I have played poker professionally for more than 10 years and I am 100% sure he was cheating.
It's not that he is playing well and making good reads. Actually often he plays like shit but happens to make some correct decisions postflop. Decicions that in long run would be really bad but in those cases were perfect. One nice example is where he went allin preflop with 45o against two players who both had AK.
Please check some of the streams and come back here to comment. You can start from Doug Polk videos. If you don't see that he is cheating then you are not a winning player and probably never have been.
In addition, his abilities magically go away on the days that his friend on the technology team is absent.
Also, he only ever plays when the cards are marked with RFID tags. He NEVER plays when they are unmarked, even against the same people that he supposedly has an edge against.
He is absolutely a cheat.
Who is his friend?
I'd rather see some evidence of wrongdoing, you can't prove he's cheating simply because he's on a heater...
Not to mention there's no buy-in limit on these stakes, BB/100 means nothing if they're playing above the expected stakes (happens often if the biggest stakes are relatively low).
Again, none of what you're saying is actually proof.
Even if the average hands are playing 2x or 4x above nominal stakes, that's still an outrageously high, many std-dev above elite, win rate.
Yea, it's hard to prove things generally, but I don't really feel like the standard of "proof" matters here. I'm 99.99999...% sure the guy is cheating. I'm not saying put him in jail because of it, but definitely raise the alarm and don't play with him. Would you play with him on the Stone RFID table?
Admittedly I haven't seen a ton of his hands, but just watched a few, it's not that unusual. One used as 'proof' of cheating where he plays low connectors and hits a pair with a draw to a straight, then he bluffs off a passive player with an over-pair. If he actually had the info wouldn't he fold? Dunno, seems to me he's just a pro preying on fish. His play is pretty standard for good cash players. It's his opponents that seem unusually bad, but whom observers are overrating.
- Bluffs river with 9 high, gets check raised by 6 high, 3bet jams for barely a min raise, it gets through obviously
- Check folds TPTK on the flop on a dry board when other player has a set
- Check folds top pair and a gutshot when other player has nut straight
- And here are some more https://www.pokernews.com/news/2019/10/10-suspicious-mike-po...
Also, Postle's mannerisms and interviews are the most damning IMO. He's arrogant, cocky and can't explain any of his lines, not to mention has said some questionable things that actually suggest cheating.
Reading this thread at first I thought maybe he was a Victor Blom kind of character; loose aggro playing against passive amateurs (shoving 54 would give that impression). But no, he's a fucking moron who basically is giving himself away by folding monster hands or playing weak hands strongly post-flop then needling opponents and bragging about it in interviews.
As for KK, what's the hand history like? Again, heads up or multiway? Might have a read? What are the bet sizes and stack sizes?
Im not wasting any more time talking to you and i stand by my previous statement that you dont know what you are talking about.
Also, Fedor Holz once won a major tournament shoving a similar hand a few years back.
This is as egregious a case of cheating as you're ever likely to find.
There are objectively better and worse ways to play poker if you make some assumptions about the behaviour of the other players. In a small sample those assumptions may be false, but in a large enough sample it's extremely unlikely to be the case.
So it's extremely surprising to see a winning player employing crazily non optimal strategies (like betting 54o AI pre flop in a three way pot). That is just a losing play in the absence of information about the other players holdings.
The idea that he's reading people is absurd, even independently of the evidence of him not actually looking at people while betting. Live reads (to the extent they help at all) are incorporated in the win rates of the best players already.
I used to play 10/20 and 25/50 PLO, and while the game is different, the pattern described is pretty typical. Big multiway pots and speculative hands are the rule, so if a draw completes and there's 4 players in the hand, someone has it.
This doesn't sound like cheating, just a typical higher stakes game but on TV.