Poker Player Accused of Cheating on Live Stream

A poker player by the name of Mike Postle finds himself at the center of a cheating row after the poker community’s watched some extremely suspicious cash game hands from a Californian poker room.

Stones Gambling Hall in Citrus Heights, California regularly streams its cash games on the internet. Viewers tune in to watch $1/$3 and $5/$5 no-limit hold’em games that play quite loosely. Postle is a regular in these games and even has his own “Postle and Pals” personalized games. He is one of the stars of the show thanks to his loose-aggressive style that bamboozles opponents and viewers alike.

Postle is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, winner in Stones’ steamed games. Commentators swoon over him as he makes seemingly impossible calls or bulldozes his way to victory time and time again. People wonder how Postle manages to never lose any meaningful sums or endures a losing session. These poker fans may now have the answer: he is cheating.

Cheating Allegations Surface

Veronica Brill, a former commentator for the Stones live stream, sent several tweets on Saturday. These tweets drew attention to potential cheating in the Stones games, although Postle was not named. Brill’s tweets sparked a thread on the Two Plus Two poker forums and this, in turn, started an investigation.

Two Plus Two has a long history of outing cheating in live and online poker. The infamous POTRIPPER cheating scandal at the now-defunct Absolute Poker was outed on Two Plus Two. Countless more cases have been investigated over a period of several years.

Joey Ingram, a prominent member of the poker community, combed through hours of footage saved on YouTube. Ingram created a five-hour video of his own where he labeled several of Postle’s hands as suspect, without directly stating Postle was cheating. Ingram created a second video further explaining why certain hands were not normal.

Televised Hands Show Blatant Cheating

Several hands stand out from the crowd, mostly because they are ridiculous calls or perfectly timed bets. The hands do not follow Postle’s crazy image either. For example, Postle is involved in a quite ridiculous bet then three-bet hand on the river of a 6c-4s-Kh-Ah-Ad. Postle’s opponent only had a busted backdoor flush draw. Yet despite this crazy play, Postle managed to get away from pocket kings against aces preflop, and only called a single bet with a full house against a bigger full house.

Another questionable hand highlighting the now obvious cheating involved Team PokerStars Pro Chris Moneymaker in a $5/$5 cash game. A $45 straddle was in play, one player called, as did a second before one raised to $245 with ace-king. Moneymaker raised to $705, also with ace-king, and Postle called despite holding five-four offsuit. The action folded to the original raiser and he moved all-in for $2,900. Moneymaker re-shove for $4,100 and Postle called off his $3,400 stack.

High stakes cash game and tournament specialist Scott Seiver, is just one elite pro who has chimed in. After seeing the aforementioned nine-six hand, Seiver tweeted, “Holy sh*t I didn’t see this one. Anyone that doesn’t understand the clear cheat that happens here should switch games they play.”

Stones Gambling Hall announced it was suspending all poker broadcasts with immediate effect on October 2nd. The Stones tweet failed to mention any cheating, although it did say it was conducting an investigation with outside experts. No other comments have been made.

The cheating saga promises to roll on not least because of the large sums of money lost in the game. Postle is thought to have won at least $200,000 from these games, or approximately $1,400 per hour.

Poker Cheat Attempts to Defend Himself

Postle has attempted to defend himself by claiming he is a winning player over a 16-year period. He claims to be a big winner in online poker circles yet refuses to divulge his aliases. He has also failed to explain why a player who makes large sums of money and who appears to have exceptions poker skills grinds $1/$3 cash games after 16-years in the game, when the plays he has been making are so advanced they would not look out of place in $1,000/$2,000 games.

Sports betting guru Haralabos Voulgaris said it best when discussing Postle’s cheating. “What I am witnessing is either a time-travelling wizard, a cheat or the greatest poker player of all time that can’t seem to get his head about 1-3NL.”

Occam’s Razor states the simplest solution is most likely the right one. Using Voulgaris’ statement, Postle was most definitely cheating.

Matthew Pitt

If it’s something you can play online for real money, chances are Matthew knows a bit about it. He’s been writing about slots, craps and poker for the better part of the last decade. He’s written for PokerNews, PartyPoker and many other respected online gambling websites during the last nine years.

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