Six Months Later, Poker Player Garrett Adelstein Still Thinks He Was Cheated (pokernews.com) 66
In October professional poker player Garrett Adelstein lost to a relative newcomer. Last month 15,000 viewers tuned in for his first new public interview, Poker News reports. Adelstein "reiterated his confidence that he was cheated," and said he will not fund the $135,000 the newcomer gave hiim as a peace offering.
[Newcomer Robbi Jade Lew] denied cheating and Hustler's third-party investigation concluded there was "no evidence of wrongdoing." Early in the two-hour interview, Polk asked his guest if he still feels the same about what went down on that memorable evening. "In essence, I stand completely by the statement I made. I think it's extremely likely that I was cheated," the high-stakes pro responded... Adelstein said that Lew "has a lot of balls" to return to live-stream poker after, as he claims, cheating him out of a massive pot...
Over the past six months, numerous poker fans have called for Adelstein to return [the $135,000] to, as they believe, its rightful owner. He instead donated it to a charity. But still many believe the right decision is for him to give it back to Lew. Polk asked him if he would do so. "No, I will not be refunding Robbi the money, period. I am extremely confident I was cheated in this hand," Adelstein defiantly stated. Adelstein then pleaded with those who are on "Team Robbi" to put themselves in his shoes and and think about how they'd react if they felt they were cheated at the poker table.
The next week — on April 1st — Poker News jokingly reported that Robbi Jade Lew had published a new book titled If I Did It..
The April Fool's day satire quotes Robbi Jade Lew as saying "I thought it would be fun to write a book about how I would have cheated if I'd actually done it. Which I didn't...."
Over the past six months, numerous poker fans have called for Adelstein to return [the $135,000] to, as they believe, its rightful owner. He instead donated it to a charity. But still many believe the right decision is for him to give it back to Lew. Polk asked him if he would do so. "No, I will not be refunding Robbi the money, period. I am extremely confident I was cheated in this hand," Adelstein defiantly stated. Adelstein then pleaded with those who are on "Team Robbi" to put themselves in his shoes and and think about how they'd react if they felt they were cheated at the poker table.
The next week — on April 1st — Poker News jokingly reported that Robbi Jade Lew had published a new book titled If I Did It..
The April Fool's day satire quotes Robbi Jade Lew as saying "I thought it would be fun to write a book about how I would have cheated if I'd actually done it. Which I didn't...."
My nephew thinks everyone cheats when he loses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My nephew thinks everyone cheats when he loses (Score:5, Insightful)
But he's 7, so it's a little less obnoxious when he starts tossing accusations around. Seems like the same thing though: "I don't know how you did it, but you cheated! I'm supposed to win, if I lose it's because you're a cheater!"
This kind of thing seems to be going around ...
Re:My nephew thinks everyone cheats when he loses (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's really obnoxious when whiner is in his 70s.
Re:My nephew thinks everyone cheats when he loses (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, we seem to have more and more people that are unaware or in denial as to how reality works. For a 7 year old, that is acceptable. For an adult, it is not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:My nephew thinks everyone cheats when he loses (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more likely he just has a huge ego and can't accept that he was beaten by a novice making what he considers the wrong moves. In poker it can be frustrating playing against people who make plays that the odds are heavily against and win anyway, and that seems to be what he's throwing a tantrum about.
Anyone who watches the playback can see that she wasn't cheating though, she would have had to know multiple cards remaining and her banter with him clearly suggests that her play is not about strategy or statistics. Luck just fell in her favor, as happens a fair amount in poker, and he can't accept that for the very reasons she was taunting him about at the table. There was absolutely nothing suspect about the hand, the behavior, it was just a bad beat and a guy that doesn't want to have lost to her when he thinks he played a better game. And in poker you can lose even when you play the better game, easily and frequently. He should know better.
Re: My nephew thinks everyone cheats when he loses (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I have a friend who is like that with PvP video games. He is in his 40s though so it's a bit more obnoxious.
Sore loser (Score:5, Interesting)
As anyone who has a handle on statistics knows, the probability an experienced player will lose to a newcomer is guaranteed. It's just a matter of when. That when just happened to be now.
What we have is another Phil Hellmuth in the making. A whiner. He'll never get over it. At any moment he'll regale you of his fanciful story of being "cheated".
What's next? The folks of the Premier League complaining Leiscester cheated when they won [bbc.co.uk]? The most unlikely of teams captures the Premier League title. Must have been cheating.
Re:Sore loser (Score:5, Informative)
The real kicker is the "third party investigation". Which says they found no evidence of cheating.
So yeah, the guy lost and he 'feels' it must be due to cheating. He ought to be banned from the table for how he handled his loss.
Re: Sore loser (Score:2)
Re:Sore loser (Score:5, Insightful)
"He cheated!"
how do you know?
"because I'm better than he is!"
oh. I see.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Sore loser (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Sore loser (Score:3)
You can play a hand of poker perfectly and lose multiple times in a row and if the players are "equally matched" in that they both make statistically and tactically perfect choices its totally just luck.
An inexperienced player can force a no-limit to be mostly luck based too, unlike say football.
This is a perfect example of a guy who didn't understand he was gambling when he was gambling and threw a hissy fit over it - the way he was "cheated" was by the opponent making it luck based.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you have no idea what you're talking about re poker being "a game of chance". And what you think you might know about "market day-traders".
If you put two calculating players against each other, I agree, it is not a game of chance. But players are not purely calculating. Players with a pair of twos don't always fold on the river. That's what makes it "a game of chance".
I don't know what hands were dealt here, but if Adelstein lost, he clearly did not have the better hand (or at least, he didn't think he did, if he folded). Because in the end, from all hands that are shown, the better hand wins.
Re: (Score:2)
Poker is still not "a game of chance". Chance plays a role, but the same could be true about most things in life. It's especially visible in competitive endeavors with immediate visibility of results. Say sports. Or day traders. In Poker, one finds the same names show up consistently at final tables of tournaments. Any decent statistician will run the numbers and determine that it's not "chance".
As for the particular Adelstein dispute, I have no view. Skilled players lose to newcompers all the time (which i
Re: (Score:2)
Poker is a game of chance, but the odds aren't that difficult to wrap your brain around. That's not to say if you always play correctly, you'll always win-- but over time, you'l come out ahead if you play "correctly". There is no "house" in poker.
But that's playing for money, not playing in a tournament. In a tournament, everything goes out the window, because for every player who knows what they're doing, you've got two or three who are guaranteed to play stupidly, AND WIN.
Re: (Score:2)
I seem to recall some kid beating a chess grand master with the fastest possible win one time. The GM just wasn't expecting such an obvious tactic.
Sometimes noobs can be dangerous because they don't do what experienced players do.
Re:Sore loser (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes noobs can be dangerous because they don't do what experienced players do.
If we don't know what we're doing, neither does the enemy.
Re: (Score:2)
As a follow up, here is an "expert" dissecting her play [youtube.com] and he mentions on several occasions she is doing things a "professional" wouldn't normally do.
Re: (Score:3)
watched that video, he basically hypes the video, "we're gonna look at the facts." And basically says, "oh a pro wouldn't play like this." and a lot of throwing shade without fact. Which honestly doesn't mean much, once you remove the hype... a pro wouldn't do this isn't really evidence, it's opinion. Even her shaking could be a nervous tick or just throwing people off
sure, he plays differently than him, she makes mistakes or could be making mistakes by design to throw people off... which isn't cheating...
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Sore loser (Score:4, Interesting)
It may well be there was some unsanctioned innovation going on here. It may be there the correctly person did not receive the reward. But that is the risk in playing games for reward instead of fun. They are based on contrived and arbitrary rules. And depend on a complex system of fallible safeguards to enforce those rules. And a gullible population that believes those rules are meaningful and can be evenly enforced.
Re:Sore loser - Games of Skill (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sore loser - Games of Skill (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, and I think that is actually what makes it so addictive to gamblers - they can either believe in 'luck' to overcome a skill deficit, or believe their skill can overcome the random factor. And switch between them depending on which is better for their ego in the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. Dude tried to push, he got pushed back harder, he lost. Happens all the time in poker with men, and you never hear about it. The big difference here for him is that he lost to a woman. That his fragile ego could not handle, and his violent asshole side came out for all to see.
Re: (Score:2)
Chess for example is a pure game of skill, you have total information about the situation and know all of the potential moves that can be made.
Technically there is still luck in chess, inasmuch as you can only calculate so far as a human, and you have to hope that the rest is good enough.
That's why Magnus Carlson loses sometimes, even though he is by far the best player in the world.
Re: Sore loser (Score:2)
You can force a poker hand be luck based.
The entire trying to read your opponent is about trying to counter that you can force the opponent to yield or accept a chance based outcome.
Sure it evens out by statistics after enough plays to call it skill based but its not like you couldn't lose to a random nobody - its very much not like boxing
Re: Sore loser (Score:2)
Isn't evidence, but expert intuition matters. (Score:2)
That would cut off any avenue for a sore loser to keep making a stink.
Personall
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. An actual professional knows this. Intuition is a reason to look closer, but it is not solid evidence.
Re: (Score:2)
"Intuition" is just reasoning you can't articulate... which means you don't have a solid conscious understanding of it, which means you could be wrong in any number of ways and be clueless about it.
It's something you follow up on until it's a solid chain of evidence and reason and is no longer 'intuition'.
(So yes, I agree with you!)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks.
He should shut up (Score:2)
The thing is, if she could actually see his cards she would've folded. Her play makes absolutely no sense except as an inexperienced player making a mistake, or a crazy bluff hoping he'd fold. He doesn't make himself look any better by continuing to insist she cheated.
Re: (Score:2)
That makes no sense.
If she could see his hand, she absolutely calls because she's winning on every street.
Re: (Score:2)
That makes no sense.
If she could see his hand, she absolutely calls because she's winning on every street.
Clarifying that she would be able to call pre, flop, turn, and river because she could see she's ahead every step. It would be a different story if he went all in pre flop, she called, and the run out went how it did.
Re: (Score:2)
She wasn't though. He had a better hand until the river card was turned over. Unless you mean if she could see not only his private cards, but also the turn and the river. But that would require collusion with the house.
Re: (Score:2)
She wasn't though. He had a better hand until the river card was turned over. Unless you mean if she could see not only his private cards, but also the turn and the river. But that would require collusion with the house.
No he didn't have a better hand. He may have had better odds to get the cards he needed to win, but he never had a better hand.
Pre flop:
he had 87s
she had j4o
She's ahead. J high beats 8 high.
Odds might be in his favor but if the board doesn't improve for him, she wins.
Flop is 10 10 9 with 2 clubs
She still has the winning hand (her J high beats the 8 high he's holding)
he has a great chance to come out ahead if he hits his club or straight draw. the odds are good for him with 2 cards left , but again
Re: (Score:2)
All of which sounds really plausible. Except all the money was in BEFORE the river was dealt.
A game of chance (Score:2)
It's called a game of chance because while skill improves your odds, even perfect play cannot assure a win.
"Professional" behaves like a child... (Score:2)
Why is this news? We have big-ego people that think chance and reality cannot harm them all the time.
Re: (Score:1)
She had the balls to call him down with jack-high. He's on perma-tilt now, stopped playing poker and has done nothing but trying to cope with his butthurt, broken ego and shrunk penis by bullying Robbi, crying himself to sleep and trying to convince himself and others he was cheated. Fascinating.
She should sue. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As of now, he believes his statements. He also looks like an ass right now, as nothing has been proven and the evidence and public opinion is going her way. So this would just turn people against her, when she's actually reputation wise in a really good spot righ
Re: (Score:1)
That's not true. At common law, there is no requirement that the defendant know his statement is false or that he intended harm. If Law wants to sue she can establish all the elements of a libel cause of action.
Re: (Score:2)
Second, the burden of proof for defamation [jacquelinescottlaw.com] has 4 items:
1) a false statement purporting to be fact
2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person
3) Fault amounting to negligence
4) damages or some harm to the reputation
Only 2 is provable. 4 is questionable, as right now gi
Re: (Score:2)
Another Wi-Fi enabled anal probe? (Score:1)
It seems like we have an epidemic of anal intrusion in professional level table games.
Not seeing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Huh...I'm still searching for the "stuff that matters" angle here...
Re: (Score:2)
That's nothing... (Score:1)
Donald Trump** still thinks he won the last election.
TWO YEARS LATER.
Re: (Score:1)
Loser calls winner a cheater (Score:2)
More about this after the lunch break in highschool.
double negative? (Score:2)
On April Fool's Day, Lew states:
"I thought it would be fun to write a book about how I would have cheated if I'd actually done it. Which I didn't...."
If you are saying that you "didn't" on April Fool's Day, what are you really saying?
Re: (Score:2)
On April Fool's Day, Lew states:
"I thought it would be fun to write a book about how I would have cheated if I'd actually done it. Which I didn't...."
If you are saying that you "didn't" on April Fool's Day, what are you really saying?
It's just an OJ Simpson joke. Don't overthink it
Re: (Score:2)
Not really taking any April Fool's statement too seriously, just saying.