But, what if the data is coming directly from the RFID readers? Depending on which boards they're using to read the rfid cards it could be a simple bluetooth broadcast that his phone picks up. His phone could constantly scan for bluetooth signals -- it wouldn't even need to make an actual bluetooth connection, the card data could be embedded in the advertising signal for anyone who knew the schema to pickup.
I think he has an accomplice. Either someone working at the casino or with remote access to casino computers.
From the 4th sentence of the article:
>and the game was broadcast on a half-hour delay so that viewers couldn’t relay information from the broadcast to the players during the hands
The most likely method seems to be a RFID reader either in his keys or hat transmitting data to his phone, but from what I can tell nobody has nailed down his technique exactly.
While it does sound like he's cheating I don't see how you can get there with just statistics. He could be incredibly good at reading his opponents.
(But it's super implausible that he doesn't play anything but these specific games, and then wins by such a large margin.)
> While his neighbors keep their phones on the table, he always keeps his phone on his chair between his legs, with his left hand holding it in place beneath the table. He almost never brings his left hand up above the table. He puts his head down to glance at his phone before he makes decisions. It all seems so obvious now.
> Like the fact that he starts wearing a hat that has a strange bulge around the brim—one that vanishes after the game when he’s doing an interview in the booth. Is it a bone-conducting headset, as some online have suggested, sending him messages directly to his inner ear by vibrating on his skull? Of course it is! How could it be anything else? It’s so obvious! Or the fact that he keeps his keys in the same place on the table all the time. Could they contain a secret camera that reads electronic sensors on the cards? I can’t see any other possibility! It is all starting to make sense.
> He also deleted his LinkedIn account, which indicated that he was connected to the company that ran the Stones Live broadcasts and had worked for them as a consultant in the past.
> The fact is, the mystery was solved a long time ago. It’s just like De Niro’s Ace Rothstein says in Casino when the yokel slot attendant gets hit for three jackpots in a row and tells his boss there was no way for him to know he was being scammed. “Yes there is,” Ace replies. “An infallible way. They won.” According to one poster on TwoPlusTwo, in 69 sessions on Stones Live, Postle has won in 62 of them, for a profit of over $250,000 in 277 hours of play. Given that he plays such a large number of hands, and plays such an erratic and, by his own admission, high-variance style, one would expect to see more, well, variance. His results just aren’t possible even for the best players in the world, which, if he isn’t cheating, he definitely is among. Add to this the fact that it has been alleged that Postle doesn’t play in other nonstreamed live games at Stones, or anywhere else in the Sacramento area, and hasn’t been known to play in any sizable no-limit games anywhere in a long time, and that he always picks up his chips and leaves as soon as the livestream ends.
So, does he have an RFID reader in his keys which communicates data to him via his phone or his hat?
Or, does he have a backdoor into the non-delayed feed with an accomplice?
Either are possible and he's definitely doing one of the above. If he wasn't cheating, he would be a world class all star poker player.