I'll be honest, guys. I went from thinking this was like 55-60% cheating when the story broke, to about 20% cheating/80% innocent at this point.
Most new things I learn seem to break in her favor.
I saw Doug Polk's latest video on her. While I respect Doug and usually agree with him, I didn't like his conclusions here. I thought he was way off with several things.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We are not seeing such evidence here. In fact, we aren't seeing evidence at all -- just a weird play which is hard to explain. The rest is all wild speculation.
Don't compare this to Postle, where we had 18 months of footage to consult, and we found loads of suspicious material. This was ONE hand, and her other play (both during the stream and during other sessions off-stream) seems to indicate a player who will sometimes make weird (and often bad) hero calls if she thinks you've been pushing her around.
I'm going to take a lot of statements made by the community, and give my response to them below.
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"She couldn't have made that jack-high-no-draw call all-in for another $100k unless she was cheating!"
FALSE. People make stupid and ill-advised plays all the time. I can't tell you how many absolute nonsense calls I've seen over my 22 years of playing poker, where I'm left scratching my head how these people could have possibly thought their hand had a chance. In one case, I was actually called by the 3-2 nut low on the river!! This was a horrendous play, and it's a fluke that it ended up being profitable. However, this doesn't necessarily mean she was cheating. As has been pointed out many times, calling there still only gives her 47% equity. If you can see the cards (or are getting signals from someone who can), you almost surely pick a better spot.
"Giving the money back is an admission of guilt."
FALSE. She stated that they were playing such high stakes that $135k could easily be won back at such an aggressive, high-stakes, deep-stacked game, so therefore it wasn't a big deal. While that's absurd reasoning to return $135k that you rightfully won, I think she was legitimately scared that she was going to be humiliated "in front of millions of people" (supposedly Garrett's words), and possibly banned from returning to the game if she didn't. I think Robbi was delusional that she was a hand-reading genius after that hand, and felt like it was worth $135k to protect her spot in the game (and possibly her rep, as well). But what about the fact that she was at least 50% staked, and possibly 100% staked? I'm guessing she thought she was making an executive decision which was +EV for the long run, perhaps even just to increase her profile in poker.
"She clearly doesn't need the money, so she never would have cheated!"
FALSE. She was at least 50% staked here. Anyone getting staked for a game doesn't feel the money is trivial, even if they can be pretty easily bullied into returning $135k they just won! Clearly if she "didn't need the money", she wouldn't be staked at all. That's not to say this is evidence of cheating, but this entire line of reasoning should be thrown out.
"She thought she had J3, since she had that the hand right before, and believed she was calling with a pair of 3s."
PROBABLY FALSE. She checked her hand several times before making that $100k call. It is likely she knew she had J4. Yes, it's possible she checked and her brain kept seeing J3 when her eyes saw J4, but I don't buy that. Usually such mistakes happen when you DON'T check your hand again, and your brain farts into thinking the previous hand is the current one. I've had that happen before, especially when tired, but I've never had it occur when I check my hand again! I feel it's just a coincidence that she had J3 the hand before. Note that, when questioned right after the hand, she never once said she thought she had J3. When questioned during the hand, she outright said she didn't have a 3. Obviously table talk doesn't mean a ton, and it's possible she was covering for misreading her hand, but I really don't believe the J3 explanation.
"Her explanations for why she made that play have never made any sense, and are often contradictory."
TRUE -- BUT MAYBE NOT SIGNIFICANT. Indeed, none of her explanations of the play make any sense. The closest thing we get to what might have been the truth was her very early claim that she had the "blocker" to one of Garrett's possible hands (J8 clubs or JQ clubs), because she was holding the jack of clubs. It is possible that this led her to believe he's probably not pulling this aggro move with a draw which also beats her at showdown, and that he was more likely to have worse than jack high at the moment if he had a draw. While this isn't good reasoning to spew off 100k with jack high no draw (and no kicker!), it's actually believable that a novice player would think this is a correct application of an advanced concept (blockers). Given that she seemed to feel Garrett was always pushing her around, she probably talked herself into thinking she might be good -- and amazingly she was. Regarding the contradictory explanations, I think this was out of embarrassment, or perhaps her feeling that the truth would look worse than a lie (as far as cheating allegations go).
"There was a clear vibration shown before she folded another hand after thinking awhile."
PROBABLY FALSE. There was some kind of shaking going on, but people don't sit like statues at the poker table. It could easily have been nervous motion. Doug Polk points out that the "vibrating" stops when she makes the decision, but that's because the hand is over, and so is the decision. This so-called "vibration" means nothing.
"She made a weird tank with J8-high against Garrett earlier, when he had Q4 and a boat. She even used a time chip to take extra time."
TRUE. However, this could be another attempt at a crazy hero call and bluff catch. You cannot conclude that she was waiting for a signal that it was okay to fold.
"Her friend Rip/Jacob, who is staking her, admitted he his buddies with someone who works at Hustler Casino Live, and named the person."
TRUE. However, it's hard to believe he would volunteer this, if this was his "in" to knowing the holecards.
"Garrett never asked for the money back."
PROBABLY FALSE. Both Matt Berkey and Nick Vertucci claim that Ryan told them that they overheard Garrett suggesting she give the money back as a way to "make it right".
"Robbi is known for a playstyle where she makes nonsensical loose calldowns when she thinks a man is pushing her around at the table.."
TRUE. See the tweet below from Ben Moon, who played her at a WSOP $1500 shootout table heads up:
https://twitter.com/bmoon/status/1576138109074300928
Continued next post...
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Originally Posted by PositiveVariance
