Published on
Update on
Author
  • Postle’s accusers rally up and file a lawsuit
  • $30 million sought in damages from Postle and Stones employees
  • Professional keep posting suspicious footage of Postle’s games and change of strategy

Mike Postle’s near-perfect games at the Stones Live Poker between July and September have caught the eye of Veronica Brill, who publicly suggested that the player had been cheating. Now, a lawsuit by Brill and 24 other players is about to find out.

Accusations Against Mike Postle Cheating Continue

Mike Postle has been a divisive name in the poker community recently. On September 28, Veronica Brill, a former commentator on Stones Live Poker, Stones Gambling Hall, accused Postle of playing unorthodox hands. Moreover, she accused him of cheating.

On Twitter she called for a proper investigation into what appeared to be some pretty slim-odd hands.

For starters, Postle had played deep stacked $1-$3 game where he raised the bet to $5,000 – an amount that defied all logic, no matter how strong your hand.

To make matters worse, Postle was holding A-2 against a board of Q-Q-4-5. Brill would not be throwing accusations lightly, and so many players followed up on her tweet, looking into footage of Postle playing.

On one occasion, he was facing off an opponent with 8-8 against his 10-10 and a board of 9-9-3-10-8. When asked about that accident, Postle simply responded that there was a technical malfunction, which wrongly displayed an 8-7 hand as 8-8.

That same excuse was used on other occasions as well. The mistake was attributed to the RFID software, which reads the hands.

Yet, this appeared an unlikely excuse, as Matt Berkey, a professional player, argued on Twitter that RFID hardly ever fails to read a hand.

Joey Ingram pitched in to say that the ‘show somehow changes the graphics at the end of the hand & says there was an error because Mike told them the RFID was incorrect.’

Ingram pointed out that he had seen – and just him – three distinct occasions on which the excuse had been used. In building her case publicly, Brill used the exact same argument, arguing against the likelihood of this happening.

She had something different in mind, too. Instead of pointing out the specific hands, she talked about the strategy and how it changed abruptly against weaker and stronger opponents – weaker and stronger hands as well.

What Has Postle Done?

With the case against Postle reaching court, and some 25 poker pros joining a lawsuit against him, the player is definitely coming under a lot of fire. What has he done specifically, though? Nobody really knows.

One suggestion is that Postle is actually familiar with RFID technology because of his time working on the “Dream Seat Poker Show,” that used the same tech. He was also seen to ‘crotch stare’ as well.

Postle himself, however, was quite vocal about his innocence. Here is what he had to say in his defence:

Stones Gambling Hall has kept the video streaming going, although the moderators haven’t been too fond of broaching the topic. On one occasion, shortly after the scandal erupted on social media, Postle’s brother participated in a game and he appeared to have no issue talking about the accusations. Yet, moderators kept everyone else silent.

On October 3, Stones “suspended all broadcast of poker play, including live streaming,” as the company took to conduct a more thorough investigation into the issue.

I Will See You in Court

And so, it has come to that – Veronica Brill and 24 other players have decided to join a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of California and challenge Postle’s play in court.

The lawsuit seeks $30 million in damages from the player and the tournament director, Justin Kuraitis.

L Even more seriously, the lawsuit is accusing Postle on multiple counts of negligence and libel, fraud and racketeering.

The plaintiffs are represented by Mac VerStanding who already posted the document. The document focuses on how high the winning hands of Postle go, which the plaintiffs have agreed is unlikely.

Another area of emphasis are the alleged RFID malfunctions, which the plaintiffs also believe to be fabricated evidence.

While ‘reading opponents,’ has been one of the cited reasons for Postle’s successful, VerStanding has explained that each of the plays were optimal and analysis has found evidence that they were manipulated in some way.

Berkey also pitched in with another Tweet sharing a forum post at TwoPlusTwo, with Postle holding a phone showing a blue screen. Berkey said that if the pictures could be authenticated, that could have been the “smoking gun”.