Here we go again...
https://twitter.com/bluesCFC__/status/1591834174985576451
Also, there is a new Twitter account dedicated to attempting to expose widespread cheating on Hustler Casino Live: https://twitter.com/hclpokerscandal
It's not clear who runs it.
It seems when Charlie Carrel went on Joey’s podcast and put out that Nick Vertucci was being looked at is when a lot of these people started to make a lot less noise. I believe this was Joey’s last podcast on the whole matter. I think it’s not hard to connect the dots when you look at the timeframe of when the chatter become muffled & this very public accusation against Nick.
I have a few thoughts
1) Denials mean nothing. It’s like the baseball players going before Congress and emphatically saying they never used steroids. It’s not illegal to lie to the public. If there was something nefarious here you would expect strong denials. Nick & Ryan would be ruined if there actually was something going on. So I can’t give any weight to denials.
2) Nick plays mainly in this stupid 5/5 $100 BB ante Game. It plays like a 40/80 or higher. So when absurd win rates using BBs/Hour are cited, they mean absolutely nothing. Nick is buying in for 35K, so to use $5 as the measure of a big blind is disingenuous. Any kind of win rate needs to be adjusted using a reasonable figure for the BB. Something around $80 I guess.
3) Nick is in a spot where his EV simply can’t be calculated. He is in this ante game where the ridiculously small blinds give him no incentive to play hands. He can fold all 6 hours and lose a negligible amount. He sits in this game and consistently has a low VPIP & for whatever reason players don’t avoid him like the plague. They seem to bluff into him and call off to him way too much.
4) Nick gets the seat and has no pressure on him whatsoever to play hands. Most of the other players feel that pressure to play. HCL has even embraced him as “Nitucci”. Is it ethical? No, not at all. I don’t believe he should sit in a game like that and exploit the fact he can nut peddle because he owns the product. But of course he is allowed to do so. I know Ryan tries to avoid playing.
Regardless if this is all on the up and up or not, it’s a bad look for an owner of the stream to exploit these games and take almost a million out of the player pool. If he was splashing around like DGAF that seems to be more appropriate. But Nick is clearly not the quality of player who could make that work.
*This is where I currently fall. That Nick is up this money legitimately, but it’s a bad bad look.
5) Changes in the player Luda Chris can be explained. He was a young guy and it’s not out of the question for him to completely change his playing style. Maybe he came in to a bunch of money or maybe a different backer wanted him to play completely differently. I believe that he made drastic changes to his playing style, but that can be explained. If he was a grinder in his late 30s plus and made such a drastic change, that would be more difficult to believe it was organic.
I am a little surprised that Nick hasn’t come out more forcefully with denial after denial. “I would never fucking cheat and have never cheated”. It may be that he knows it doesn’t matter. Once someone puts your name out there you are kind of fucked. But I am a bit surprised we haven’t seen some stronger statements that he would never and has never cheated. But again, he probably realizes it doesn’t matter.
Last edited by JeffDime; 11-13-2022 at 03:32 PM.
I wonder if Garrett Adelstein hired these guys to conduct their own investigation. They replied to a tweet saying that Garrett was involved in the group but not anymore.
Garrett mentioned in the LA Times article that he was given back money after being cheated in a private game. I think Robbi offering to give back the money made him convinced she cheated because of his prior experience. He must be on monster tilt seeing all those juicy games on HCL. The person who benefits the most from this is Andy. He gets to take his spot in the big games.
the purpose was to get attention, they succeeded.
https://saint-raphael.ch/prix-kiwani...ntreprise-2017
There is a game being played on another level.
Nick Vertucci has to be ecstatic right now between the FTX implosion and this recent sports book funds theft fiasco its literally totally just made the whole J4os Robbi Garret shit disappear from the headlines on Poker Twitter and other media outlets. Nobody has even posted on it here until myself after a week. I dont even think PokerKaren (who Im now sure is a guy based on some recent comments online about Tinder) has had much to say about HCL.
1 more week, folks! I can’t wait!
Todd, can i come on radio when you review the finding from the 'investigation'?
i find this particularly comical....what type of legitimate third party auditor quotes the amount spent on the 'investigation' as a reason that cheating did not occur
"they couldn't have cheated, no one would spend this much money on a coverup"
Essentially exactly what I expected. I’m sure Druff will give it a nice write up. The only thing of real note to me….
https://twitter.com/JeffreyDime/status/1603179567812071424
Now I do think they will fix this and say Robbie is welcome back. But with Garrett not returning the money, it’s really awkward to have her come and play when she seemingly is light 125K of rightfully won money according to their own report. Think they chose Garrett.
https://twitter.com/JeffreyDime/status/1603189362535313412
Last edited by JeffDime; 12-14-2022 at 04:54 PM.
Las thing of note is they dropped this literally on the day they are starting back to back to back high stakes livestreams. That is no coincidence and pretty smart. They know the report is going to be disappointing to the community, so why not try and pivot to the poker as quick as possible. That’s what they are doing. Pretty standard but smart. I’m sure it wasn’t the easiest time to put this together with a lot of players in Vegas and then the holidays right after.
They shouldn't have even done an investigation. One player accusing another player of cheating is not enough to justify a full blown investigation. And those who think she is guilty are just gonna dismiss the investigation if it rules in her favor. You have to catch them in the act or have a whistleblower.
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