[jaxomlotus]

This is super interesting, but honestly it was clear from the video immediately that it was sour grapes. Part of being a pro poker player is having an intuitive sense when someone is bluffing. The guy bluffed and was called on it. That he then came up with an elaborate accusation and even cornered her for the money is pretty crappy behavior. Even if she just got lucky with a jack high, it's not unheard of for people to shove in poker with absolutely nothing.

Now that this report came out, I'd say she has a clear avenue for a libel suit against him.

[zone411]

I've been following this case and I'm definitely on the no-cheating side, but it should be mentioned that what made this case weird and polarizing was that the employee of the production team was caught stealing $15k of her chips on the same day. So, you had two big coincidences, a possibility of somebody on the inside being crooked, the player returning the money, and this somewhat understandably caused a lot of conspiracy theories to emerge. It also emerged (noted in the report) that the production booth had live access to hole cards.

Also, note that shoving != calling, so it was definitely an unusual hand. And poker players are very wary of cheating - there was a famous case of Mike Postle in livestreamed games.

[awb]

Doug Polk (a fairly well known poker player) dives into theories of a vibrating chair and an inside job:

https://youtu.be/xPQUarLEr9A

https://youtu.be/t3l7xw7mbcs

[RyanCavanaugh]

It's not enough to know that someone is bluffing; you actually have to have a better hand to win the pot when calling an all-in bet. Even if you were given the information "Adelstein does not have a pair" by an oracle, statistically, J4 is behind a randomly-chosen non-paired hand here.

[freyr]

This arguably makes cheating less likely. If someone in production knew both players’ hole cards, which was the theory, this would be a nonsensical place to cheat. It was still a coin flip to either lose everything or, best case scenario, win a hand with a remarkable call that was sure to draw scrutiny.

If they were that unbelievably reckless, this wouldn’t be the only hand they cheated in. Yet there weren’t other examples of notable calls or folds that indicated cheating.

The simplest explanation in my mind is that this rather inexperienced player made a very loose call and got lucky. I can’t rule out the possibility of cheating, but there’s not enough evidence to make it more than a conspiracy theory.

[tptacek]

Why does she have a clear avenue for a libel suit?

[tomr75]

it didn't make sense because even most bluffs beat her hand

even if she thought he was bluffing, Q K A high beat her..

why return the money? why let the dealer steal 15k?

100% cheating

[googlryas]

You can't use the fact that she returned some of the money as an indication of cheating, because it doesn't make sense to ever return the money, even if you were cheating.

[MerelyMortal]

> why return the money?

Maybe because she was bullied into doing so.

[Yeahsureok]

> most bluffs beat her hand

That has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of bluffing. The hand is irrelevant.

[intrasight]

Yup - she'll call his bluff - again.