 2019
You take that player off the stream while you launch a proper, objective, investigation done by a third-party. Once it’s shown that the player has not been cheating you make your investigation public and let the player back onto the stream.
— Veronica 2.0 (@Angry_Polak) September 28, 2019
Furthermore, Mike Postle is good friends with the stuff of Stones Live and is also going to produce a new poker live stream show, so he is an expert on the technology behind the stream and know about its potential flaws.
Veronica Brill and Joe Ingram brought up the cheating accusations
Other big Twitter and YouTube accounts such as Joe Ingram, Doug Polk, Matt Berkey and Haralabos Voulgaris, were quick to pick up on the rumours and launched in-depth investigations of Mike Postle’s hands.
Besides Angry Polak special thanks and credits go to Joe Ingram, who put it more than 80 hours of forensic work analysing hands of Mike Postle played on the Stones Live stream, which has led to clear evidence against him:
Impromptu livestream – I will go over every single hand that @Mike_Postle played during a session on @StonesLivePoker to take a look at his entire play vs various hand histories that have been posted. I’ll speed it up to move from hand to hand.https://t.co/gvhOjXmazx
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) October 1, 2019
Watch all of the shocking Joe Ingram investigation videos below:
Doug Polk also did several great videos on the matter here is one of them:
Watch the most suspicious hands played by Mike Postle and our analysis below:
We have collected and analysed the craziest and most suspicious hands and scenes from the Stones live streams, in which Mike Postle played below:
INSANE HAND – Mike opens 95o – calls 3bet – calls 4bet
INSTA OPEN JAMES $3k on the FLOP INTO 4bettor
Says I can’t lose this one when guy has 64 on J-9-3
Turn 7 – Says Oh, shit
River 7 – Says you scared me…..
Everyone looks on in disbelief as Mikes act begins… WTF! pic.twitter.com/lSZl7l8qM0
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) October 2, 2019
This hand alone speaks for itself. Mike Postle open-raises with 9h-5d and there is a 3-bet, a 4-bet and an All-In behind him.
Mike not only calls the 4-bet and All-In out of position, but then insta-jams All-In on a Jh-9d-3h board stating: „I can’t lose“. Once a 7 appears on the turn, he says: „Oh shit“ followed by a „You scared me“ after the 7 River.
Analysis: There is no way in this world you would call a 3-bet, 4-bet and a call All-In out of position with 95 offsuit, if you don’t have help from outside such as access to the hole cards or board cards. After seeing this hand, it was clear for me that there is some form of cheating going on and there are several like this being played by Mike Postle. Could it be his playing style or a coincidence? – Well, maybe if you are a person that believes in Santa Claus?
Check this one out Joey.
Cold calls 63ss after open-3bet-4bet.
Not surprisingly 3-bet & 4-bet are AQo and AKss.
Proceeds to magically play every street perfectly.
Thoughts @Mike_Postle?https://t.co/4qnJyobTsV
— Kevin Martin (@KevinRobMartin) October 1, 2019
In the next hand, Mike Postle cold-calls a 4-bet on the button with 6h-3h! The flop brings 9s-8s-3d and although Postle flops bottom pair, he is still a massive 33% underdog against the As-Ks for nut flush draw and two overcards of his opponent, but he still insta-calls the All-In of his opponent.
Analysis: Would you call an All-In as a 33%-underdog in this spot, if you don’t have access to the hole cards? – Probably not.
Those are only two of the most striking hands played by Mike Postle, but you can find many more in Joe Ingram’s investigation videos posted above.
Further evidence against Mike Postle
Thanks to the work of the poker community and all the players investigating the case, new and striking evidence not only against Mike Postle, but also against Stones Live and Stones Gambling Hall were brought up.
Let’s start with some numbers and pretty interesting graphics regarding Mike Postle’s results on Stones Live.
There is a big thread about it on the 2+2 forum, where a lot of interesting facts were posted:
Above is an excel sheet with Mike Postle’s results on the Stones live stream in 2018/2019. As you can see, Mike has won more than $253,000 in 277 hours of play, while booking unreasonably large profits in 62 out of 69 sessions. In addition to that, he won all of his big All-ins!
Everybody, who has an idea about knows that winning every All-In and boasting such winrates in live poker are virtually impossible.
Mike Postle has a bigger winrate on Stones Live than Superuser Account Potripper!
Mike Postle even has a bigger winrate compared to the Ultimate Bet Superuser account „Potripper“, which was able to see the hole cards of his opponents!
Comparing @Mike_Postle results to the infamous online poker super user potripper
You can see Mike to the right in Orange – potripper in Red pic.twitter.com/Qi0HbxXZZt
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) October 2, 2019
To put this into perspective, the Potripper Superuser account was the biggest cheating scandal in the history of online poker!
Mike Postle Cheating has basically been exposed at this point
Further evidence is that Mike is on his phone all the time when making big decisions and that the hat he always wears has a different size during the live streams than after:
CHECK THIS HAND FROM POSTLE OUT
Game switches from NL to PLO but cards don’t register. Postle stares at crotch & attempts to get cards to register multiple times.
45 mins later goes in the booth – asks why the cards didn’t register in the hand & says he hasn’t seen his name yet pic.twitter.com/tMSbwKcXaN
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) October 6, 2019
This would also answer the question, how Postle received the information about the cards of his opponents namely via a hidden Bone induction Speaker device in his hat.
This is an important step to developing a data rich case https://t.co/EARvT8v5Nh
— Matt Berkey (@berkey11) October 7, 2019
Mike Postle must have had an accomplice
Due to overwhelming evidence, Mike Postle is clearly exposed as a cheater at this point no matter what explanations and counter arguments he comes up with. However, the scandal starts to take a new twist now as it becomes evident that Mike must have had at least one if not several accomplices…
What makes me and other people in the poker community, so sure about that is the following hand on Stones Live, where the hole cards were changed at the end of the hand, which is simply impossible when using RFID cards…
One of the most INSANE hands from Mike/the show w/ all their memes
The show somehow changes the graphics at the end of the hand & says there was an error because Mike told them the RFID was incorrect. This is the 3RD TIME they allege this error happened always in Mike’s favor. pic.twitter.com/UOnYYhB2lq
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) October 2, 2019
“This tells me someone working in the booth forced them to change the cards“
After the hand played out in an insane way, Mike’s hole cards were suddenly changed from 8d-6s to 9s-8s for the nuts. Several experts of RFID technology later confirmed that from a technical point this is impossible and must have been done by one of the people running the Stones Live stream.
Below is a very interesting thread and quote by Ryan Feldman, who is the producer of Live at The Bike, where they also use RFID cards:
Actual giant smoking gun @Joeingram1 @haralabob https://t.co/8nyuIEVcyY
— Scott Seiver (@scott_seiver) October 4, 2019
„This just occurred to me so I have to speak up. Shows are produced live & air on delay, so the booth can never know that someone’s cards are wrong. This tells me someone working in the booth forced them to change the cards for some reason while producing the hand. Player can never tell booth during the hand. Once it’s produced live, you can’t change the graphics when it airs. Poker GFX is pushed thru OBS live. Impossible. This is regarding the 69o hand that was mysteriously changed to 89ss during the hand. I work on a broadcast that is produced the same way, so I know this is impossible. Why would someone change the cards while the hand is happening? Huge red flag“
Here is a great explanation of how RFID works and why things don’t add up by Matt Berkey, who is an expert on the matter:
Short clip of how the Poker GFX Tracker & Poker GFX Server work with regard to the river spot where Postle’s 8d6s magically turned into 9s8s for the nuts…
Complete breakdown here: https://t.co/zSuVlBhnam pic.twitter.com/Pe12jAnlou
— Matt Berkey (@berkey11) October 5, 2019
Was Stones Poker Manager Justin Kuraitis Mike Postle’s accomplice?
So who is Mike Postle’s accomplice or have there even been more people involved? Many things point to Stones Gambling Hall Manager and producer of the live stream Justin Kuraitis, who is good friends with Postle and has also been accused by several players:
But why? You already went on @FOX40 and called it brazen cheating. Said that someone, like Justin Kuraitis, was in on it. pic.twitter.com/ljJBlOI9uP
— PokerProErik (@PokerProErik) October 4, 2019
The reason why many accuse Kuraitis is that Mike Postl’s results are significantly worse, when Justin Kuraitis was not in the building. Miraculously, Postle started losing as soon as Kuraitis was not there, while he won every time in his presence a coincidence? – Highly unlikely.
As early as January 2019, there was a Sacramento Reg, who played on Stones Live, even complained to Justin that Mike Postle is cheating. Kuraitis then went on the live stream and gave an interview to downplay the rumours:
This Sacramento reg claims his friend was certain Mike Postle was cheating after this January 2019 session. The player complained to Justin Kuraitis which led to the booth interview during a subsequent Stones Live to quell the fears and rumors.https://t.co/Tx0vlU12wZ
— Rachel Lees (@rachelees69) October 5, 2019
Twitch Poker streamer Andreas “tvtotaliwin” Froehli made a very interesting video on the connection between Justin Kuraitis and Mike Postle:
Did Mike Postle have further accomplices?
Another person, who could be a potential accomplice of Mike Postle, is Justin Taylor one of the commentators of Stones Live.
There is a new post on 2+2, which points that Mike Postle potentially had more accomplices and that more members of the Stones Live stuff were in on it.
The new thread, which you can read, by clicking on the link below, shows that Postle’s results were significantly better, when Taylor was doing the commentary:
This post is REALLY problematic for Justin Taylor, btw. Leaning towards him and that Kuraitis is just a complete potato, now https://t.co/QtF2BLNvsX
— Anton Falkenby (@Falkenby) October 6, 2019
Why hasn’t there been an official investigation yet?
You are probably asking yourself now, why there hasn’t been an official investigation regarding all those facts?
Well, probably because it is in the interest of someone to sweep the evidence under the table and that the case doesn’t go to court.
Stones Gambling Hall launched an internal investigation and then came up with the following ridiculous statement on Twitter:
Earlier this year an accusation was made that a player was cheating in our game
We conducted a full investigation & found no evidence that any cheating had occurred
Stones Live stream remains a secure poker streaming platform
The recent allegations are completely fabricated
— StonesLivePoker (@StonesLivePoker) September 29, 2019
For me this proves that they didn’t take the investigation seriously and it also points to that Stones Live is involved in this scandal.
Luckily, only three days later they were forced by gaming allegations to suspend the live stream and halt the use of RFID cards.
Famous poker lawyer Maurice “Mac” VerStandig is on the case now – Joe Ingram offers to help with the investigation for free
On October 2nd famous poker lawyer Maurice “Mac” VerStandig announced on his Twitter that he will represent several victimized players in court and that you should get in touch, if they know something or want to be reimbursed:
Regarding the @StonesLivePoker situation, @VerStandigLaw & I have been engaged to bring suit to address these wrongs on behalf of victimized players. If you played on a stream & would be willing to discuss your experience, pls DM me. We look forward to pursuing our case in court.
— Mac VerStandig (@mac_verstandig) October 2, 2019
The next day, Stones Live announced on their Twitter that an allegedly „independent“ investigation team lead by Michael Lipman will work on the case. Unfortunately, it turned out that Michael Lipman is the former counsel of Stones Gambling Hall 😊
(3/4) To that end, we are today announcing the creation of an independent investigation team. The team will be led by Michael Lipman, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, and Chief of that office’s fraud unit.
— StonesLivePoker (@StonesLivePoker) October 3, 2019
Shouldn’t the investigation be done by independent group? But how? Since stones are the only ones who will pay for it..
— Ari Engel (@AriEngelPoker) October 3, 2019
However, there is hope that truth will come to light as Veronica Brill, who came up with the cheating allegations, and other victimized players will be working closely together with Mac Verstanding and his team.
“Bring me in to look at video & I’ll wrap this case up in under 24 hours“
Furthermore, chief investigator Joey Ingram offered his services free of charge to Stones Live saying:
„Bring me in to look at video we don’t have access to publically & I’ll wrap this case up in under 24 hours.“
I offer my services to @StonesLivePoker free of charge – bring me in to look at video we don’t have access to publically & I’ll wrap this case up in under 24 hours.
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) October 7, 2019
An official and independent investigation is urgently needed!
The Mike Postle case is probably the biggest cheating scandal in the history of live poker and has such a ripple effect due to the potential involvement of Stones Live stuff that it needs and deserves an independent and thorough investigation.
If found guilty Mike Postle and his accomplices also have to face legal consequences as they consciously committed a crime by manipulating the game and stealing the other player’s money.
We really hope that this case will be thoroughly investigated and completely solved, so that all harmed players will be reimbursed.
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