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Stones Gambling Hall in Sacramento, California says it will not livestream poker games pending an investigation into cheating allegations made against one of the game's players, Mike Postle.
Postle has been a regular on "Stones Live," a live poker game streamed on Twitch. His success in the game has raised eyebrows.
The original accusations were made by Veronica Brill, another poker player who has played with Postle on "Stones Live." Since then, others have come forward with similar complaints.
Brill has no specific accusation of what Postle is doing and even admits that she can't be sure he is cheating. So why does she think he is cheating? His results are too good, according to Brill.
She said (and several professional pokers players who talked to CNBC, agreed) no one could do as well as he has, for as long as he has, on these livestreamed games.
Postle has not yet responded to CNBC's request for comment. He has defended himself on Twitter as well as on a poker podcast, "The Mouthpiece with Mike Matusow," saying "it is absolutely impossible for me to be doing what they're claiming. It is 1000% impossible."
[...] In a statement Stones Gambling Hall said: "We temporarily halted all broadcasts from Stones. We have also, as a result, halted the use of RFID playing cards."
The RFID cards contain chips, that combined with readers in the poker table, transmit information about each player's hole cards, so that viewers can see the cards on the broadcast (which is on a 30-minute delay to protect game integrity).
At this point, there is no specific allegation, no "smoking gun" as Berkey said. But many pros are pointing to those RFID cards and the hole card information, saying it's just not possible for Postle to play the way he does and win the way he does.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday October 07 2019, @04:57PM (2 children)
The older method was to use a camera. In some games you'll see a glass pane on the table and players are expected to expose their cards to the camera underneath. Alternatively, some tables have cameras in the rail point horizontally across the table, and a player would peak at the cards in the normal fashion and expose the hole cards to the camera.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @09:36PM
Occasionally it would go wrong and the camera wouldn't see the cards, but the rail cam worked 99% of the time. But it's probably cheaper this way as you don't need special tables, and you needed a human operator to read and input the cards.
I expect the players didn't like the glass pane setup as it interrupts their normal routine.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:22PM
Thanks. This is what I've seen in the past on the rare occasion when I've watched poker.