Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Wireless Networking Classic Games (Games) Idle

Did a Poker Pro Use RFID Tags To Cheat? (cnbc.com) 158

Posted by EditorDavid from the security-hole-cards dept.
CNBC reports that a popular Twitch poker star has been accused of cheating: Stones Gambling Hall in Sacramento, California says it will not livestream poker games pending an investigation into cheating allegations made against one of the game's players, Mike Postle... The original accusations were made by Veronica Brill, another poker player who has played with Postle on "Stones Live." Since then, others have come forward with similar complaints. Brill has no specific accusation of what Postle is doing and even admits that she can't be sure he is cheating. So why does she think he is cheating? His results are too good, according to Brill. She said (and several professional pokers players who talked to CNBC, agreed) no one could do as well as he has, for as long as he has, on these livestreamed games...

It's not just that Postle is winning, it's how he's winning, that is drawing suspicion. Poker commentator Joey Ingram, poker pro Matt Berkey, and others have spent hours reviewing hands Postle played and found several times where Postle made a fold or a call that wouldn't seem "right" but happened to work out in his favor. Berkey said Postle made plays no pro would ever make, and he did them often, and they worked. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Berkey said Postle played "as if he had perfect information."

Stones Gambling Hall said it has hired an independent investigator to look into the accusations. In a statement Stones Gambling Hall said: "We temporarily halted all broadcasts from Stones. We have also, as a result, halted the use of RFID playing cards." The RFID cards contain chips, that combined with readers in the poker table, transmit information about each player's hole cards, so that viewers can see the cards on the broadcast (which is on a 30-minute delay to protect game integrity). At this point, there is no specific allegation, no "smoking gun" as Berkey said. But many pros are pointing to those RFID cards and the hole card information, saying it's just not possible for Postle to play the way he does and win the way he does.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Did a Poker Pro Use RFID Tags To Cheat? More

Did a Poker Pro Use RFID Tags To Cheat?

Comments Filter:

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @09:47PM (#59274288)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Trivial to test. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by F.Ultra ( 1673484 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @10:23PM (#59274334)
      The problem is that those same RFID chips are what they used to detect this anomaly to begin with, remember that the complaint is not that he is winning but how he is winning (aka how he reacts to other peoples hands without knowing their hands).

      • Re: Trivial to test. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @11:13PM (#59274420)
        Isn't the skill of a poker player his or her ability to discern what the opponent's cards are by reading the signs? Maybe he is just good at reading the opponents. No reason for him to be accused of cheating until you understand that he did and how.
        • reading the signs of beginner or average players is a definite skill and easy to learn and can significantly increase your winnings. Doing that against hardened professionals consistently is next to impossible as they all know what to look for as well and what to avoid.

        • "Isn't the skill of a poker player his or her ability to discern what the opponent's cards are by reading the signs? "

          The other player can't have a tell about the cards they don't see.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by OcabJ ( 13938 )

          I skimmed through one video where a guy was analyzing the hand footage and there was one hand where the accused had 8-8 and went 8's full at the turn (or flop). Opponent had 10-10 and river'ed a 10 to go 10's full. The accused option checked into 10-10 who bet (something like a pot-size bet or less) and the accused only called. I'm not the best poker player by any means, but I don't see how anyone would have checked called a full house on the river like that. There's no reason to suspect the opponent had th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by marcle ( 1575627 )

            I skimmed through one video where a guy was analyzing the hand footage and there was one hand where the accused had 8-8 and went 8's full at the turn (or flop). Opponent had 10-10 and river'ed a 10 to go 10's full. The accused option checked into 10-10 who bet (something like a pot-size bet or less) and the accused only called. I'm not the best poker player by any means, but I don't see how anyone would have checked called a full house on the river like that. There's no reason to suspect the opponent had the over pair and went full at the river to beat the accused's full house. Max value play is to 3-bet raise (if not all in).

            I didn't understand a single word you said. Can you translate that into a nice automobile metaphor?

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Two people at the table had a full house, which is almost always what they call "the nuts" - an unbeatable hand. The guy who got it earliest played the weakest... which is ok except what you'd normally do is make a big bet at the end to force everybody else to pay up to see your superior hand. In this case, the guy checked, which makes no sense. The only way you'd do something like that is if you're an idiot, or you knew your hand was beat, and it was extremely unlikely his full house would have been bea

      • The problem is that those same RFID chips are what they used to detect this anomaly to begin with, remember that the complaint is not that he is winning but how he is winning (aka how he reacts to other peoples hands without knowing their hands).

        It says right in TFS what the RFID chips are actually used for, which is to help with the broadcasting of the game. Independent analysis using humans who are also experts in the game is what actually detected an anomaly in playing and raised suspicion.

        How the hell did you come up with that theory of yours?

        • That is what they main use is for yes, but the information from them is what the experts used to see that he always does the correct towards his opponents due to the cards that they hold and that he holds.
      • No they did not. They didn't "detect" anything, they "suspected". Playing with non-id'd cards would definitely show any difference in his results.

        • Re:Trivial to test. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday October 06, 2019 @09:47AM (#59275214)

          No they did not. They didn't "detect" anything, they "suspected". Playing with non-id'd cards would definitely show any difference in his results.

          Or better yet, play with cards with purposely incorrect RFID's.

          When it turns out completely incorrect, then we'll see how great his poker face is.

        • What they have detected is that he always does the 100% correct thing as if he knows exactly what cards his opponents holds. That is not the same thing as they detecting that he cheats, but they most definitively detected this anomaly by analyzing his moves combined with the information on exactly which cards he and his opponents where holding at each moment (info that they got from the RFID chips).

      • The problem is that those same RFID chips are what they used to detect this anomaly to begin with, remember that the complaint is not that he is winning but how he is winning (aka how he reacts to other peoples hands without knowing their hands).

        Save each hand for analysis and start with a new deck, as well as change the decks back so any print anomalies he may know would not be present.

    • They have and he does shit. At the rfid table he has is like a god at 6 standard deviations above the next best player at a cash game off same limits. His history in all other games is mediocre.

    • Use cards that aren't tagged with RFID chips, and see how he does.

      -jcr

      Exactly. And collect each players cards after each hand so you can compare what he did no versus how he played against similar hands in the past against the same players. Though, I suspect if he was cheating simply getting rid of RFID cards and an audience would be enough to throw him off his game; he also vilated the first rule of cheating, which is don't win too big too often.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Or use different coding for each card set and replace them after each game.

      But also review the system that reads the card to ensure that there aren't any "leaks".

      Many cheaper RFID cards are also easily hacked, but later versions are more resilient.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by v1 ( 525388 )

        Many cheaper RFID cards are also easily hacked, but later versions are more resilient.

        Properly programmed RFID chips are basically impossible to "hack". The MUPPET way to set up RFID is to use the serial number of the token as the identifier. The problem with this is twofold: (1) ANYONE can get the ID of the token simply by asking, it's a core part of the opening connection protocol. And (2) you can buy tokens online that don't have their ID number locked from the factory, so you can change it. Walk by

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          What about a passive snooping or even a MiM attack? He could do one of those via his phone....

  • WCPGW (Score:5, Insightful)

    by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 ) <sharper@TWAINboo ... com minus author> on Saturday October 05, 2019 @09:50PM (#59274292) Homepage Journal

    So they setup poker games where the hidden cards literally broadcast which card they were?

    Yeah, no chance that someone is taking advantage of the marked cards which are deliberately configured for remote exploitation! What could possibly go wrong....

  • TV Show did this... sorta (Score:4, Informative)

    by irving47 ( 73147 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @09:54PM (#59274296) Homepage

    Can't remember which show it was.. MAYBE Las Vegas with Josh Duhamel... Anyway, the games were recorded for TV, and little cameras built into the table to see the cards instead of RFID, the idea being that nobody in the room could know, because the video recording was done from a van/truck trailer setup outside... So the guys in the truck could see the hole cards on their screens. Then they activated the cue lights on the cameras to signal the cheater when he should call/raise/fold.

  • It's basically a certianty that he's cheating (Score:5, Informative)

    by Karganeth ( 1017580 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @09:58PM (#59274306)
    Since he's on a twitch stream he knows people are watching him play, so for example he would not do something like instantly fold KK preflop when an opponent has AA (the only possible better hand) - if he did that it would be extremely obvious he magically knew another player had AA. Instead he'll make a small raise as expected, then when the player with AA raises he'll act like its a really difficult decision for him then throw his cards away.

    The problem is that you need to be fairly competent at poker to understand he's cheating, so if this goes to court it'll be hard to convince a jury that doesnt consist of poker pros. Lots of wild theories are being made, trying to understand how he is cheating. The hub of the main Postle discussion is at the 2+2 forums which has quickly amassed over 4000 posts https://forumserver.twoplustwo... [twoplustwo.com]

    • The problem is that you need to be fairly competent at poker to understand he's cheating

      No you don't. All you need to do is look at situations where the odds are against him doing the right thing but yet he does do the right thing and then calculate those odds for the jury (that part is just a maths problem). If you have enough of these then you should have odds so vanishingly small it is "beyond a reasonable doubt". If you do the complex probability calculation for the jury the results should be easy to explain.

      The other argument you will have to overcome is that poker players always argu

      • I’d think you would need to show how exactly he was reading the other hole cards, in order to secure a conviction.

        • That may be true but I find it interesting that we've convicted people of murder based on scene-of-crime DNA evidence that had much lower statistical odds. This isn't like finding a match among living humans, this is like finding a match among all humans who ever lived or will live in the next few million years.

          Basically he either read the RFID signal or had a time machine.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mvdwege ( 243851 )

        It gets worse for him. If he gets into court, it's not a criminal case, but a civil one (people trying to get back his illegitimate winnings). There the standard is not 'beyond reasonable doubt, but 'preponderance of the evidence'. Ouch.

        • Not saying he did or didn't cheat but
          1. There isn't any evidence of a method he would have employed to cheat
          2. There are no witnesses of actual cheating.

          The only argument is he got really lucky.

          By that logic everyone who wins a lottery cheats.

          • By that logic everyone who wins a lottery cheats.

            No, because anyone can win a lottery once.

            But if over the course of a year if you won the weekly lottery 50 out of 52 weeks, you wouldn't be lucky, you'd be cheating.

            How you're cheating would need to be determined, but consistently defying the laws of statistics over and over again is sure sign of cheating.

    • I'm a casual player who only plays with family & friends and when you can see the example hands it starts to look pretty off, pretty quick. The big clue is his really loose play only happens when the hole cards are right for his hand. I play pretty loose but his play is far beyond spooking opponents.

    • That's something I always wondered about, isn't that what they meant when they wrote "Jury of your peers"? This guy's peers would be poker players and understand what's going on.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        "peers" meant "the other lords of the realm".

        this was in contrast being tried by the king himself.

        The notion that such a right applied to us commoners comes *much* later . . .

        Also, fwiw, an impeachment is, roughly, a trial by the full jury of his peers, but instigated by Commons rather than a prosecutor. (or in the US, by the House before the Senate).

        finally, impeachment is an exception to the usual US constitutional bar against bills of attainder; it is a very specific type of bill of attainder.

        hawk

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      The moment you know he's throwing away a pair of kings that still sounds like obvious cheating to me. If I was a cheating man I'd try to not let it affect my "positive" play at all, the strong hands I get I have to play like I would anyway. Maybe you could selectively slow play your hand to limit the pot size and hope an ace or straight/flush draw gives you an excuse to back down, but otherwise I'd have to eat the loss. My main game would be trying to steal extra pots when the opponent also doesn't have muc

      • So, to build a better cheat: why not build an automated system that actually feeds him bogus information some percentage of the time, to let him fully maximize his play, but keep the winnings statistically in check?

        Just sayin'.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Joviex ( 976416 )

      ...The problem is that you need to be fairly competent at poker to understand he's cheating...

      Its not hard to see he is cheating. I will quote this part of the article I read, cause it makes the most logical sense, no need to worry about finding anything, the evidence is simply human behavior:

      [quote]Postle doesn’t play in other non streamed live games at Stones, or anywhere else in the Sacramento area, and hasn’t been known to play in any sizable no-limit games anywhere in a long time, and that he always picks up his chips and leaves as soon as the livestream ends. I don’t real

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You probably just need a statistician expert witness and a poker player expert witness.

  • Isn't it possible that among the thousands and thousands of poker players Postle was simply very lucky (while not playing like a pro)? Since the other players lost (money) it is understandable how angry and spiteful they can be.

    • Isn't it possible that among the thousands and thousands of poker players Postle was simply very lucky (while not playing like a pro)? Since the other players lost (money) it is understandable how angry and spiteful they can be.

      Or even more plausible, he is extraordinarily talented when it comes to reading "tells"

      • Re:Statistics (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @10:46PM (#59274376)

        Or even more plausible, he is extraordinarily talented when it comes to reading "tells"

        If that is the case, he should be equally talented in games without RFID tags on the cards.

        He isn't.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Koby77 ( 992785 )
        If he was truly that good at getting tells from other players, then it's amazing that he is playing a relatively mediocre stakes game instead of using that talent to make millions of dollars at a higher stakes game. The player in question has not been able to achieve this type of success in his past career. It would be like a baseball player getting signed to the minor leagues, doing nothing spectacular for 10 years, then suddenly having a breakthrough year with 200 home runs, and finally declining a contra

    • Isn't it possible that among the thousands and thousands of poker players Postle was simply very lucky

      No. The odds of him winning the way he has by luck is infinitesimal.

      This isn't "one in a thousand" luck. It is "one in a hundred quadrillion" luck.

      Nobody is ever that lucky. Ergo, he is cheating.

      The only question is how he is doing it. Most likely he is in cahoots with the TV film crew who see the RFID data in real time. But it is also possible that he has his own concealed RFID reader.

      • It is "one in a hundred quadrillion" luck.

        No, it isn't. That kind of luck gets you royal flushes in three consecutive hands. He may certainly be doing something where the odds are long, but they're nowhere near that long.

        • It is "one in a hundred quadrillion" luck.

          No, it isn't. That kind of luck gets you royal flushes in three consecutive hands. He may certainly be doing something where the odds are long, but they're nowhere near that long.

          The graph a few posts up indicates he's > 10 sigma from the mean. That's longer than the stated quadrillions^-1.

          • The graph is only showing BB/100 and VPIP. So yes he puts in money roughly a normal amount of time for a loose player and as the most winning player he will obviously have a higher BB/100. So much data is missing from that graph, like how long of a time period was the graph over, and what was his bb/100 over? Who are the other players in the graph? There was only 8 people at that table right, so why are there hundreds and hundreds of blue dots? Maybe it's true but that graph proves absolutely nothing as is

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Cederic ( 9623 )

              What are VPIP and BB/100?

              Yeah, I could use an internet search engine, but I trust you to provide a simpler and more pertinent explanation.

        • If he had only gotten 3 royal flushes in a row, nobody would be accusing him of cheating.

          His luck is well beyond 3 royal flushes in a row odds. His luck is more like the pieces of a broken glass that was sitting on the floor suddenly jumping up onto the counter and assembling themselves into a glass again.

          The chance that we live in a universe where his luck occurred, is easily dismissed, in the same way that we can easily dismiss claims of broken glasses reassembling themselves.

      • But it is also possible that he has his own concealed RFID reader.

        The "cahoots" thing is probably it, not an RFID reader. The only thing he needs is to get is the signal to fold or call so this is literally just two bits of information that must be transmitted to him somehow - maybe only one if he can guess which by the context (I imagine as an expert poker player, he can). If anything in the room he can see can be rigged to give some sort of visual cue that would do it. Or some device on his body that can be activated by IR or ultraviolet, or an ultrasonic pulse, or a m

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by irving47 ( 73147 )

          I said it on another post already, but I saw a show where this was the basic plot. The cheaters used the TV/recording truck outside to watch/record the game to isolate them from the crowd, but used the cue lights on the camera to communicate.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )
          Perhaps he's hearing the RFID tag through a tooth filling (plausible) [fandom.com].
        • I'm guessing most/all require a cohort-in-crime. That's been the weak link of many a criminal strategy. Find that weak link, and you'll likely have the method. Design a system to record what you've found out, and you're off to court for the win.

      • If it is truly livestreamed, then all he needs is communication with almost anyone outside who can see the livestream.

        • Ignore my parent comment. I see that there is a 30 minute delay, so it isn't livestreamed at all.

    • It's possible, but you can calculate the odds of that happening.

    • Possible, yes, But so unlikely that it's almost certain he cheated. Someone posted a graph showing where he is compared to the people he's playing against, and he's not even in the same vicinity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Nope. Too much statistical evidence to the contrary.

  • Quoth W.C. Fields (Score:5, Funny)

    by BlindWillieMcTell ( 5553362 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @10:46PM (#59274378)

    Q: "Is this a game of chance?"

    A:: "Not the way I play it."

  • oR... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Saturday October 05, 2019 @11:23PM (#59274436)

    He could just be psychic, clairvoyant, telepathic etc

    • He could just be psychic, clairvoyant, telepathic etc

      Don't be silly he is blessed by God and has an angel on his shoulder telling him the hole cards.

      Or he sold his soul to the devil and there is a devil of his shoulder telling him.

      Or maybe its an invisible ghost who can move about the room.

      The government is beaming it into his brain with N-rays.

      Aliens. I'm not saying its aliens, but its aliens.

      Leprachauns.

      This is fun. I could do this all night.

    • or time traveler!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      Dowsing rod in his pants?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Nope. In that case he could have made far more money and far less publicly.

  • Luck, good that is, is a super power, right Dominoe? Getting away with Cheating almost a super power. Results similar.

  • Clearly playing like you can read everyone's down cards for an extended period is a bad idea. The poker world are record keeping and stat geeks (even if not all players are) know what kind of play exists in the real world. There are records of lots of tournaments. So someone playing far, far better than anyone in recorded history is going to stand out. It's not like no one is going to notice. And they will know your record of play up to now. Yes, they will figure you are cheating, and they will definitely b

    • They aren't watching you lose, which matters (Score:4, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Sunday October 06, 2019 @03:24AM (#59274780) Journal

      > People are not watching how much you make winning, they are watching how you win

      With 8 players at a table, each player will win about 12% of the time and lose about 87% of the time.

      It's been said that in poker you can't control how much you win, you have absolute control of how much you lose. And you spend most of your time losing. Especially in a cash games as opposed to a tournament, your goal is to lose less than you win.

      The thing about psychology is, people aren't paying close attention to how you lose, what you do when you fold. They are watching the wins carefully. So an optimal strategy is probably to fold a little more often than you would if you weren't cheating. You wouldn't go all-in with 3-6 off suit, you'd fold borderline hands when your opponent has you beat.

      A similar idea is lottery tickets - lottery officials examine winning tickets carefully. Nobody examines losing tickets. So to cheat at lottery tickets, the guy at the guess station uses to be able to scratch 500 tickets and keep the winners. Then use the appropriate machine to re-apply the gray scratch-off covering to the losing tickets and sell them. The winning tickets are perfectly legitimate. It's the losing tickets (in the trash can) that have been tampered with.

      Now, they do colorful printing on top of the scratch-off cover instead of having it gray like it used to be. So the same cheat now requires re-applying the scratch-off coating AND reprinting it. That makes it harder / more expensive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It comes down to greed in this case. A non-detectable cheating strategy would probably have netted much, much less money. Somebody else posted that it was just 250k, that is not a lot already.

  • It's entirely possible that a game with RFID cards to be compromised without the use of the video commentary. Having a duplicate set of RFID readers could give a cheater all the information. This could be detected if the RFID cards were to also disclose how many transmissions they make, how many RFID readers, or the identity of the RFID readers they're handshaking with.

    RFID cards could be programmed to encrypt such identification information with internally generated time-dependent keys, and only disgorge t

    • The problem is time dependent keys.... information is not temporal. The only way for it to work would be for each card to have an internal timer and ability to store a key value every time the card was read. this is a very big ask, and requires something way more complicated and expensive then an rfid chip.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      One main issue with the RFID cards is that the identity code of each card isn't protected, just the data on the card can be protected.

      There are several issues with RFID cards as can be seen here: https://securitywing.com/top-1... [securitywing.com]

      So the use of RFID technology on poker cards is inviting for abuse. But that would only work if the abuser is good at memorizing or have technical devices to facilitate even a database of cards that can be maintained while the cards are encountered. Card counting is a known method i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      A passive reader that listens to the exchange between the card and the real reader is quite enough. RFID pumps out quite a bit of power, as the ID tag is powered by the reader as well.

  • Remember that listening to the cards responding can potentially be done over quite a bit of distance and entirely passively. If you can identify the different readers, either from time patterns or from reader IDs (I too lazy to look up whether the Reader transmits an ID), you can get which card is which, potentially from quite a bit of distance away (to be used by an ally in cheating) or from next to the card and reader by the cheater himself. Also, the video may not be as secure as thought in the 30 minute

Slashdot Top Deals

"The medium is the massage." -- Crazy Nigel

Close