ILX Poker Players Unite

yep, no cheating scandals in chess, no siree...

people cheating in chess is funny, i guess i can understand it at the top levels theres some sort of real benefit but doing it, against average players online whats the point, yet people do do it, every once in a while lichess will give me 5 points back because i lost to someone who was caught cheating lol

That Katie Martin thread makes me mad because of the "lol I admit I don't know how poker works so I'm going to summarize the scenario in the most reductive incorrect way possible, double down, and ignore all the actual well-intentioned corrections offered by people ".

Like the idea that misogyny has nothing to do with this is probably wrong, I'm sure that a male doing this would also have been put on blast, and they have been in the past, but their excuses/alternate explanations would be more likely to be believed, perhaps default assumption wouldn't be cheating for some. Not to mention the dark alley confrontation which was probably terrifying.

But the inability to accept that the situation was seen as suspect for legitimate reasons is just willful ignorance, even accepting that. Esp since tweet thread poster is a Ph.D student and capable of doing the homework.

there 100% was misogyny involved here but the conclusion that "she made a brilliant play actually" is way wrong

Otm

in regards to the hand, her misreading it makes sense it doesnt really matter how long she looked at it if you think you have a three you can stare at four and think its a three no problem top chess players have thought a piece was on a different square than it was while staring at the board for many minutes

starting to think this was probably it and that Robbi, understandably, did not want to let on that she misread her hand and was perhaps goaded by Garrett's response into insisting it was some kind of insane soul read. if there's one trait a lot of bad players share it's a total inability to ever admit they may have made a bad decision. (alternatively, maybe she *did* peg Garrett's exact hand, but forgot to consider that he would also be bluffing a bunch of other hands that she's losing to) obviously you can break everything down as though you're watching the Zapruder film, like Doug Polk seems to be doing, but the reality is that nerves can be a real factor in these sort of games. she's playing 10x her normal stakes in a televised game vs. someone who had been bullying her around, totally understandable if something in her brain just misfired. hell it's happened to me at the 1/3 game in the casino, I've galaxy brained myself into laydowns I'd never make otherwise

as far as misogyny goes, maybe there was in Garrett's decision to approach her and accuse her of cheating to her face. I can't imagine he'd do that to some of the guys in that lineup. but all that in regards to the hand itself is just plain wrong. if you polled the 100 best players on the planet all 100 would say it was a horrible play. if you polled the 100 worst they'd probably all say it was bad too. the call is incredibly odd no matter how good a poker player you assume Robbi is. fwiw she does seem to have been professionally coached and has been playing for at least a decade, so I'd say she's probably better than at least half the people commenting on this right now

there's nothing wrong with saying it was a bad play, it's the immediate conclusion on zero proof that she was cheating, forcing her to hand over money that was probably won legitimately, and, as far as I know, continuing to hold on to that money with zero intention of giving it back while not climbing down one bit from the cheating charge despite the fact that it seems unlikely, there's still no proof, and such public claims could easily be the grounds for a defamation suit.

not only is there no proof of cheating the allegation doesnt even really make sense

One should always side-eye claims of cheating simply based on odd behavior precisely for reasons detailed above, human error is a thing of many degree. Cheating in a casino itself is hard enough to pull off due to spotters and cameras, much less a poker tournament. Nothing wrong with investigating any potential malfeasance based on the unlikely nature of the bet, but there's a difference between that and drawing the conclusion up front, or drawing it without any corroborating evidence. much like the chess "vibrating anal beads" story.

this is why I like the fishing scandal. something was amiss, so the tournament sponsor cut open the finish, found weights, and began screaming in the faces of the cheaters and told them to leave.

I'm kind of surprised this is still ongoing and that Adelstein hasn't moderated his accusations even a tiny bit as far as I know

I've definitely seen people misread hands during the much lower stakes matches I play in before.

it's me, I'm hands

even had a dealer announce the wrong hand the winner and didn't react quick enough to point out his mistake before he yanked away the cards (which meant I lost out on quite a big pot). wasn't for real money, mind. or I probably would have reacted more

much like the chess "vibrating anal beads" story.

― stank viola (Neanderthal), Wednesday, October 5, 2022 2:24 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i would just like to say for the record that the anal beads theory originated as a joke on a stream and a bunch of outlets picked it up because of course i mean its irresistible

Oh I totally know it was never a real viable theory, it's just that it went from that joke to people acting as if it is what actually happened or what the person is seriously accused of doing. like my friend shared it w/ me and I was like "this article doesn't say 'he won cos anal beads', it says he's accused of cheating and someone else said "lol what if it was vibrating butt beads"

not only is there no proof of cheating the allegation doesnt even really make sense

yeah as nonsensical as calling with Jack high in that spot is I'd argue it's actually more nonsensical to have access to a cheating device the entire stream and only use it on that particular hand. I'm not gonna rule out 100% she was cheating but if she was it almost certainly had to be something specific to that hand. so Garrett saying right away that she was getting buzzed was pretty weird. maybe he knows something or was suspicious beforehand. either way super odd for a guy who you'd think definitely knows how things work in the poker world to make that kind of accusation. he isn't just some random guy.

he couldve just had a strong emotional reaction and cant find it in himself to back down

not to mention he has the money and would have to give it back

once he backs down, he gets (rightfully) accused of putting an unfair target on his opponent's back, so he's not going to back down

Uhhhhh….what

Hustler releases a statement that one of the High Stakes Poker production employees took $15,000 of Robbi chip stack after the game!!! WTF is going on??? pic.twitter.com/6hNZooiLxD

— Joey Ingram 🐉 (@Joeingram1) October 6, 2022

what the hell

[working a job recording an event] i think i will do a crime during this

wow he's a reporter: https://lvchronicle.com/author/bryans/

Garrett seems to think this is going to vindicate him somehow, sounds like he knows something. or maybe he's bluffing

yeah but even if he is bluffing you still can't call there

This is getting really weird

I received the following statement from @RobbiJadeLew regarding the recent @HCLPokerShow revelation that $15K was taken off her stack.

More coming an an article that’ll appear on @PokerNews. pic.twitter.com/8ik91wWwgh

— Chad Holloway (@ChadAHolloway) October 7, 2022

pretty charitable of her which is cool.

sadly while all this was happening D.B. Cooper came out of hiding, stole the rest of the chips, and parachuted out of the building

What is going on here

So I got a message … @Joeingram1 pic.twitter.com/4S2zvR5BmQ

— Robbi Jade Lew (@RobbiJadeLew) October 7, 2022

This woman is…incredibly odd

https://t.co/0Ac06b5DkQ

I don’t think that mysterious box in her pocket was anything but cmon it was not just glare

just got on GGpoker, had to hold some BTC while waiting for my affiliate to come through. he took forever and I lost $300 thanks to the dumb crypto market. I know it's probably keeping online poker alive, but still, fuck Bitcoin

WSOP $1,500 7-Stud is streaming on YouTube (I've never had a PokerGO subscription), and it's been a good watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIStzOpRN44

lol just clicked on it and theyre talking about pokemon

Fantastic stuff cheers

Stayed up past midnight (Pacific Time, even!) watching the last three play this out for hours. Loved it. The wholesome rail vs. the rail of mooks added to it, but mostly it was the first time I had watched an unedited 7-stud tourney for hours.

$3.1 MILLION POT!! THE BIGGEST POT IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISED POKER!!@TomDwan vs @CryptoApprenti1

Tom Dwan is now winning more than $2 MILLION tonight pic.twitter.com/Fiv7ldVykt

— Hustler Casino Live (@HCLPokerShow) May 31, 2023

this stream was incredible

that's a 1550BB pot which would be the biggest I've ever seen in a cash game by some measure

lmaooo "all in? is that for sure? I'm gonna go get a water"

the big blind ante makes it a little smaller effective but yeah there were some insane hands

I haven't watched Tom Dwan in a while I had no idea he swore that much

dwan’s really the goat man

lol I remember when he turned 21 and started playing televised games a lot of people said he'd be broke in a year

the percentage of biggest tv hands ever that hes been involved in is very high

that High Stakes Poker hand where he bluffed Barry Greenstein and Peter Eastgate w/ QT on the T22 board is still my favorite televised poker hand. blocker bluffing wasn't really a thing back then, especially not in big 3-way pots. it really blew a lot of minds when people figured out what he was doing

its crazy how much better people are now at poker

Yeah I think your average 25NL reg is probably better now than the high stakes pros were during the poker boom. Thankfully there still seem to be enough whales and shitty rakeback grinders that you can still turn a profit. It’s definitely harder now though. Live poker on the other hand hasn’t really changed much at all.

we need legal online play in order to usher in another poker boom

the other day I listened to a podcast which argued that the biggest change in understanding between now and 20 years ago is in how much variance there really is, especially in PLO where it's possible to have hot or cold streaks which last years. ultimately he says that in the pre-online era it really wasn't possible to play enough hands to get a good handle on who the best players really were, and that virtually every "pro" who played big and made a lot of money pre-Party Poker was either rich enough to ride out the variance or just started on a heater. he thinks there were probably dozens of potential Tom Dwans and Junglemen out there but few of them ran as good as they did where they could really commit themselves to the game. definitely rings true for me at least, had I not run well my first few months playing online I probably would have given it up within a year. poker is so uniquely frustrating when you're on an extended downswing, it just feels like there's nothing you can do but give up.

whenever this thread pops up I end up watching an hour of poker highlights on Youtube and I don't know why - I haven't played a hand in a decade and I was absolutely terrible even among friends who were also bad, I don't have the attention span to play cards for more than like 20 minutes at a blackjack table.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDt90EyZnWA

incredible - was laughing throughout the entire section with Hellmuth and Gus. though his math on the Gus Hansen section is way off - that only applies if you get called by everyone, and if you did technically you'd only have to win once to win the tournament. I would guess just blind shoving every hand in a 6 person sit n' god you'd probably have like a 6-8% chance of winning it all.

god I used to love watching this stuff in college. better than any game show if you ask me. watching these dudes in the WSOP go on 3 day heaters, suddenly finding themselves at a featured table and allowing themselves to think just a little about the possibility of a big payout and some TV fame, only to get doinked by an 8 on the river. after which the camera just lingers on their face as they realize they will almost certainly never have this opportunity again. tough to watch I guess but still, great people-watching. also so many of them were massive dicks so it was easy to figure out who to root for.

https://philgalfond.beehiiv.com/p/elephant-poker-room

galfond could certainly use an editor, but I completely agree. doug is an amazing player and peerless analyst (when he puts work into it…he doesn’t prep as much for his videos these days) but he’s a bully and his non-analysis videos suck