ILX Poker Players Unite

just watched it again thinking "okay lets assume she thinks she has J3". certainly all the conflicting explanations would make sense then, because she was probably embarrassed for misreading her hand and got defensive because she didn't understand why her play looked so suspicious. I mean that's what Phil Ivey thinks happened, so who am I to disagree??? but then you get to the turn call and she's staring at her hand for like 15 seconds! how could it be a misread??

ok last thing. she has tournament results on Hendon Mob going back to 2010, so "she has no clue"/"she's just a really terrible player" doesn't really hold water either

Misread hand is the most credible explanation, but she also talks about how "You keep letting me do this to you," so there's some broader context in the game. Maybe she just had his number somehow? Or maybe it's just what it looks like, a really terrible bluff that got lucky.

'misread hand' doesn't make sense since she double checks her hole cards before calling. the clip posted cuts some of it out but on stream she was looking at her hand for a while

bluffs by definition aren't really suspicious, since you can argue "I thought my opponent was weak and would fold". people make weird bluffs all the time. but this is a call which means the only way she can win is if her J high is actually good. which it really only can be vs. this specific hand. when Mike Postle, Potripper, NioNio etc. got started getting heat it wasn't because of their bluffs it was because of their calls

I’ve been in that situation where a player knows the other is full of shit and wants to call them on it, and might even lose sight of how weak their own hand is while doing it. Not when there’s $100K+ at stake, but still.

I was watching this live, agree completely with froggy

The added fuck-you of her having the 5th card in his straight flush is pretty amazing.

so what I think might've happened is she caught a glimpse of his hand from across the table. maybe the cards were dealt high, maybe Garrett lifted them up a little too much, doesn't have to be a lot, just enough for her to know that he's got two small clubs. imo this kind of explains everything, it explains why she was so cagey about it and was offering up a ton of contracting explanations, and also explains why she felt she should give the money back. and it doesn't involve her having to wear a device and have an inside man and all that. playing in casinos you accidentally catch little glimpses of people's cards all the time. not exactly what they are but something like "it's a red non-face card". not unreasonable to think someone may find themselves in position to act on that information.

also answers the question of "if she was cheating why did she pick the most suspicious spot possible", well maybe that's the only spot where she had additional info

Garrett had one of the stoniest stone-cold looks I’ve ever seen once he saw her cards.

if nothing else I appreciate the sheer David Lynchian quality to the whole thing. not only does the hand make no sense but everything she says and does afterwards makes it even weirder. there are ways to counter pretty much any argument you could make about it. too bad we'll probably never know the truth

garrett also left the game after this hand and weirdly she gave him his money back too

Garrett blocked me. Guilty as charged. What an honest man. He cornered me & threatened me. If he has the audacity to give me the death stare ON camera, picture what it’s like OFF camera. I was pulled out of the game & forced to speak to him in a dark hallway. Full details to come

— Robbi Jade Lew (@RobbiJadeLew) September 30, 2022

well of course you got the death stare on camera, you just made maybe the craziest call in televised poker history in a huge pot

kinda fun to see people proclaim her innocence by saying "she's a bad player, bad players make bad plays", it kinda belies the notion that most of the people commenting on this have no clue what they're talking about. just because someone is bad at something doesn't mean they do the worst possible thing every chance they get. if an NBA player suddenly starts shooting at the wrong hoop you don't say "what do you expect, he sucks". Robbi's play here is one of the few spots in poker where there's a clearly wrong decision, even if you have a read you are very confident in. this doesn't mean she cheated of course but the only times I've seen calls like this are when the person was revealed to be a superuser OR when they were 37 Coors Lights deep

obviously Adelstein handled this in a really bad way but he's also one of the most experienced and recognizable players out there now so I at least put some stock into the idea that if he thinks something's up then something probably is. its not like he hasn't lost big pots on camera in bizarre ways before.

This is also my home game, so was a fun detail:

J4o is our home game’s prop hand ( the buzzsaw ), but today its ceiling has been reached. Who knew there would be so much collateral damage 🎈

— 🎈Brandon Shack-Harris (@Oscillator_WSOP) September 30, 2022

wow looks like this story has actually become somewhat mainstream as evidenced by bad takes like this one getting 250k+ likes

I am hearing now that dudes are mad at a woman for beating them in poker because she gambled on a statistically bad hand after reading her opponent’s tells, which is, as far as I was aware, the exact reason they call poker “gambling” and not “statistics”

— Katie Martin (@katiedimartin) October 2, 2022

yeah, it's been all over the place, the idea that he was bluffing therefore it was smart of her to call seems like a pretty plausible description of her (very wrong) thought process

In the low-stakes regular game where I play, there's one player in particular who gets morally incensed any time someone beats him on a hand they obviously should have folded. It's a lot easier to do when there's only like $5 in the pot, of course, but to him it's the principle of the thing: People shouldn't play bad poker, regardless of the outcome.

in poker you want people to play bad against you lol

this is true, but the flip side is sometimes they win regardless, and it's foolish to be a big crybaby about it

yeah if you cant accept that the worse play wins sometimes then poker is prob not the game for you

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, seeing his cards could also work, if you had a cheating set up with someone telling you the cards or whatever it would be an insane spot to use that cheat in but people do insane things

always funny when you misread your hand thinking youre strong and end up winning on what was really a bluff

yeah if you cant accept that the worse play wins sometimes then poker is prob not the game for you

Yeah, he actually quit playing for about six months once because he was so mad about a bad beat. I agree this is his problem, not poker's.

he should play chess the good play wins every time

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