For the pats couple of weeks, the poker world has been talking about the hand between Robbie Lew and Garrett Adelstein.
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Cheating or just nonsense? The most incredible hand of 2022 has been played
While streaming a high stakes game at the Hustler casino, one of the strongest regulars was called by just J-high, and now the entire poker world is trying to figure out what happened.
The now legendary video has 7.5 million views on Twitter and 350,000 on YouTube.
And the stream itself scored 510,000 views.
Hustler Casino confirmed that they will conduct a thorough investigation. They plan to reach out to experts from the gambling world and hire lawyers who will jointly study the tapes, interview all parties and, if necessary, arrange interrogations using a lie detector.
“As soon as the investigation is completed, we will publish the results – regardless of its outcome,” Nick Vertucci and Ryan Feldman promise.
“Oh no, lawyers are the last people who should profit from this hand,” one of the commentators was upset.
“Give me 48 hours and access to all the records, and the case will be closed,” Joe Ingram volunteered .
Over the past week, he has hosted four streams on the hot topic lasting from 9 to 12 hours. Almost every stakeholder (except Garrett) and many poker stars were guests.
The community is divided into two camps. The former are sure that Robbie is a fraudster, the latter believe that there was no malicious intent in her actions.
Reddit user beeeemo carefully studied the public statements of professionals and divided them into three large groups:
– Confident of cheating
– Doubters
– Confident of innocence
Within each group, as can be seen from the table, there are different categories.
One of the most vocal supporters of the "fraud" version is Doug Polk . This week, he released two revealing videos, and on Twitter, Doug publishes new evidence on a daily basis. First, he noticed a mysterious vibration around Robbie during the hand, in which she also considered calling with J-high against Adelstein.
As Doug observed, as soon as the vibration stopped, Robbie immediately threw the cards away, when her opponent had a full house.
Then Doug switched to her pants.
Can someone explain to me what this rectangular object is? I haven't heard a convincing explanation yet. The microphone is mounted on the back, so it's not that. It can't be her phone either, they are prohibited on the set.
This week, Doug will be the guest of Hustler casino streams. They promise two broadcasts on Thursday and Friday.
“Hopefully he sits out like Magnus in the first hand,” Marty Mathis offered in a spectacular gesture. This is an allusion to the demarche of the world chess champion, who resigned on the second move in an online game with Hans Niemann, whom he accuses of cheating.
An article in the Wall Street Journal, a 72-page report from Chess.com's anti-cheating department, and amazing correlations found by a Brazilian programmer, GT's editorial team delves into the latest news about a high-profile scandal in the world of chess.
Daniel Negeranu, who is confident in her honesty, joined the discussion of Robbie's pants. With the help of his wife Amanda, he established the exact model of the clothes that Robbie Lew wears.
“These are the famous pants,” writes Daniel. “They don’t have pockets, but there are thick lines on the side of the hips that run down the leg. On the red model, the lines are more visible than on the black pair Robbie wore.
Robbie posted a real photo of the pants she wore on that stream.
The fuss about the pants left Ike Haxton bewildered .
– So, at the moment, the theory that is gaining popularity is that a fraudulent device was used, the size of a phone with a powerful motor, which is capable of rocking the chair on which the player is sitting. And Lew managed to hide it by simply tucking her tight leggings into the waistband? Did I understand everything correctly?
Robbie has been actively involved in the discussion of the drama since day one and has visited Joe Ingram several times. She insists on the version that she really misread the cards and was sure that she had J3.
“She thought she had J3,” Matt Glantz supported this version . She felt like the men at the table were constantly trying to push her out of the pot, and she was dying to make a hero call. And then she just felt ashamed when she saw that she actually had J4. Therefore, she began to carry senseless nonsense to hide an innocent mistake. If she flipped J3, Garrett would just say "nice hand".
“You can’t say it better than that,” Robbie retweeted the message.
She was reminded that she checked her cards several times before calling. To this she retorted that she only looked at one card to see what suit her jack was.
In the early days of the scandal, Robbie first accused Garrett of threatening her and forcing her to return the money, and then challenged him to a duel:
– I have an idea. When I get vindicated, let's play heads-up. Let the whole world see how I read you.
In a lengthy interview with PokerNews, Robbie once again denied all allegations of cheating.
A few highlights:
– There was no mechanical vibration. It's just that her leg was shaking, it often happens to her.
– In an expensive game, she has full backing from RIP with a 50% freeroll.
– RIP is now insisting that Robbie owes him that $135k. She doesn't mind.
– It was Garrett who pressured her to return the money. In his statement, he argued the opposite.
– Robbie is ready for any test, including a lie detector.
– She had no contact with Garrett after the stream, he only conveyed through mutual friends that he agreed to accept her challenge to heads-up.
– The best way out of the situation, in her opinion, is to divide the money equally and give it to charity at his discretion.
Adelstein, after the statement, which we translated in detail in the first part of our review of this saga, remains silent. He limited himself to reposting Polk's first video, accompanied by a couple of remarks:
– She herself confirmed several times that I didn’t threaten her (first on the stream, and then on Joe Ingram’s podcast)
– There was some kind of vibrating object in her pocket
– Naturally, I accepted her challenge on HU4ROLLZ, retweeting Doug
On Wednesday, Garrett broke his silence by tweeting a post encouraging people to donate money to a specific charitable foundation. He didn't say anything new about Robbie :
– I still firmly believe that my opponent played this hand dishonestly. She herself decided that the best way to mitigate the consequences was to give me the money. This happened in a crowded hall of a large casino, under cameras and in front of a neutral observer. I am sure that in this most difficult situation I did everything right. For me it was never a question of money.
In the text, Garrett did not indicate in any way that he was giving money to Robbie's charity, but transferred exactly the $135,000 he lost in that hand (this was before Robbie's PokerNews interview, where she essentially suggested the same thing).
These actions of Garrett caused a flurry of criticism on Twitter and especially on Reddit, where he has gone from everyone's favorite to the subject of constant ridicule and memes over the past week.
“Not a bad way to get a tax deduction at someone else’s expense,” some commentators sneer.
– And if the investigation confirms her honesty, will you return the money? – specify others.
The main contradiction in Garrett's version is who offered to return the money? He repeated several times that the initiative came from Robbie. She denies it. According to Ryan Feldman, who was the "neutral side" in their conversation, everything was a little different. Robbie asked Garrett, "What can I do to make you feel better?" to which he replied, "Give me back the money." This information was confirmed by Nick Vertucci on the Ingram podcast and Matt Berkey on his show. Reddit combined both statements into one video.
Even Doug Polk took notice:
– I am one of the main supporters of Garrett in this story, but at two moments he did not behave in the best way:
1) Feldman claims that it was Garrett who asked her for the money in the off-camera conversation. Needless to say, it was her idea.
2) He should clearly explain his position on this money. It is probably best to temporarily give them to a third party.
It is unlikely that Doug expected that a certain charitable foundation would act as a third party.
Robbie also has no shortage of defenders. One of the first to stand up for her, as expected, was her husband – a businessman, crypto-investor and lawyer – Charles Lew.
“Robbie called because she read him like an open book,” he tweeted . “She has done this to me a thousand times at home. And by the way, with regard to legal consequences, so far I can only say one thing – fasten your seat belts.''
Phil Galfond also sided with Robbie:
– Since this is what most people are interested in, I’ll say right away that the probability that she played honestly, I estimate above 85%.
Robbie played fair and played J4o like this – very unlikely.
Robbie played it that way because she was cheating – quite unlikely.
Robbie played fair, but she thought she had J3o – that doesn't sound so strange.
Phil devoted a series of two dozen tweets to a detailed analysis of the hand.
Eric Persson, who was at the table during the ill-fated hand, offered his support to Robbie :
– If you are serious about taking a polygraph test, I am ready to pay all costs and make sure everything is fair. I own 27 casinos, my security team is ready to cooperate with you. This is a real chance to clean your name. Contact me.
Visitors to the Hustler casino have already begun to check for the presence of prohibited items.
–''WTF? What do I think?'' – Patrick Leonard drew attention to the inscription on the detector. – ''Our simulation is too crazy 😂😂😂😂''
Steve O'Dwyer remembered that the hand with has already been beaten in the cartoon The Micros, which was released in 2011.
On the board of "villain" put all-in with , and the "hero" called with .
In the US, this story has gone far beyond the poker world. The hand was featured on the BBC website and featured on the popular CBS news show Inside Edition . And on The Behavior Panel podcast, the handoff between Garrett and Robbie took almost two hours to sort out.
The presenters, positioning themselves as "the world's top experts in body language," unanimously concluded that there was no fraud.
A great stir among professionals was caused by the judgments of a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Kathy Martin :
– I just heard that the men were angry with the girl for beating them at poker. She read the opponent and risked with a bad hand. As far as I know, this is why poker is referred to as "gambling" and not "statistics". Do I know anything about poker? Absolutely nothing. But once I won 50 bucks from a bunch of nerds, and this story reeks of misogyny a mile away, so I thought I had the right to speak out.
The tweet got 260,000 likes and 16,000 retweets. Liv Boeree, Vanessa Cade and many male players tried to reason with Katie, explaining that it was not a matter of sexism, but it seems they did not succeed.
Another Twitter star is Ada-Rhodes Short from the University of Nebraska. She tried to scientifically justify Robbie's call.
Patrick Leonard offered her a $10,000 freeroll if she could explain her findings to a jury of three professional players. But he did not wait for an answer, Ada Rhodes could not withstand the pressure of the poker community and simply restricted access to her tweets.
But her "diagram" has already become another great source for memes.
Random Chu posted it with the caption: "My girlfriend when I ask her what she wants for lunch."
“Thank God, you saved the picture,” Henrik Hecklen was delighted, “I thought we had lost this beautiful tree forever.”
According to statistics, Garrett is by far the most profitable player on public streams. Trackingpoker has been collecting TV cash game results for several years.
The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of sessions.
It seemed that interest in the case of Robbie Lew was gradually fading and more and more players were taking her side. However, tonight everything changed.
An investigation initiated by the casino owners found that on September 29, one of their employees, who is directly involved in the filming of the show, stole $15,000 (three $5k chips) from Robbie's stack. This happened right after the stream, during which the famous hand with J4 happened. This employee has already admitted his guilt.
Now all of Robbie's supporters are hastily changing their position. More and more people doubt her honesty, as there are suspicions that they acted in collusion. Among those who dramatically changed their minds is Phil Galfond. Now he is 80% sure that Robbie is a fraud (before he was 85% sure that she was innocent).
A few important points:
– An employee named Brian had access to the public cards of the players.
– She and Robbie were following each other on Twitter.
– She allegedly simply did not notice the loss of $ 15,000.
She also refused to press charges against him.
As soon as Hustler released the statement, Robbie unfollowed Brian. On today's Joe Ingram stream, she explained that she didn't know him at all, and follower him only because he left several tweets in support of her.
Brian really actively spoke out on social networks immediately after the scandalous stream. He introduced himself as one of the organizers of the stream and confidently stated that cheating is generally impossible in Hustler. He deleted his twitter today.
Also on Ingram's show, Robbie said it was the police who convinced her not to press charges. Sean Deeb confirmed that he had firsthand experience of the unwillingness of the security forces to investigate such cases, especially when the victim received his money back. In the case of Robbie, this is not entirely true. Nick Vertucci and Ryan Feldman have already promised to compensate her for this amount. Robbie also said that the police assured her that Brian had never had problems with the law before. This was also one of the reasons why she refrained from accusations. But this turned out to be untrue, he had problems, and serious ones – in 2017 he was detained for a robbery, and then he participated in a jailbreak. Another mystery – Robbie is keeping something back or the police were doing everything possible, not to start a commotion? How such a person got a job in casinos, which are famous for their checks, is also unclear.
Police file for Brian