Garrett Adelstein vs. Robbi Jade Lew (part 3)

In this newsletter, guest writer Rigondeaux continues his examination of an infamous poker hand involving Garrett Adelstein and Robbi Jade. In this installment we continue to examine the case against Robbi Jade.

If you missed the first two chapters, here are Part 1 and Part 2.

 

 

Part II The Case Against Robbi Continued.

 

What did pros/experts think?

Some claim that pros in general, the poker community or a poker pro they know believe Robbi is guilty. This is a good chance to look at the fallacy of appeal to authority.

Many people interested in this case were eager to learn the opinions of top pros. This is sensible but we should be careful. Did the pro just see the hand and make a snap judgment? If so, his snap judgment might be more valuable than Ringo Starr’s. But it is still of limited value. A recreational player who understands poker and has learned many details of the case will probably judge it more effectively.

Moreover, poker strategy is only a small component of the case. An online poker expert who never plays in live games and rarely plays true amateurs and has poor social abilities might be far less equipped to judge this case than say, a criminal lawyer who has played a decent amount of poker for fun. So we must balance a respect for expertise with an understanding that skill at poker doesn’t make one a great evaluator of any situation involving poker.

We should value the opinions of players with decades of experience, who have played lots of live poker in many situations, especially playing with wealthy amateurs, and who have looked closely at the case. Some such players have suggested guilt. The most credible of these to me is Tom Dwan, who was an online prodigy, yet has decades of experience playing on TV/streams, in high stakes live games and all kinds of crazy situations.

However, many credible players leaned slightly or heavily to innocence. Phil Ivey and Andy Stacks were two high stakes veterans playing in the game. Both said on the spot that they did not suspect cheating. Phil Galfond, Bart Hanson and Jonathan Little are high stakes and live veterans who’ve become coaches and each has leaned to innocence. Daniel Negreanu, perhaps the second biggest name in poker after Phil Ivey, has firmly sided with Robbi, citing several comparably crazy hands he has witnessed. David Williams, a longtime star who runs large, private games similarly said such things happen in his games.

Two “underground” legends carry the most weight for me. One is a 2+2 poster named Eskaborr.

While he is not a TV player, he is a respected high stakes pro with decades of experience. He stands out here because he was among those obsessed by the case. Eskaborr knows most of the details and thought and posted about it extensively, concluding that Robbi was probably innocent, but not ruling out cheating. A similar 2+2 character named Limon, who is famous as a real world gambler, succeeding in golf, poker, sports and advantage play landed on 85% innocent 15% guilty.

“the day it happened i posted 85% no cheating. I stand by that. no cheating team would go to the trouble of setting all that **** up for a run it twice coin flip then give the money back! hahahahaha. ive dealt with a lot of gambling criminals in my life that situation is basically impossible. ive also seen 100s of amateurs out of their depth make stupid plays and give stupid explanations because the are embarrassed. so why even 15%? because some criminals are just stupid. not in this instance IMO but in at least 15% of instances.”

 

There are plenty of other pros besides Tom Dwan who leaned guilty. Most notably, Doug Polk, whom I shall address below. The reason I focus on pros who lean innocent is to show that appealing to the authority of poker pros does not provide meaningful evidence of guilt.

One reason I believe in evolution is that virtually every expert who examines the issue closely believes in evolution and their judgment is better than mine. While not a logical proof of evolution (I am technically committing a fallacy), it’s a good reason to believe in it. We can see that there is no parallel situation here. Many and arguably even a solid majority of poker experts, at least some of whom have closely examined the case, do not believe Robbi is guilty.

For what it’s worth, we can also see a major shift among posters on 2+2, the largest poker forum. Initially, many posters suspected cheating. After Garrett’s manifesto, a majority did. In recent discussions, a clear majority believe cheating did not occur. Of course, they might be wrong. But this further belies any claim that experts, or people who really know poker AND have spent a lot of time learning about the case, are convinced she is guilty.

 

There Is No Good Theory of The Crime:

I would like to contrast this case with that of Mike Postle. You could make similar comparisons to other cheating scandals like those of Russ Hamilton or “Potripper'' online. In all of these cases, the cheaters played many hands in ways that didn’t make sense, unless they knew their opponents’ holdings. On one hand, they might be extremely conservative. In another, extremely aggressive. The only thing that was consistent was that they played perfectly against their opponent’s holdings, as if they could see them. All of these players were huge winners, way past the point that should be mathematically possible for even the best player on earth. Astute viewers noticed that Mike Postle, who was playing on a different show streamed on youtube, would often stare deeply into his lap, where he had placed his cell phone, before the perfect play would occur to him. Postle was a long time poker player and while he had God like results on the streamed show, his results at all other times were mediocre. Those who played with him off stream reported that these crazy plays disappeared from his repertoire.

The case against Robbi is that she played 1 hand strangely, in a way that was barely +EV and won the hand anyway.

Some of her decisions in the hand were slightly +EV. Some weren’t. No other genuinely suspicious hands were identified over 3 separate games in which thousands of hands were played. For example, Robbi and RIP played a hand where both had AQ and they seemed to “soft play” each other. This is technically unethical, but is widely accepted when amateurs do it and it has happened on this show countless times without incident and is happening in 200 other games as I type this. But there were no other hands that were played very unusually and in particular, unusually so as to create significant EV for Robbi or RIP.

As mentioned, when all the money went in on the J4 hand, Garrett was a small favorite. Unless Robbi knew the river card, she could easily lose the whole pot. Only some of the more fringe members of team Garrett believe that Robbi knew both Garrett’s cards, and the impending river card. Especially because Robbi asked to run the river out two times. Even if some sort of cheating was going on, it would be extremely unlikely that Robbi would know both the river, and the extra card that would be used for a second river. A cheating team with this level of knowledge would have total control of the game as they would know which hands would win or lose as soon as they were dealt.

Staying with the hand as played, one could argue either way for Robbi’s call of Garrett’s preflop open raise. If you know your opponent’s holdings, you would have an advantage with any 2 cards. On the other hand, why pick J4 offsuit? Other hands play more smoothly and such a poor hand could only draw attention to your play, while a cheater would prefer less attention.

Garrett flopped an open ended straight flush draw and bet out. Knowing his cards, Robbi would have been wise to fold here. She has some backdoor draws, meaning she could make a flush or straight if both the turn and river cooperated. But if she turned top pair, Garrett would make a straight, which would be quite awkward. If she turned a flush draw, Garrett would turn a made flush.

In reality, Robbi probably did not know Garrett’s cards but realized her hand had some equity against Garrett’s range of possible holdings. Garrett is a hyper aggressive, big time bluffer, especially vs amateurs. She thought this would be a good place to make a stand. Suppose Garrett had 4d5d or As2s. After calling him on the flop, Robbi might be able to steal the pot on the turn, and she might improve her hand.

That’s if she didn’t know Garrett’s cards. If she did know them, she would know that Garrett had a huge draw that he was never folding and that most of the cards that improved her hand would give him a monster.

So her flop play is inexplicable if she knew his cards, but makes some sense if she didn’t.

Now, Garrett bets the turn and Robbi makes a minimum raise. As I’ll mention again, on the previous hand, Robbi had been dealt J3. This hand she had J4. The turn was a 3. Most people who think Robbi is innocent believe she misread her hand and thought she had J3 again. Others think she just made a crazy call with jack high. Both are possible, but the misread makes a lot of sense here.

This is a move amateur players are fond of, and here it makes some sense for any player. If Robbi has a pair of 3s (as she erroneously believes imo), she very well could have the best hand vs Garrett’s many bluffs. However, a pair of 3s is quite vulnerable. Garrett could have that 5d4d and he would still have 6 outs! It makes sense to make a minimum raise so as to deny Garrett that equity. Alternatively, Robbi could realize she has J4 but also realize Garrett bluffs a lot and that a min raise will force many of those bluffs to fold, rather than allowing him to put her in a terrible spot on the river with another big bet.

The minraise doesn’t make much sense if she knows her cards and Garrett’s cards. With an OESFD, Garrett will never, ever fold to a min raise. You could argue that she is trying to slow him down so she could win when he misses the river and it goes check/check or she bluffs. She could also try to bluff him if he makes just a pair on the river. But really, it just doesn’t make sense to knowingly put more money in the pot with Jack High against an OESFD. Especially because one thing that could happen is...

Garrett goes all in! Uh oh! Now what? Some on team Robbi have erroneously said she should fold here from an immediate EV standpoint if she knew Garrett’s cards. While it is true that Garrett is a favorite, once we account for money already in the pot, if all cards were turned face up it would be profitable for Robbi to call. Robbi hems and haws and does make the call, which is the first time in the hand where she is really playing as if she knows Garrett’s cards. So, the whole cheating ring theory is based not on a single hand, but on a single decision in a single hand.

 

 

One expert player named Eskaborr (discussed above) pointed out that at a super advanced level, this might not be as crazy a call as it seems, even with J high. The reason is that Garrett bluffs too much (in theory, though not in practice because his opponents fold too much). And in this particular spot, it is hard for Garrett to really have a good hand. A full house should absolutely never go all in here. If Robbi is bluffing, you want her to continue bluffing, not let her off the hook! If she has a flush or straight draw, you badly want to give her a chance to make second best hand and win all her chips. Those draws would have to fold vs an all in.

Weaker players (like me) might move in with trip tens here. But would Garrett? Garrett should think it is worth the risk of losing to a draw to allow his opponent to keep bluffing. As one of the best players in the world, he can navigate these situations brilliantly and probably isn’t going to just shove all in to win the pot now and avoid difficult decisions on the river.

Garrett probably shouldn’t make this move with an ace-high flush draw either. He will be called by full houses and trips, and be a big underdog. He will make worse draws fold, but he wants worse draws to stay in.

So an argument can be made that Garrett almost always has exactly what he has! No offense to Robbi, but I doubt she put all this together. I would not have. But the point is that, even if you realize or intuit half of this, Garrett’s play looks really bluffy and he is the biggest bluffer at the table. Robbi calling with a pair of 3s would not be an outrageous play. It wouldn’t be an easy call, but it would be a sound one. And who knows? Maybe she could even find a crazy call with Jack high.

Here is a video of Rui Cao, a respected player, calling down the great Tom Dwan for comparable money. Rui didn’t have Jack high. He had eight high and no draw! He just “knew” Dawn had 7-2. The players were playing a game in which you get a bonus for winning with 7-2. Are the hands the exact same? No. There are more combinations of 7-2, as a more seasoned player would realize. But a less seasoned player might not see it that way and it remains the case that Rui is making an absolutely nutso call with 8 high for tons of money because he puts Dwan on one particular hand. Yet nobody believes Rui was cheating.

 

Other Hands

Not only were no other genuinely suspicious hands involving the alleged cheating team identified, there were hands where the “cheaters” put in money badly. Most notably, Robbi called down in a pot where she was drawing to a flush. But her opponent already had a full house. She had a 0.0% chance of winning and put tens of thousands of dollars in the pot.

There are two basic ways Team Garrett explains all of this. One is that these people were not actually cheating for money. Their real goal was to create a hand that went viral, hoping that this would boost Robbi’s social media presence. If this seems like a reasonable belief to you, I wish you good luck in life.

The second explanation is that the cheating was only occasional, for various reasons. Robbi might have put tens of thousands of dollars in drawing dead so as to cover their tracks. Or, they only had sporadic access to the hole cards for some reason. Or they played the first two games without cheating and began to cheat in the third. Meaning that part of their big cheating scheme was to play two sessions against world class players without assistance.

Various absurd cheating methods have been posited to explain away the fact that, by all appearances, there was no cheating. For example, Robbi never knew exactly what her opponents had. She would get a signal something like: one buzz means you’re ahead and two buzzes means you’re behind. You might ask, wouldn’t they at least do one buzz for fold, two buzzes for call and 3 buzzes for raise? Or devise any number of other cheating methods that were not completely idiotic? I mean, these people supposedly have access to their opponents’ hole cards and are playing six figure pots. It seems like they would spend more than 3 minutes planning their cheating system.

Another idea is that Robbi would signal when she wanted to know what to do. Then a signal would come back to her, but only with limited information. Kind of a “phone a friend” option, but the friend is restricted in what they can say.

Funnily enough, even these carefully contrived cheating methods don’t really explain the J4 hand. Why would Robbi choose to use her “phone a friend” when she was facing an all in and held jack high with no draw?

If she was being signaled something like “ahead/behind” wouldn’t Bryan, an avid poker player and someone who worked on the show, understand poker well enough to signal “you’re behind” when she held jack high against an OESFD? Even if Robbi received a “you’re ahead” signal, holding Jack high against a huge all in, isn’t there a good chance she would fold, either thinking it was a mistake, or realizing that she couldn’t be ahead by much and that a call would draw a lot of attention?

Even if they were using some ridiculously stupid cheating system, why would there be no other suspicious hands over the course of three days? In fact, there should be more suspicious hands, especially if the system was used so ineptly. Robbi and, presumably RIP (why else would he be in the game?) have played hundreds of hands over 3 sessions simply getting buzzed “ahead or behind” and no other weird hands happened? They never made any insane bluffs or hero calls? How was this plan supposed to win any money? (Spoiler alert: it didn’t!)

If they were waiting for extra special situations to cheat, why would they pick the most conspicuous situation imaginable, and one in which they didn’t really gain much of an advantage? While Robbi’s call was +EV, it wasn’t that much better than folding and they could easily lose the whole pot, and the whole scheme would lose money.

Even someone who was very stupid and very bad at poker would realize that it would be better to use this system to make correct decisions on the river, not in big pots that are basically coin flips. On the river, when my opponent bets if I call with the best hand I win 100% of the time. Not 47%. I can also bluff extremely effectively, knowing when my opponent is weak. But neither Robbi nor RIP made suspiciously good river decisions.

Note that, if the cheating was reserved for select hands, they would be playing most of the game straight up, as mediocre amateurs. against Phil, Garrett and Andy and be huge underdogs. I guess they would still have an advantage because they could cheat in the bigger pots.

It kind of depends on what theory you believe. If they could get the info whenever they wanted (the phone a friend system), I think they’d still be favorites. If Bryan was only able to get them the info at random times, I’m not sure they would be.

If Robbi had a cheating device on her, why did she return to the game after her confrontation with Garrett? Wouldn’t she take the opportunity to leave, rather than sitting around calmly with damning evidence?

If they were using signals, who sent them? Some have suggested a bystander. But the game is played in a booth enclosed by glass. There is no audience. Is the idea that some random person was hanging around the booth, making loud noises or flashing a laser pen, and nobody noticed? And the investigation, which would have access to all the cameras in the casino, was unable to spot this person?

Others have suggested floormen or dealers were involved. Robbi would signal to Bryan, who would see her on camera. Bryan would transmit a signal to the floorman, who would wear the cheating device so that RIP, Robbi and other cheaters could avoid wearing one. The floorman would make a physical signal to Robbi. That’s pretty complicated. You also now have the obstacle of recruiting a floorman to the cheating team. Imagine being a floorman and having some random poker player or production worker you don’t know walk up to you and ask you to join a cheating ring. We’ve now got 3 units of conspirators who really shouldn’t even know each other well: the wealthy players, the floorman who works for the casino and Bryan who works for HCL.

The bigger the conspiracy, the less likely it is to be true. And in this case, every additional member of the conspiracy is another person who should probably say, “maybe we shouldn’t use an incredibly stupid cheating system that might not even make money. Let’s spend a few minutes thinking of a better one.”

 

Spaghetti on The Wall

One of Robbi’s most prominent critics was Doug Polk. Polk is indisputably a great poker mind, one of the most successful poker influencers and the owner of a top coaching site. He has also been accused of dishonesty and bullying by other credible people, like Galfond and Negreanu.

Polk is responsible for some of the unsubstantiated allegations and theories put forward against Robbi. For example, Polk made this claim in one of his videos: an anonymous source told Polk that, some time prior to J4, they saw Bryan move a filing cabinet in the production booth and that this blocked a surveillance camera. In hindsight, he speculated that this could have been part of the cheating operation.

There are many obvious problems. This is hearsay. It comes from an undocumented, anonymous source. If the testimony is authentic, it is eyewitness testimony of something that happened in the past--and on that point alone, of limited value. Let’s take the massive leap. Let’s assume this is a real person who is being honest, Polk is being honest and accurate about the hearsay, and this person accurately remembers what happened. People move furniture all the time. Usually for innocent reasons. If a security camera trained on Bryan was obstructed, this would be suspicious, but in cramped quarters it might not be all that unusual. More importantly, this claim was never verified, even after an expensive investigation by a third party. Why didn’t Polk’s source speak to Bulletproof?

There is also a hole in the theory: if Bryan was being monitored by a security camera and it was blocked by a filing cabinet for a significant amount of time, why did nobody notice? Especially, if someone saw Bryan moving furniture and obstructing the camera. You can construct an answer. You always can. But it would have to be pretty complicated and parlayed with the fact that these are all unsubstantiated, unverified claims from a disreputable source.

Here’s the cherry on top of Polk’s claims and theories. Polk co-owns a poker room that also has a youtube stream. After all this happened, Polk invited Robbi to play on the stream. Either Polk does not believe she is a cheater, or he is of such low character that he is willing to invite a cheater on his show to play against his customers and promote herself to thousands of viewers. In either case, he has undermined the credibility of his claims.

In online discussions, proponents of Robbi’s guilt treat many unsubstantiated claims as fact. “If Bryan wasn’t cheating, why did he move the filing cabinet to block the camera?” Another claim originating from Polk is that Bryan yelled out in dismay when Robbi returned the money. This was never verified and, again, one wonders how, if this could be substantiated, a 3rd party investigator ignored it.

Another strand of spaghetti comes from Garrett’s manifesto, which consists mostly of attacks on the general character of the alleged cheaters and finding personal connections between them. For example, several of them supposedly had a long dinner together.

According to Garrett, according to another poker player named Julie, Robbi had previously demonstrated poor poker ethics. The bare facts, according to Garrett, according to Julie, are as follows. Robbi was drunk. She sat in a game as a new player and verbally bought in. She immediately won a hand and doubled her buy in, before producing the money. She attempted to play only with the chips she won, rather than following through with the buy in and adding her buy in amount to her winnings. This is not allowed. After some contentiousness, Robbi produced the cash. Garrett seems to think it is important that the money she produced was crumpled. Robbie continued playing and lost all the money.

To his credit, Garrett seems to have been honest about facts throughout his manifesto. But as you will see if you read his version of this story, he spins these facts heavily. As a result, many people believe the above is another example of Robbi attempting to cheat or demonstrating a high level of dishonesty. But reducing this example to the facts, as relayed by Garrett himself, we can see that nothing all that worrisome happened.

An amateur player, while intoxicated, was unclear about the rules, or tried to fudge them, but then complied with them. It is true that Robbi was required to add the amount of her original buy in to her winnings. She was either in error on that point, or, perhaps, tried to get a break. Likely, she preferred having 2 “bullets” rather than one: she wanted to keep the cash in her pocket so she could re-buy if necessary. This is a minor ethical breach, if it was even intentional at all. No big deal from an amateur. She did not verbally buy in with money she did not have, as some continue to believe. We can also conclude that she was not trying some kind of hit and run tactic, or some type of scam because she continued playing with her full stack until she lost it all.

These are 3 of many misleading or unsubstantiated claims made as evidence of guilt. Note that I didn’t cherry pick them from the crazier online commenters who have alleged that Robbi had fake body parts and that everyone at the table, including Garrett, was involved in a larger conspiracy. This is some of the evidence put forward by Doug Polk and Garrett. It’s impossible to address every piece of spaghetti, but the fact that so much is flung suggests that there is not a good case to be made. Robbi has never faced viable suspicions of cheating or thieving prior to this case and the third hand stories and random coincidences that pop up amount to little reason to think she’s become a cheat.

A little testimony to the degree to which Robbi was scrutinized and the power of coincidence. Years prior to J4, Robbi appeared on a game show. Internet sleuths, of course, dug up the appearance. One of the prizes: a poker table! The odds of this are precisely 8 jillion to 1, but it is clearly just a coincidence. If you scrutinize a complex event closely enough you will find many.

 

Stay tuned for part 4 in an upcoming newsletter.

Author: Rigondeaux