I still won't say they cheated via technology but signals were going round the table and even if that was just friends colluding, it was out of order. Half the characters involved are shady on one level or another and while many say that it's great to get so many eyes on poker, I think that a stupid take. I believe people will look at this and think poker is full of dubious people who shouldn't be trusted...not exactly news to many.
I think, the case for cheating via signaling from someone with access to the hole card information is quite strong with the information, that has come out now. We even know, who the inside guy most likely was, and at least 1-2 other players, who might also be involved. So if people outside Hustler Casino actually want to investigate this, then the thing to do is to go through the streams before this one and look for other unusual
hands. Pretty much like, what a lot of people did in the Stones cheating scandal.
I watched the first 90 minutes of the first stream, where Robbi appeared with this mindset, and to me her play looks completely normal. There is even a hand, where she incorrectly folded AT high to a small flop bet, when it was the best hand. However RIP and Nik Airball each played a hand, which is at least someone unusual during this time frame.
Nik Airball had a draw against Garrett, who flopped top pair. It went bet, call, which is very standard. On the turn Nik made the new top pair with a T kicker, and he then bet very large on both turn and river and got paid off. This is not like a crazy hand, but one of the things, you can potentially do, if you have information, is to use larger bet sizing, when you know, you are ahead. Normally with a hand like top pair T kicker one needs to worry about not value owning oneselfes by building to large a pot. But if you know, you are ahead, then the worst thing, that can happen, is to not get paid.
RIP on the other hand went crazy with Q4s. First he 3-bet, which ok people might do that sometimes, but he then called a 4-bet, which is definitely already a bit unusual with such a bad hand. However if you have information, you can play some very big pots with bad hands, which is something, we often saw Mike Postle do. RIPs opponent C-bet the flop with AK high, and he then raised essentially putting her all in.
This went wrong, because she called, and of course its possible, that he just felt like going for it. But he did pick a really bad hand and a good timing, because often people will fold AK in this situation. And this is also something, we saw a lot with Postle. When he eventually lost a big pot, it was often, because people made a really big call against him, when he was
bluffing into the bottom of their range.
Now obviously for this to be cheating, the signaling would need to be a suggestion of, which action to take. But thats not to complicated to make up either. It can be a simple as "one bleep means fold, two bleeps means call, three bleeps means raise". And the player on the table should then be able to know, if they are raising for value or as a
bluff.
