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Classic Games (Games)

Man Alleging Poker Cheating Demands Better Security in Livestreamed Games (msn.com) 102

Posted by EditorDavid from the upping-the-ante dept.
Last week the Los Angeles Times published a sympathetic portrait of Robbi Jade Lew, the woman facing unproven allegations of cheating in a high-stakes poker match.

This week the newspaper profiled the man making those accusations — Garrett Adelstein, known "as an affable guy who is known for taking even big losses in stride." "Garrett would have reacted normally if his opponent made a good, even heroic, call that cost him $100,000," said Jennifer Shahade, a pro poker player and chess champion. "I think the initial hand, the call and the situation would be suspicious under any circumstances, any gender."
In the profile we learn that Adelstein has 14 years of experience as a professional poker, and is "one of the game's best and most profitable high-stakes cash players, known to viewers of popular casino broadcasts for his loose-aggressive style of no-limit hold 'em and his willingness to buy in for enormous sums of money, bringing as much as $1 million to the table....

"On Sept. 29, Adelstein made the biggest bet of his life: risking his well-respected reputation, and possibly his poker career, when he accused rookie player Robbi Jade Lew of cheating in a $269,000 hand against him on Hustler Casino Live..." Adelstein, 36, hasn't played poker since. Whereas he once spent much of his time studying optimal strategy, reviewing past hands and appearing on streams from Hustler Casino in Gardena and Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, he is now hyper-focused on conducting his own investigation to prove his case. In a more than four-hour interview from his Manhattan Beach home on Tuesday, Adelstein said he was "extremely confident" that he was the target of a cheating ring involving not just Lew but other players and at least one member of the show's production crew. Lew, 37, denied the allegation, which she called "defamatory."

The drama has left Adelstein uncertain when he'll return to the poker table.... Adelstein says he has been cheated before. When he was 26, he was invited to a home game where he bought in for $100,000.... Adelstein said, he laid out his suspicions about the intricacies of the operation to the host and a business partner, and said he would go public with what happened. "They offered me a deal where they would refund me my money in exchange for my silence," he said. "And then they paid me in six installments, once a month, for a six-month period."

The incident, which he relayed on a poker podcast last year, showed Adelstein the darker side of poker and left him cautious.

He never played in a high-stakes home game with strangers again, choosing to exclusively play in casinos, where he reasoned cheating would be less likely. Still, "I'm always looking out for it," he said. "I'm not the world's most trusting guy when it comes to poker."
The article notes how major poker sites were busted 15 years ago for "superuser" accounts with cheating privileges — and a 2019 lawsuit in which dozens of pros sued a player and gambling hall accused of leaking info from the RFID-tagged cards uesd in their livestreams. "When it comes to stream security and these types of games, as professionals we're obviously always on the lookout so it doesn't happen again," poker player Matt Berkey said of the aftermath. "Garrett's one of the biggest players who plays on stream, so he himself is more of a potential target."

"Hustler Casino Live," the streaming show that hosted the now-infamous Sept. 29 game, also uses RFID playing cards. Since its first show aired in August 2021, it has become the world's most-watched poker stream, combining the drama of the game with huge amounts of cash, poker's top players, celebrities and other colorful personalities. "Hustler Casino Live" now has more than 1 million monthly unique viewers and 185,000 subscribers.

The show's games are streamed five days a week on a delay of one to four hours to prevent information from being passed to players live. But now its stream security has been called into question, with players saying tighter protocols need to be implemented. They've raised concerns over the number of employees who had access to the control room where hole cards were being monitored, and a few have said the stream should temporarily shut down while the investigation is ongoing....

"I thought that streamed poker was, at least by comparison to the other options, one of the last safe havens," Adelstein said. "And at this point, I have so little faith in that...."

"Live at the Bike," on which Adelstein has played several times, has been hitting him up since Sept. 29 in the hopes that he will join its stream. But he says he's not in the right headspace for it.

"There's I guess a world in the next several weeks or months where maybe I'm able to process this and want to play a poker game. But at the moment, that's not how I feel," he said.

"I'm not playing poker on a stream again unless I see tangible, noticeable, measurable differences in livestream security," he continued. "That's for my own benefit and it's for the benefit of the poker community at large."
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Man Alleging Poker Cheating Demands Better Security in Livestreamed Games More

Man Alleging Poker Cheating Demands Better Security in Livestreamed Games

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  • Two things (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @03:32PM (#62971739)

    A) Anyone who thinks online play, whether poker, blackjack, baccarat, etc, is secure and a "safe haven" is deluding themselves. It is far more susceptible to cheating and other shenanigans than live playing.

    B) This guy sounds like election deniers. He "knows" there was cheating yet can't show any instance of said cheating (in this case).

    Crap happens. It's always possible Lew got extraordinarily lucky and he just happened to be the person playing her at that moment in time.

    • I agree with your first assertion, but because of what you point out, it seems perfectly reasonable that he should request that stronger security precautions be implemented. Technology has made it almost trivially easy for players to collude in these games.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Of course it is reasonable, he has 14 years of experience as a professional poker!

        In the profile we learn that Adelstein has 14 years of experience as a professional poker, and is "one of the game's best...

        Although he doesn't beat my brother with 25 years experience as an professional airplane nor my step father with 30 years experience as a professional bus!

    • Online cheating has been uncovered in the past by statistical analysis of hand histories.

    • A) Anyone who thinks online play, whether poker, blackjack, baccarat, etc, is secure and a "safe haven" is deluding themselves. It is far more susceptible to cheating and other shenanigans than live playing.

      I don't know what you think he was saying, but he was talking about live, in-person poker streamed online, not "online play" of poker or anything else you listed.

      "I thought that streamed poker was, at least by comparison to the other options, one of the last safe havens," Adelstein said. "And at this point, I have so little faith in that...."

    • We know that they are cheating, example below:

      https://www.wsj.com/articles/c... [wsj.com]

    • Blackjack and baccarat are different in that they are played against the "house." Depending on the jurisdiction, the house might be cheating to juice margins although there is no good reason to do so since they have a built-in advantage! Players certainly go to great lengths to cheat but likely have zero success. It's pretty easy for the house to secure a house vs player game played online.

  • Loose/Aggressive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jean-Clod ( 8104012 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @03:53PM (#62971801)
    Anyone who plays "loose/aggressive" really can't complain when their bluff gets called. And yes, going all-in on the turn when you don't have the hand (which should have been obvious at the table) is a bluff, even if the odds favor you on the river. The guy is acting like a sexist tool, and he'd best apologize and drop it if he wants to save his reputation.

    • Why is he sexist? I read the entire article. At no point does the article quote him saying anything sexist, nor state or imply he had previously said anything even remotely sexist.

      Do you have information from elsewhere to back up that bold assertion?

    • Which is why she should have raised. Although if he was already "all in," it wouldn't have change the outcome.

      • She was all-in, he was not (from what I understand).

        • That's a bit more interesting (although makes the rest of the story even less so). You are now into the nuances of poker beyond my knowledge. But I don't see how she would be "all in" *before* the call. But if she could only call (not raise), this is a non-story.

          • He had more money than her, so when he went "all in" it was only up to the amount of money she had. That is, she would have lost everything, but he wouldn't have.

  • Of all the poker scandals (Score:3)

    by Slashythenkilly ( 7027842 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @03:56PM (#62971805)
    The Absolute Poker scandal should have been the red flag to any serious players that no online venue is safe.

  • Digging Deeper (Score:3)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @04:12PM (#62971837)

    Adelstein said he was "extremely confident" that he was the target of a cheating ring involving not just Lew but other players and at least one member of the show's production crew. Lew, 37, denied the allegation, which she called "defamatory."

    To put it in poker terms, unless his hand is a whole lot better than he's shown so far he really needs to fold.

    On a separate note, I want to make a comment I now need to hunt around for the 'X' on the ad that's covering up the comment text box?? Between this and the "Newsletter" subscription popup something is going seriously screwy with /.

  • The guy should let it drop (Score:4, Informative)

    by imidan ( 559239 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @04:27PM (#62971881)

    I think some people who gamble a lot have ways of tricking themselves into believing that it's not really gambling for them, because they have a 'system' or they've been historically lucky or good at their game. I've played at a table with people like this before, and it can be a real drag. If I do something that doesn't fit their system, then I have somehow contributed to their loss. For example, at a blackjack table, I take a card in a situation where their system says I shouldn't, and it doesn't help me. But that card would have helped them. Therefore, I have taken 'their' card according to their system, and it's my fault that they lose the hand. Or I bluff with a handfull of slop and they fold on a hand that's weak, but still better than mine.

    From watching the video of this hand play out, the guy was bluffing. He didn't have the cards, and he made a big bet anyway. The woman who called his bluff also didn't have the cards, but she won anyway with a crummy hand. That's not cheating; it's gambling. And that guy may think he's a great poker player, and maybe he even is, but at the end of the day, there's a very strong element of chance in poker, and you can lose even when the odds are in your favor. (And they weren't, particularly, in his case.)

    • Re:The guy should let it drop (Score:4, Insightful)

      by overnight_failure ( 1032886 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @04:45PM (#62971911)
      The problem with super experienced players (of any game) is that they expect other people to play a certain way when they are also experienced, because why would you play any other way if you were a good player. This is super evident in e-sport titles like Rainbow 6 Siege. You get pro league guys dying to much less experienced players because they did something no 'pro' player would do (take a certain position in the map etc.).

      Superficially, this feels like a similar situation. He expected the other player to play a certain way, they didn't and he lost. Essentially he's coming across as salty.
      • As a coach in high school wrestling, I dreaded the first week of wrestling practice because the kids who had never done it before would behave all erratically compared to seasoned wrestlers. With experienced wrestlers, attempted moves generally have a known finish. So even if you get caught off-guard in a move, your body more or less knows how to respond, and the other guy knows how to finish without harming anyone. With noobs, they don't know shit and all bets are off. I hope your insurance premiums ar

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I seem to recall some kid beat a grandmaster with one of the well known early game traps that lets you win in only half a dozen moves, many years ago. Can't find the details now, and I think it was just a friendly game, but the excuse given was that the use of that trap was so unexpected the master didn't even consider it when making his moves.

      • Poker has never been a quiet game. There is always room for gossip and scandals. There is always someone unhappy. There is nothing worse than being dependent on someone else's logic and someone else's mood. I preferred online betting - https://1xbet.com.gh/ [1xbet.com.gh] The main thing here is my decision. And some luck. There are no extra people, no intermediate chain, no resentment.

    • the guy was bluffing. He didn't have the cards, and he made a big bet anyway. The woman who called his bluff also didn't have the cards, but she won anyway with a crummy hand. That's not cheating; it's gambling.

      That depends. If she was calling a possible bluff, that's gambling. If she knew his cards, that's cheating.

      • Re:The guy should let it drop (Score:4, Insightful)

        by imidan ( 559239 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @05:40PM (#62972035)
        He was sitting on 7-8 clubs with 9-10 clubs already on the table. She had a J clubs and 4 hearts. He has the stronger hand at that moment (at that point, they favored him 70%). Then another card comes out, 3 hearts. Now he can win with a flush if any club comes out, win with a straight if a 6 or J comes out, win with a pair if a 7 or 8 comes out, and she's relying on drawing 4 or J to get a pair, or for the last card to be trash and win with her high J. They still favor him 53%. I don't see any reason why, if she knew his cards, she would call, especially putting her all-in. It seems more likely she would have folded out early if she knew his cards. I think it's more likely that she made a mistake and misremembered her hand or played recklessly. If you're cheating, it makes more sense to use cheating to win when it's a sure thing, not to go all-in on slightly worse than coin-toss odds.

        • Re:The guy should let it drop (Score:4, Interesting)

          by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @08:25PM (#62972339)

          I don't see any reason why, if she knew his cards, she would call

          Ding ding ding! Bingo! Unless she knew what was going to come up on the River, even if she knew his cards, it was completely stupid of her to call. He had an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw, to her J. She gambled. She won. End of story in my opinion.

          • I don't see any reason why, if she knew his cards, she would call

            Ding ding ding! Bingo! Unless she knew what was going to come up on the River, even if she knew his cards, it was completely stupid of her to call. He had an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw, to her J. She gambled. She won. End of story in my opinion.

            She was the favorite. 24 cards win for her, 20 for him.

        • Yes, indeed. We call this the "Leroy Jenkins Strategy." Highly scientific. It's well documented.

        • He was sitting on 7-8 clubs with 9-10 clubs already on the table. She had a J clubs and 4 hearts. He has the stronger hand at that moment (at that point, they favored him 70%). Then another card comes out, 3 hearts. Now he can win with a flush if any club comes out, win with a straight if a 6 or J comes out, win with a pair if a 7 or 8 comes out, and she's relying on drawing 4 or J to get a pair, or for the last card to be trash and win with her high J. They still favor him 53%.

          When he went all-in she was the favorite. His 20 outs are 8 clubs, 6 non-club straight cards, and 6 pairing cards. Her outs are the 24 other cards.

    • Professional poker playing is not analogous to casino gambling. Yes there is an element of chance (like most any competition). But at that level, chance is a smaller element than skill (which is not the case when sitting around a commercial blackjack table). Yes, blackjack players are suspicious and not very fun to be around. Even in games like poker with an element of chance, there are certain plays that are always wrong. And calling a bluff with a bluff is one of those that makes sense under no circu

  • This Guy.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by GeorgeMaverick ( 7680960 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @04:56PM (#62971945)
    No article on cheating during "delayed" streamed casino poker can be complete without mentioning Mike Postle. This man obviously had a casino insider helping him to systematically cheat fellow poker players. Fellow players' hole cards or at least bet/check/fold decisions were relayed to his cell phone. And he got away with it for many months. And he was finally outed/accused by a female player who was initially derided and ignored. Last I heard a group of players who had been cheated sued the casino and had their case thrown out for jurisdictional reasons. There may be more recent updates than what I am aware of but I believe so far he casino (Stones Gambling Hall near Sacramento) has essentially gotten away with one of their employees defrauding patrons.

  • He was bluffing, maybe she could tell... (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @05:46PM (#62972043)
    From TFA:

    Adelstein was holding the seven and eight of clubs; Lew the jack of clubs and the four of hearts. After the flop — the first three communal cards — Adelstein had a straight flush draw, a hand with a lot of potential to win. Lew’s hand at that point was objectively terrible, but she called his bet anyway.

    The fourth communal card, known as the turn, didn’t help either player. Adelstein semi-bluffed and bet out again; Lew raised. Adelstein responded by pushing all in for the remainder of Lew’s chips: $109,000.

    Lew called — a shockingly unorthodox move that paid off. She took down the huge $269,000 pot when Adelstein failed to improve his hand after all the cards were dealt.

    Though his had "potential", they both had bad hands. He was bluffing while hoping to fill out his straight flush; it didn't happen. Maybe he has a tell and/or she simply sensed something was off -- and maybe doesn't exactly know why she could tell. They both plowed on; she got lucky and he got burned. Would he be complaining if he had lost to a guy or admiring his gutsy play?

    • What does her being female have to do with this?

      I read the entire article. I saw nothing in there directly or indirectly from him or anyone else saying anything that could be taken as sexism.

      Do you have information from elsewhere?

      On what do you base that bold assertion that his complaint is due to her sex?

      • Would he be complaining if he had lost to a guy or admiring his gutsy play?

        On what do you base that bold assertion that his complaint is due to her sex?

        It wasn't an assertion, just a question. Take the chip off your shoulder.
        Unfortunately, sexism (subtle or overt) in sports and gaming isn't unknown or even uncommon.

        When this story broke earlier on /. someone else here expressed the same thought (before I did).
        I don't think it's a wholly unreasonable thought.

        • I think it's a wholly unreasonable thought drawn from thin air based on nothing which besmirches a man for no reason.

          It only says we should always assume men are evil and women are always innocent victims due solely to having a vagina.

          It's a bunch of nonsense and not worth asking or raising in any way.

          Why not say he accused her because of her race or the dress she wore or her shoes or her hair style or where she was raised? None of those were referenced in the article either. But suddenly for no reason ou

          • Ya, no. It's not an unreasonable thought or question and thinking/asking it doesn't besmirch anyone. Asking questions is how things get resolved. If it's not true, then it's not true.

            Why not say he accused her because of her race or the dress she wore or her shoes or her hair style or where she was raised? None of those were referenced in the article either.

            People have wondered about things she wore, like her ruby ring, bulge in her stocking (which reported was her microphone pack) and her sunglasses -- all noted in TFA. And if other people have actually wondered these things, it's not unreasonable to speculate that Adelstein could too.

            But as to casting aspersions without any

            • Yes he besmirched her reputation with no proof. Absolutely.

              The right answer is to crush him in court for defamation.

              The wrong answer is to besmirch him as sexist based on nothing more than her vagina status.

              I'm not a pro level poker player, I don't pretend to know what either was or should have been thinking, what the right play was, the odds, etc etc etc. and none of those things is important to my point. My point is strictly that smearing him with sexism charges without evidence is wrong. There is no

              • Oh and why I am arguing in his defense? Because I'm an absolutist about fairness, justice, and treating everyone in an absolutely unbiased manner. He might be a dick leveling false zero evidence charges but there are just and fair ways to deal with that. Falsely charging someone with some random crap that will follow him for the rest of his life that he's not even guilty of when he's already going to get crushed for his real wrong doing is double jeopardy and just wrong.

          • Would this guy shake down another man in the hallway like he did Lew? If not, why not?
    • She called a bluff with a bluff. That's something that's simply not done. If you raise, you force the bluffer to reconsider. If you fold, you at least aren't out a large stack of chips. Calling basically turns it into a complete game of chance. It's a nonsense move. The best explanation is that she misread her had. Even if she was cheating to the point of knowing what his cards were, calling would have been the wrong play. If she knew his hand and the order of all of the cards in the deck, the call

      • I don't necessarily disagree.

        So far, the best armchair explanation I've heard is that she misread or miscalculated things and got (very) lucky. The contrary to that is that she unknowingly or subconsciously read things correctly -- more likely cues from him rather than the cards -- and acted on that when she, more logically, shouldn't have. I think the phrase is "went with her gut".

        In any case, either she somehow cheated in some currently undiscovered way or got very lucky, accidentally or not. All t

        • It is very reasonable to "go with your gut" in terms of thinking that your opponent is bluffing. However, once you are sure your opponent is bluffing, you still play the correct strategy in response. How she knew/thought he was bluffing isn't interesting. She's a professional poker player and that's her job. But the second part is that she still has to play her hand correctly and the call was the wrong response. However, none of that is evidence of cheating.

          • Right. A bad move/play even with a good/lucky outcome, is, or may be, a mistake, but is not necessarily/automatically cheating. TFA noted (below) that Adelstein apparently tweeted that she must have cheated and that definitive an assertion seems premature:

            That night, in a lengthy statement posted on Twitter, Adelstein reasoned that Lew never would have continued playing with the cards she had unless she was cheating, ...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      If you watch the video, in the aftermath, while they're counting the chips and matching them from Garrett's pile, she says (I think a couple of times) "I've done this to you before." It is completely conceivable that she had a tell. It's also completely conceivable that she didn't care about losing $109K (she and her husband have got money), but if she won she may rattle him. And rattle him she did.

  • What would happen if they stop RFID chip cards? (Score:3)

    by tekram ( 8023518 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @07:02PM (#62972191)
    What these sites don't explain is what would happen if they stopped using these RFID cards and use older technology that cards can be id but not in real time.
    • Really depends on how the live stream is setup. I've only watched poker on ESPN. The hands and percentages are all displayed. I don't know if that is coming from RFID on the cards or cameras behind the players. Even with no information about the cards, a live stream is an incredible source of information. You could have a dozen people watching other players for tells in a way that one can't do at the table. (You can only look at one person at a time. Scanning the table is still a form of time slicing

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      I think they should stop using RFID cards. It's just too open. They would have to go back to having software "read" the cards via cameras under the table or at the edge, like they used to, and hope the players don't stack their two cards.
      • No need for software. You just input the hands as they are shown. These shows got dozens of people working during filming. One of them used to do that. One of them still can.

  • The Behavior Panel don't think she is lying (Score:3)

    by mikaere ( 748605 ) on Sunday October 16, 2022 @07:13PM (#62972199)
    Four body language experts have reviewed the footage of the game and it looks like Robbi Lew was telling the truth. She had a bad hand, made an atrocious call and got lucky. You can see their video here [youtube.com].

  • Wait, what? I think I see the problem here.

    BRB, going to hit the local Indian-feather-not-dot casino with my HackRF.

  • I see a lot of comments that show people are really misinformed when it comes to poker, and don't understand the specific play that resulted in Garrett calling his opponent a cheater.

    Let me start by observing I don't know whether or not Robbi cheated. I don't think the evidence is that strong, but it isn't exactly weak either.

    Robbi's call made no sense at all. When Garrett shoved all in with low equity (a bluff), the play makes sense because of what is called 'fold equity'. If you think your opponent'

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