The latest poker cheating scandal in poker is showing no signs of slowing down with new opinions coming in every day. Let’s weight the arguments for and against that Robbi Jade Lew was cheating against each other.
Arguments that Robbi Jade Lew Wasn’t Cheating
First, let us start in defence of Robbi Lew’s play and understand the reasons why she made the decisions and behaved as she did.
The biggest talking point has been the claim that Lew misread her hand. In the previous hand she was dealt J3 and in the hand in question it was J4.
This matters because when Garrett Adelstein is drawing to a straight flush on a board of TT9 the turn cards is a 3. If Lew now thinks she has showdown value then her hero call makes sense. She is ahead of all draws.
In fact, this is the explanation she later gives after handing the $135,000 back to Garrett Adelstein in a short interview before returning to the table.
None of this was said after the hand and Lew could possibly have been embarrassed once she realised her error.
That said, when asked how she can make such a call, Lew did mention that she thought Adelstein only had ace-high. This does indicate that she thought she had a pair of threes allowing her to call.
Reasons that Robbi Jade Lew Was Cheating
The misreading J4 for J3 has divided opinion throughout the poker community. Doug Polk for one is utterly convinced that this story was made up after the hand was played out.
He replays a video clip that the audio clearly shows Robbi Lew answering another player saying she doesn’t have pocket threes and then that she doesn’t have a three in her hand.
When he confronts Lew with this on Twitter, another poster produces a video showing her saying that the reason she ran it twice was because she thought jack-high was no good.
This is all incongruent with somebody telling the truth.
12:00 literally says ” i ran it twice because i didnt think j high could be good”.https://t.co/dC3mJxQrf4
— FLOBY94 (@FLOBY94) October 2, 2022
Then there is also the fact that not only did she look at her cards for at least 15 seconds before making the call, she also did not show a hint of surprise when she turned her cards over.
This is something that would be automatic to almost everybody. Even those who would be embarrassed at the thought of doing this in front of so many viewers.
Lew later tried to say that when she was looking at her cards it was only to check for which suit her jack was, but we can see this is untrue from the camera angle.
Finally, we need to address the way in which the money was handed back to Garrett Adelstein.
On the day of the game, we heard that Lew did this at her own request after being told that this was going to go viral and be seen by millions of viewers. Would an innocent player ever do this?
We await further information on whether or not the poker community decides one way or the other on this sensitive case, and the reasoning above is only opinion and speculation.
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