After chess, cheating rows rock poker and fishing

I saw the poker event live. I genuinely think she was not cheating. She was only 47% to win the hand after her call of the all-in bet and while the play was marginally +EV, it wasn’t much.<p>Far more likely was she misread J4 as J3, especially as she literally said “threes are good, right?” during her deliberations.<p>Cheating in this spot just makes no sense and there has been zero evidence to indicate it was anything more than what she said - she misread a 4 as a 3.

All these accusations of cheating without any concrete proof are really worrying to me. I&#x27;ve read a few of these threads now, and not once have I seen any actual, <i>real</i>, <i>explicit</i> evidence for cheating.<p>It looks very similar to the vote rigging claims we&#x27;re seeing a lot more of recently in the U.S. Don&#x27;t like the outcome? Just blame your opponent of cheating! No need to show any _real_ proof - just make up some vague claims of what _could_ have happened! And just keep repeating it. And this all seems to working pretty well - THAT is the scary thing<p>Obviously none of this applies in the case of the fisherman, who seem to have been caught red-handed.

The fishing one is the outlier, since in that case th cheaters were caught red handed in dramatic fashion in front of a crowd. With the chess and poker it&#x27;s much less clear if anything happened and what to do about it.

I think the only reason this drama is going around is because of the chess drama. It&#x27;s in the zeitgeist and it&#x27;s good clickbait right now. It&#x27;s made clear by articles like this that are using the chess drama to make their article interesting, including an even more tenuous link to some fishing drama.<p>Go back an hour in the footage, and she&#x27;s calling with Jack high on a KQK board against the same player, and she calls for extra time before eventually folding a bet on the river when she still has Jack high. It&#x27;s apparently not unlike her to be trying to catch bluffs with hands that lose to the bluff. She&#x27;s new to poker and playing against sharks on TV. She&#x27;s nervous and embarrassed and doing and saying things that don&#x27;t make sense.

Faith in the athletic sprit of fair play and may the best win probably never existed.<p>&quot;...Anonymous surveys done after elite athletics events in 2011, in which 57% of competitors admitted doping compared to under 4% in WADA test results...&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;sport&#x2F;2017&#x2F;aug&#x2F;29&#x2F;sport-doping-study-revealing-wider-usage-published-after-scandalous-delay" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;sport&#x2F;2017&#x2F;aug&#x2F;29&#x2F;sport-doping-s...</a><p>&quot;...In addition, of the 81 different riders who finished in the top-10 of the Tour de France during this period, 65% have been caught doping, admitted to blood doping, or have strong associations to doping and are suspected cheaters. ...&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;lance-armstrong-doping-tour-de-france-2015-1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;lance-armstrong-doping-tour-...</a><p>&quot;...For a nearly year Serena Williams was allowed &#x27;Therapeutic Use Exemptions&#x27; (TUEs) which involved LOTS of steroids. Date for use&#x2F;Date given&#x2F;Substance<p><i>Oct 2010 - Mar 2011&#x2F;23 Dec&#x2F;Hydromorphone </i>Dec 2010&#x2F;23 Dec&#x2F;Oxycodone <i>Nov 27-Dec 1 2010&#x2F;23 Dec&#x2F;Methylprednisolone </i>12-19 Mar 2014&#x2F;13th Mar&#x2F;Prednisone <i>21-30 Mar 2014&#x2F;2 Apr&#x2F;Prednisone </i>7-21 May 2014&#x2F;8 May&#x2F;Prednisone <i>10-17 Nov 2014&#x2F;3 Dec&#x2F;Prednisone, Oxycodone </i>5-10 June 2015&#x2F;8 Jun&#x2F;Prednisolone <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tennis.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;tandon-a-closer-look-at-serena-williams-therapeutic-use-exemptions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tennis.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;tandon-a-closer-look-at...</a>

The cheating claims for the poker example are absolutely stupid. Only people who know very little about poker would claim that.<p>What is obvious is that the lady made a mistake. If someone were helping her cheat, there’s no way they would have told her to call, especially after the flop.<p>She was behind the entire hand after the flop, and even after the turn she still had a disadvantage. She shouldn’t have called it at all and there was no reason to even think about it. If she were cheating her accomplice would have told her under no uncertain terms to fold. Who would advise anyone to make a 6 figure bet on a coin flip???There’s no circumstance under which her actions make sense except in the case of her making a mistake.<p>She made a mistake and got lucky, that’s all there is.

All the men commentating on this situation are missing the perceived sexism dynamic at the table. She clearly believed he was full of shit and wanted to call him out on it. Her statements about &quot;bluff catcher&quot; align with this. It was a stupid play that had no rational basis, but she did it based on an emotional read of him not an assessment of the realistic value of her hand. And she got lucky.<p>In amateur games I see this type of behavior all the time. To me all it says is that she&#x27;s a noob in the world of pro poker. Playing against irrational opponents is hard, hence &quot;beginner&#x27;s luck&quot;.

Let me give you all a quick crash course in poker exploitation. Exploitation is taking advantage of inaccuracies in the other player&#x27;s strategy to maximize the amount of money you win.<p>When you bet or raise in poker you need to do this action with some combinations of hands that are good (we refer to these as value hands) and some combinations of hands that are bad (we refer to these as bluffs).<p>If you ever have too many value hands the opponent can exploit your strategy by folding all hands that are worse than your value hands. If you ever have too many bluffs the opponent can exploit your strategy by calling with <i>all</i> hands that beat your bluffs.<p>The problem with this J hi call is that it does not beat the majority of Garrett&#x27;s bluffs. In this situation Garrett has at most 2 combinations of hands that are worse than J hi, those hands also have 50% chance of winning due to half the deck improving them on the river vs J hi. In this situation Garrett could have three of a kind, a single pair, a full house, or maybe just Ace hi (which beats J hi).<p>So this call is terrible, even if &quot;you have a read&quot;.<p>So the only explanation is that she&#x27;s extremely stupid or cheating. Both explain the shifting story for why she called because nobody wants to admit they are dumb and they definitely don&#x27;t want to admit to cheating.<p>edit: She could also just have poor emotional regulation under pressure which compelled her to call despite knowing it&#x27;s bad.

The cheating accusations need to be a lot less dramatic. Removing cheaters from competitive play isn’t a public activity. Magnus throwing the chess equivalent of a tantrum in public, and a woman being bullied into undoing a lucky win aren’t going to solve anything.<p>Unless you catch someone red handed go through channels. Unless of course the object is to create a bunch of hype and engagement… then I suppose accuse more people of cheating without evidence in the noisiest way possible.

Check out ‘Mike postle’ in the poker world - he was accused of cheating based on hundreds of hours worth of evidence but no actual proof, the evidence was substantial enough to basically prove guilt beyond doubt.<p>The current poker drama doesn’t offer enough evidence to prove or disprove anything. I think largely the poker world is addicted to drama, unsure if the objective is to remain in the media or just because drama sells.

Adelstein is one of the best poker cash players in the world. He has a sterling reputation in the community and to my knowledge has never made an accusation like that before.<p>If you play poker, that call was either the greatest hero call of all or extremely suspect.<p>There is absolutely no reason to call in that spot considering the fact that many bluffs could be ahead of her hand such as AcXc for a flush draw.<p>Furthermore, she was backed in that game meaning that she doesn’t have the money to play in it. Who is backing you if you are calling over $100K pots with Jack high.

The future is full body x-rays or large magnetic fields that will kill your if you have metal in you.

&gt; Local media report that the [fishing] pair were disqualified as winners at an event last year, because one of them failed a polygraph test.<p>wtf? That is definitely not how to use a polygraph. First off, why would you ever submit to that? Second, they are notoriously questionable, and something tells me the fishing championship didn’t get the world’s leading expert to run it.

This reminded me of a fascinating article about cheating in bass fishing that came out a while back. I had no idea how big cheating in fishing is!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sdfish.com&#x2F;general&#x2F;dark-secret-americas-big-bass-guru-mike-long&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sdfish.com&#x2F;general&#x2F;dark-secret-americas-big-bass-gur...</a>

The chess world is loving Niemann right now, but even more so Carlsen for his high-profile indignation. P.T. Barnum&#x27;s chestnut about bad publicity applies most to &quot;sports&quot; desperately seeking spectators.

Dumb question, but if she was cheating, where is the information sourced from? How could her accomplice see the other player&#x27;s card to pass to her? I never saw this part explained.

How do you even check if someone has a wireless vibrating device?

Coming soon to ProductHunt- Faraday underpants.

The poker one doesn’t make sense to me in any direction. Even if she was cheating and had full knowledge of the other player’s cards, her call still doesn’t make sense. Giving back the money to the other player was a really suspicious move though. It seems like she mostly just didn’t really understand what she was doing.

&quot;Lew ended up returning Adelstein his chips, saying she had been &quot;threatened&quot; - something Adelstein denied.&quot;<p>This seems like a very suspect thing to do in my opinion. The threats must have been very specific and meaningful for me to even consider returning chips that I was claiming to have fairly won. Returning them just seems like a guilty move.