ILX Poker Players Unite

only time worth adding up is time spent on ILH

every moment a gem

tapped out about 1am, this went on till 8 eastern apparently!

some absolute titans clashing at the final table of the 1M one drop tonight. sick sick sick hand fedor won 20 mins ago to bust rick salomon and byron kaverman

lon just referred to fedor vs bonomo as ali-frazier and honestly it is

true that
bonomo now overtaken negreanu all time live tourney $$$!
$25 million is 2018 alone!

damn... Negreanu's been on top of that list for a long time hasn't he?

didn't watch this but Fedor vs. Bonomo seems like a must-see HU match. I watched the Super High Roller bowl tourney that involved a lot of those players and it was awesome watching poker being played at such a crazy high level. and Kevin Hart too.

had to go to bed finally but it was just a sick match, at one point fedor overbet like 6 rivers in 15 hands or something, these guys were out there throwing haymakers

some pretty crazy shit going on here

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/mike-postle-cheating-allegations-1753388/

basically, there is this guy named Mike Postle who plays on a 5/5 streamed game at Stones, who has been running insanely good, cashing at a rate of 220bb/100 (for reference, in a live game 15bb/100 is generally seen as "crushing it"). this has gone on for nearly 2 years before someone noticed something very strange about the way the guy was playing. he is consistently taking lines that are absolutely ridiculous - he plays nearly 50% of his hands (which no winning player can do), takes the correct river line 100% of the line (lol) and makes the most ridiculous bluffs, which just so happen to be correct every single time. a number of his plays make absolutely 0 sense unless you happen to know your opponent's exact hands. the theory is that this guy somehow got access to the RFID info that is broadcasting these hands. probably could have gotten away with it too but he makes it so incredibly blatant.

yeah I’ve been following this too. guy is clearly a cheat, and a dumb one

@Mike_Postle @AndreasFroehli @Joeingram1 @berkey11 @scott_seiver @haralabob @DougPolkPoker

I apologize in advance for how long this is going to be, but after what i have witnessed in the past 24+ hours, i couldn't sit on the sidelines any longer without giving My 2 cents. First

— Nick_Rice (@NickRic06274872) October 2, 2019

lol

ha watched a montage of his hits and it's pretty ridic

I mean the numbers speak for themselves - he's winning at a greater rate than Potripper (the Absolute Poker superuser who stole a ton of money from pros), he never screws up on the river, he wins nearly every single session (EXCEPT when the dude who runs Stones is in Vegas? WTF?!?) - the odds of someone going on this kind of streak is like, hitting the Powerball 5 times in a row. Especially playing the way he does.

What gets me about this is not just the obvious stuff - like, knowing when you're beat and when you can bluff obviously is worth a ton of money in itself, but he takes it a step further and takes lines that make zero sense UNLESS you knew exactly what your opponents are holding. The AK vs AK vs 54 3 way all in hand with Moneymaker is a good example of that, even if his "expertise" in live reads tells him his opponents don't have a premium hand there, there's still a good chance they show up with something like, I dunno, pocket 8s, which has you completely crushed. It's just so dumb. And there are dozens of examples like that.

IMO the most damning hand is the 95o one. It's a 3-way pot and he somehow gets 120 BBs in with 95o against an all-in player with 64 and another player with AQ, who he is quite deep against. The flop comes J93 and he open shoves 600bbs into the dry side pot. It is one of the most spewy plays I have ever seen and the only way it makes sense is if you somehow knew that the all-in player couldn't beat 9 high and that the other player did not have 99+ (and, even knowing this, it still might not be a profitable move!) But there's more - so he bets the AQ out and they run out the board. The turn card is a 7, which gives the 64 an inside straight draw. You clearly hear Postle say, "oh shit!" - even though the cards have not been flipped up yet. It's pretty much case closed based on that one hand alone.

The best clip of his I've seen so far is the one where he bets $5,000 with A2 on a QQ45 flop in an uncapped 1/3 game. Nothing suspicious there.

I also like how, in his defense, people have started claiming that the RFID readers at their table make mistakes, so his non-showdown hands aren't necessarily what's displayed on the livestream - which, sure, if you believe that a mistaken RFID value is going to be something like "seven of clubs" instead of a UUID (or more likely something SHA-1 encrypted).

Although given the fact that what's going on here almost definitely involves somebody intercepting RFID signals, probably not SHA-1, lol

Watching some of this is distributing. I own RFID Tech & let me tell you graphics almost NEVER misread a hand, you'd have to have misregistered a card, meaning it would consistently be wrong. https://t.co/Hv2Nvn0Wlj

— Matt Berkey (@berkey11) October 1, 2019

You might be giving him too much credit - he seems to have an inside man and if so it is almost certainly that Justin Kuraitis dude who runs the room (during the 2 weeks Justin was in Vegas he played a much different style and actually lost a few sessions). some plausible theories I've heard is that he has access to the actual live stream on his phone or that he's got something stuffed in his hat that is telling him the hands via Bluetooth. someone noticed that his hat while he's playing is a different shape than his hat when he's doing interviews. also worth mentioning that he always seems to sit in seats 1 or 2 which are conveniently the ones that are on-camera the least.

the "RFID error" thing is curious - during that TT vs 88 hand where they both have full houses (and Mike somehow only loses about 200 bucks), apparently it was Justin himself who informed the commentators that he actually had 87, which makes his play a lot more sensible. more than that I think the commentators are speculating it's getting the cards wrong because his play makes no sense otherwise. (unless, y'know, he's cheating)

producer of Live at the Bike makes an interesting point:

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. Unless a player says so later, which would be 15/30 min later after it airs. How can the graphics person know cards are wrong live?

— Ryan Feldman (@TheRyanFeldman) October 3, 2019

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.

— Ryan Feldman (@TheRyanFeldman) October 3, 2019

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

— Ryan Feldman (@TheRyanFeldman) October 3, 2019

Literally zero reason, zero chance. I can’t think of any reason. We might suspect something is weird about a hand but we would never change the cards. Only if cards are shown down and the camera sees the cards are wrong, then we can edit it before clearing the graphics.

— Ryan Feldman (@TheRyanFeldman) October 3, 2019

many xps yeah the 95o one was the nail in the coffin for me. calling pre was bad enough but to lead jam the flop there is ridiculous

effectively revealing that you know he has 64 before the cards are even flipped up is pretty damning too. he seems to forget that he's not supposed to know what his opponent's cards are yet.

its just disappointing that the board didn't come completely blank because I'm curious what he would have done. would he be shameless enough to bluff at a dry side pot and win with 9 high?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixqxi9Aq84Y

sportscenter on the case now

Assuming no actual, physical evidence comes out (and nobody rolls over) I wonder if there's any chance this dude gets prosecuted. or if Stones has any liability to the players cheated.

I tried to explain this to a friend yesterday. It is like if there was a golfer who, for the last 2 years, was constantly shooting 40s. But he can only do it at this one course, which strangely is the only place he ever plays. Despite being apparently the greatest golfer in history, he has never given any thought to going pro. Not only that but his clubs are old and his swing looks like shit. He takes weird angles that no professional golfer would even think about. The course is set up so that, conceivably, someone could quickly swap out a ball and move it way closer to the pin. No one's been caught doing that, but drives keep magically appearing on the green. Every time. He also happens to be good friends with the owner of the course. And for whatever reason, whenever the owner's gone, he suddenly becomes average.

Now you know this guy is 100% cheating. No doubt about it. But do you have any evidence? If you lost a ton of money betting with this guy, is there any real recourse for you? Is "no one could possibly be this good" a valid argument in a court of law?

this is hella fascinating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH8Fjro2oJs

the fold with QJ...

first hand in that vid where he 4-bets the turn on QQ43 with A2 is also disgusting. the only person I've seen who even attempts stuff like that is Phil Ivey. only difference is that Ivey is sometimes wrong, and he doesn't rebluff all-in to give his opponent nearly 5:1 on a call. I know this is all hindsight but Postle's body language is just so off in that hand. He leans back, pretends to agonize, says "what do you HAVE!?" several times, makes that dumb smirk like, WELP LETS GAMBOOOOL while shoving the rest of his stack in. I've never seen another poker player act like that while in a big hand.

idk if any of yall are still playing online but man this week has been some pretty wild action on Ignition/Bovada, it's like vintage Partypoker up in here

Any tips on how to approach an app like that if I'm mainly interested in low stakes learning?

has anyone heard any good or bad things about postflop plus? I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago and while the spots it gives you are a bit limited, and I 100% have questions about some of the frequencies, the concept is amazing in theory. are there better apps or training sites going for something similar?

and yeah I can imagine now is a reallllly good time to be playing online poker

xxp - you mean how to deposit? I couldn't use any of my cards but if you buy one of those preloaded VISAs you can do it. Or if you wanna venture into Bitcoin you can deposit that way. Ignition goes down to $5 buy in tables with .02/.05 blinds so you can def play pretty low stakes

never heard of postflop plus...sadly I don't have much free time for anything but just playing these days. I'm not really good but I've been turning a steady profit on the $25 tables

anyway to give you some indication of how crazy it is now, I went one last round on a PLO table and played 3 consecutive hands with pots over 250bb (winning two of them)

That loss prevented me from scoring one of my biggest winning sessions ever, ‘twas a 4bet pot with AAxx, flopped all diamonds and shoved with the nut flush blocker but the guy obviously flopped the second nut flush

the action on ignition is fucking breathtaking right now, i also can't believe it actually works (i'm in NY where online gaming is v much illegal)

their servers are having a lot of trouble keeping up this week, it's always either laggy or down completely. worth sticking out though, what else are you gonna do right now?

definitely reminding me of the good old days where you'd get into 4-way 3bet pots with AA, flop would come 346 and you'd strongly suspect someone flopped a straight

allo experts

is there a recommended site that allows private rooms for a group of mates that doesnt require download?

the answer to that strongly depends on whether or not you live in the US. I know Pokerstars allows that and I assume they have a web interface by now. but you can't play it in the States.

funny story, I recently cashed in a bunch of "Ignition Miles" for ~$90 in the casino which has an insane rollover requirement (10x but it's really like 35x if you play Blackjack). apparently you can do it for tourney tickets but they're hard to find and I assumed they just went away. anyway I spent like 90 minutes trying to clear this, getting up to $200 and slowly grinding it away, hitting a big downswing with like 5% of the bonus to go, finally clearing it on the hand I lost my last dollar on

i've been running my usual poker nights using pokerrrr2
there's about 20 of us, and it's pretty smooth

anyway I guess I broke the cardinal rule, never brag about running good, I'm currently on a 40 buy-in downswing in cash, it is absolutely soul crushing

wishing some rungood on you man

playing semi-regularly on a private app (which is actually pretty amazing in terms of user-friendliness) and am pretty pleased with how I’m playing, though I have the same issue I always do when I play online, which is that I play well enough most of the time but then punt it back when I decide to get stoned and have nothing else to do

soooo tempted to start playing again...

what else is there to do?

thanks kev but it didn't work, dumped another 3 BIs last night

the thing that sucks about this downswing is that I'm seeing monsters under the bed, after 5-6 weeks of my opponents pretty much always having a set whenever the pot gets to a certain amount I'm getting super timid and not value betting in spots where I definitely should. Ignition in general seems to be pretty bad for my game. Last night I had a hand where I shoved with 2nd pair & a flush draw, fully expecting to get doinked but wound up getting called by pocket 2s. first thought was "how do you bluff when some players will punt off 100 BBs with an underpair?" second was "how am I getting my ass kicked by these guys?"

50 buy-ins now. starting to think I just might be bad but combing through the hand histories I don't feel like I'm making a lot of big mistakes, just getting a lot of stupid run outs, particularly in PLO. feels like a daily occurrence now where I flop top set + nut flush draw in a 3bet pot and still wind up losing a stack

love to tell myself "okay, June's a new month, clean slate" and then lose 11 out of the first 12 sessions (my one winning session was for 5 bucks lmao)

btw the case against Mike Postle was dismissed, fucking insane. he got away with it

wow

anybody been watching the doug polk/daniel negreanu heads up match? it’s really been a blast

Was watching when Negreanu was getting absolutely crushed, he basically lived out every HU nightmare scenario in like 30 minutes

Looks like he’s rebounded since

he was down about 950k or so and won about 140k in the last session, still down a ton. he’s definitely running bad, but doug’s also clearly the much better player. looks like he’ll play the full 25k hands so it’ll be interesting to see where it ends up. guessing doug +1.25 milly is reasonable

yeah I think DNegs is better than he often gets credit for but online HU vs. one of the best players in the world isn't it. props to him for giving it a shot though. HU vs. a good player can be brutal. you get put in so many spots you don't really have to deal with in 6max. I stopped playing HU because it was so psychologically taxing

doug hasn't played or really even studied in a couple years, but he was probably the best player in the world at that format less than half a decade ago and dnegs has next to no experience, it's a pretty big mismatch imo.