The Ryen Russillo Podcast - China vs. the NBA, Plus Poker Scandals With Joey Ingram | The Ryen Russillo Podcast

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

Russillo examines the situation between China and the NBA after Daryl Morey's tweet regarding Hong Kong (2:50) before he is joined by Joey Ingram of 'The Poker Life' podcast to discuss the cheating scandal rocking the poker world (16:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's gonna be a little different simmons was always saying wednesdays should be known as the let's get weird wednesday deal i don't know that i can be that weird every wednesday but this is gonna be a different podcast we're gonna have jo Ingram on. He is the guy that basically spent hours and hours investigating Mike Postle, the poker player that everyone has alleged has cheated in this one stream, by the way. So the evidence is not great for Postle. The evidence against him is great that he was cheating. So I want to spend some time talking about that because I think most people like a good scandal story and we have a scandal on our hands. Also going to do a little state farm read for you a little bit later that has everything to do with Deshaun Watson because I feel like Watson should be in the MVP conversation. And I can't believe we could see him go up against Mahomes this weekend.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about this NBA China deal with the Daryl Morey tweet. So buckle up, man. We're taking on communism on this podcast. No, we're not. I think we're taking on or trying to promote rational thought. So we're going to start there. That'll be this week's open and we'll do it right after you hear from our guys at Sales Genie. If you're in sales or own your own business, listen up. We all know the top reason businesses fail is because they can't find new customers. I'm here to tell you that all you need is to reach the right audience. Sales Genie is the proven way to find, acquire, and retain customers. If you're serious about finding your next customer and growing your business,

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rep, I guess is the best way to say it. I don't want to use her name or anything. She's awesome. She's been great, great relationship the whole time. And I've been sending those to her. Now, does that mean anything for you? The guy sending me the video? Likely nothing, but she seems to enjoy them. So, uh, let's, uh, make sure, you know,

we're all adults about this. Speaking of remember to always drink responsibly when sending those videos as well. Today's open is about China. So we have the United States. It's about government. It's about capitalism. And it's about Daryl Morey.

As you probably heard by now, Houston rockets, general manager, Daryl Morey, a friend of the whole by now, Houston Rockets general manager, Daryl Morey, friend of the whole operation here. And despite our kind of back and forth, a guy I do like, respect a lot, care about, sent him a DM, said, hey, hang in there. He sent out this tweet. He's dealing with a lot of it. The quote is, fight for freedom, stay with Hong Kong.

Now, if you don't know what's going on in Hong Kong, there's been democracy protests been going on for a long time. Hong Kong, there's been democracy protests been going on for a long time. These originated from actually a story that I didn't know that much about in the beginning, because there have been, if you go back and look at Hong Kong and China, mainland China, and all the different stuff, we're talking about Hong Kong being occupied by the British after the opium wars in the 1840s, I think is when it was given to Great Britain. And then a Japanese invasion, and then communism spreading, and so many people from China going out to Hong Kong, and then trying to come up with some sort of agreement in the 1990s once it was given back to the people of China, but yet it just felt like it was two entirely different places. So it's one country, two systems, and that's kind of how it's worked there for a while. So something happened where a young man in his late teens murdered his girlfriend,

and it happened in Taiwan. And then he went back to Hong Kong, admitted that he murdered her, but there was no extradition in place. So people were like, all right, we need to go ahead and fix this. But if you grew up in Hong Kong and you're distrust of the Chinese government, you're sitting there saying, hey, you guys want this extradition by policy bill to be passed. But you know what? No, we don't trust you, which is another part of this whole thing that when you have outside foreigners, like when's the last time you saw somebody who was from another country rip the United States and you were like, that's awesome. I'm psyched that person's doing that. psyched that person's doing that. I mean, look, I'll admit, I saw a comedian the other night. I'm not going to say his name. I thought he was terrible. And all he did was make fun of the United States the whole time. And I was like, you know what? Look, I'm not exactly Captain America, but I was pissed off. Like I had a moment where I'm like, I almost want to tweet at this guy. One, I was probably more offended that he wasn't funny, but two, that his jokes were like layup

stupid jokes. Be like, oh, I'm from another country, but you guys are stupid for all of these things. All right. So that side rant a little bit over. So Daryl sends out that tweet. Everybody loses their shit. It's on every nightly news headlines, geopolitical storm, geopolitical backlash, because Daryl Morey is looking at Hong Kong and saying, hey, I'm siding with you guys. I'm siding with democracy, which isn siding with democracy which isn't some massive leap but it is if you're on mainland China going who's this GM of an NBA team in Houston freaking Texas

telling us how our country should interact with Hong Kong when this whole thing started from this horrible act by this guy that was in Taiwan in the beginning now look there's far more history than a guy who murders his girlfriend in Taiwan but But let's all try to do that thing that I emphasize over and over and over again throughout life is that is try to think a little bit like the person you completely disagree with or the person you know nothing about. So we've given you the backstory, the history. We've given you all of this leading up to once Daryl Morey does it, the NBA is like, oh man. Now the NBA, as some would joke, the most woke league in pro sports. But I actually don't

think that this time it should be thought of as a criticism. I think it's really cool that NBA players who are socially conscious are supported by the NBA. But at the same time, if the NBA had somebody kneeling, it would be an entirely different issue. So a lot of times other leagues kind of draft at the headwind of the bullshit that the NFL deals with first. So the NBA, Adam Silver, a very progressive thinker, he comes out and says, you know, we support Daryl's right to say stuff, but essentially we don't want to fuck up and maybe the biggest, let's say it's the second biggest market in the world when it comes to where our NBA growth is headed. Okay. Now you may not like those rules, but those are the rules. It's the same rule that Tillman Fertitta, the owner of the Rockets, is expressing in his tweet after the Daryl Morey shitstorm by saying,

quote, listen, Daryl Morey does not, all caps, speak for the Houston Rockets. Our presence in Tokyo is all about the promotion of the NBA internationally, and we are, quote, again, all big letters, not a political organization. And that was actually sent to ESPN. I know what you're thinking, especially if you're taking Daryl Morey's side. Like who do these people think they are? They're business people. You didn't need me to tell you that,

but we obviously need to remind ourselves of that sometimes. And I saw a lot of tweets from media members on this story, and it took me a little while to figure out how I wanted to do it. And I knew I wasn't going to do it on Monday's podcast with Chris Long anyway, which is even weird. It's like, oh, afraid to say something about the Chinese thing? No, I just really good football slate on Sunday and I didn't get to it. Um, I saw a lot of people tweeting the same thing over and over and over again. That was incredibly not interesting. It was a marathon of,

and it was this story, quote, tweet, lot of angles, so many layers, difficult situation. And it's like, I don't know what's going on there.

I'll never, I'll never quite understand. Like, Hey honey, hold on. Can you, can you pick up the kids? I have to send an innocuous tweet that says literally nothing.

I have to do this kind of vague communist capitalism, Chinese U US tweet, but make it really vague and lacking any substance whatsoever. Yeah, no, I'm in the content business. I'm sorry. I got to hit send on this right now. So there wasn't a lot added to the whole thing.

Although I think it's a constant page out of the playbook of today. And that is wanting to be right morally on social media and i don't know if it's shouting down everybody else that doesn't do it but who are you really shouting down an nba that's like hey look we don't want to deal with this there's a video game company that suspended one of their users a year because he said something about hong kong he was pro hong kong in this game, and I can use the company's name. You can go ahead and find this stuff out. They fined him and banned him for a year where this one video game maker that's made some huge titles is facing a boycott by some of

its own members because they didn't want to deal with it because they know that China's where the money is. And I know we don't like this lesson, but I don't know why anybody's ever surprised. It's not surprising that Daryl Morey is walking this one back. It's not surprising that his own owner is basically shouting him down. It's not surprising that Adam Silver is going to sit there and go, yeah, cool. You can say stuff, but just not this in the future. There is some parallel here between Kaepernick and Morey. Kaepernick was certainly somebody who, his fight is a bigger fight. His fight is in our own backyards, depending on what you think of Kaepernick. I don't really want to do that debate that much more,

but Kaepernick's approach, whether for or against it, was bad for business. So even if you're the person that is all about Kaepernick, you have to admit, you have to admit if you can just allow yourself to go, yeah, you know what? I can see an owner going, I'd love to give him a chance. He's probably better than our backup. I don't have a racist bone in my body. But if I have fans in my geographical footprint that are going to hate my product because they hate Kaepernick, even if I disagree with that fan, he is a customer and I don't want to piss off the customer. That's all this is, man. that's all this is man when I had somebody to answer to at ESPN I had 20 people to answer to nobody ever wanted me showing up going you know what I want people to become Mormons and I'm

going to start doing more of that on the radio because I think morally that's what I'm allowed to do like I think that's the right path so you know what that's the opening segment and then bees will get to the Browns whether or not Baker Mayfield's a bust I could have thought morally I was doing the right thing but I also knew deep down. Now, again, I'm not Mormon. I'm just using that as an example. That shit just doesn't fly. It's why sports talk radio. It's why ESPN, it's why all these places are like, you know what? We don't, it's not that we don't want you to feel right. We don't want you to, to fight for the unjust. We just want you to shut the fuck up and do the job that we hired you to do. That's it.

That's all it is. And that's what Tilma Fertitta is saying. Silver's doing it in a nicer way and why Daryl Morey would love to take that thing back. But back to Kaepernick, I remember being in Tennessee, getting in an Uber outside of the airport. Guy picks me up, asks me what I do. Say I work in sports talk. He says, I haven't watched the NFL since Kaepernick.

Now I'm sitting in the back being like, oh, here we go. NASCAR sticker, central casting, late fifties, early sixties. You know who I'm talking about? And he said, I've never watched the NFL since Kaepernick took a knee. And I was like, were you in the military? No. No. And then you want to be like, you hate black people? Like what's going on here? Um, obviously I didn't ask that question, but he just goes, you know, it's a disgraceful thing. I'm a patriot, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we know exactly what those things are. And some people listening right now are completely agreeing with the guy driving the Uber. Other people are outraged, right? That's fine. It's okay. Both can feel both ways. And I'm thinking,

this is nuts. But if you spent time in different pockets of this country, instead of your same four friends that all agree about the same stuff all the time, or only follow the people that agree with you, or have never moved outside of your neighborhood, you don't understand how there's a lot of people out there thinking a lot of different things. And the goal of the business is to make sure as many of those people are looking at you as a potential product that they're going to invest in. And that's why the Kaepernick thing hasn't worked out. And that's why he hasn't gotten sound. Now, the difference is Kaepernick has been 100% okay with his path and what it's cost him.

Daryl Morey wants nothing to do with this anymore, okay? So that's a very, very big difference, and I don't want to compare those two anymore. So yes, you can get mad because the NBA didn't back Daryl Morey. You can get mad that James Harden basically made a video apologizing to China on behalf of the Rockets because he's got a shoe deal. You can get mad about all this different stuff. You probably get mad about how the mom and pop shops are closing up.

But you know what you like? It's those Tide Pods for a few bucks less on Amazon that show up right away with prime shipping. Because we're all deep down a little selfish. I know the gray areas of some of the sneaker companies and guess what I do? I still buy the sneakers because I like them. And if one of those companies called me tomorrow and said, hey, will you be a guy to endorse some of our stuff? I'd say yes in a second because it'd be free gear and I like their gear. Even though I know deep down, there's probably some stuff I don't like. There is nothing easier than being the moralist

when you're telling the other person what they should do when they're the person in the conversation that has something to lose and you have nothing to lose. So whether it's the NBA, whether it's a franchise, whether it's a general manager, whether it's a player and everybody just backing up because of business interests, which I know pisses people off all the time, but that's, again, that's the rule.

Get mad if you want, but I heard one of my colleagues say the other day, history smiles on the principal. Maybe, but does your wife? We're going to talk some poker next. And now it's time for the State Farm Safe Bet of the Week. The player you can count on.

I'm going with Deshaun Watson because he's going up against Patrick Mahomes and as I pointed out I really think if it weren't for Patrick Mahomes we'd be doing all these Mahomes features on Watson instead.

Now I'm not arguing with the Mahomes part of it but I'm just telling you look out for Watson this weekend. If you're fumbling with insurance State Farm agents are here to help because with over 19,000 agents, they're local to you and available to help. Whether you connect in person by phone or through the State Farm mobile app, agents are here to help. So go to the one that has coverage and agents that you can count on. So it's like, all right, hey, thanks, Priscilla, for telling us everything. I had five touchdowns

and 85 percent completion rate um this past weekend that deshaun watson is good but if you go back and and think about at least how i am with quarterbacks and trying to understand like what's real and what isn't i think this past weekend we just saw a really big correction across the board with some of these dudes that are unproven where daniel jones kyle allen who had a great effort from christian mccaffrey more so than his passing game. And I think in the beginning of the Deshaun Watson thing, I'm like, I don't know if this is real. His head coach at Clemson, Dabo, was like, man, if you pass on this guy, you're passing on

Michael Jordan. And granted, that's pre-draft hyperbole, but in a way, it's like maybe Dabo wasn't lying to us because he was around this guy all the time. And watching what Watson does when he has just a little bit of time. And this past weekend's the first time he wasn't sacked in a football game since week eight of last year, which is only the second time in his career, apparently that that's happened. And we saw at the beginning of the year, remember that Saints game where it was an absolute shootout and then the Saints moved the ball right back down the field. And maybe it left us a little bit more excited about the Saints instead of realizing like how special Watson is because we didn't know if Watson was going to be able to get through an

entire season. But what I'm telling you is that this shootout with Mahomes, I feel like even though we've just seen what Brady did in a playoff game at Arrowhead, as far as this year's concerned, I'm just not sure how many other quarterbacks. Look, it's Rodgers, healthy breeze. We just saw it from Brady. But add Watson to the list of quarterbacks that can get into a shootout in Kansas City with Mahomes and come out a winner. State Farm, talk to an agent today. So if you're on social media, the last few days kind of picked up last week

and it still carried over. You saw something about this poker scandal. And there have been other bigger poker scandals monetarily, but we didn't always have video to go back and look at. And Bob Valgaris, who does some stuff here with Simmons over the years, big basketball guy, big gambling guy, now working with the Mavs. I know him very casually, and I saw him tweeting about it, and I'm like, man, this is just so interesting.

I think it's, I don't know, if you've ever been to a casino, I don't want to make it just about guys. I think if you're anybody that spent time around a casino or thinking about playing cards or anything, it's just immediately fascinating. And people that don't do it, I think are fascinated by it. And this thing really picked up and it started with this one poker player named Mike Postle who just had an insane win rate, but a win rate at one specific event, which was the Stones gambling hall near Sacramento. And there was this live feed that really nobody watched. But one of the broadcasters, a female broadcaster was like, okay, this is his pattern, the way

he's playing hands, his folds. Don't like, it's impossible to be this good. And some of the numbers would tell you that it wasn't even possible. So I DMed Bulgaras. He said, look, if you're going to get in touch with anybody or talk to anybody, you tell you that it wasn't even possible. So I DMed Bulgaras. He said, look, if you're going to get in touch with anybody or talk to anybody, you got to do it with Joey Ingram. He's the host of Poker Life Podcast, also a professional poker player. And he joins me now. So Joey, I'm going to do this from just the, I don't know if you've ever watched The Office, but when Michael Scott asks Oscar to explain a budget and he's like,

explain it to me like I'm nine. And then he goes, explain it to me like I'm nine. And then he goes, explain it to me like I'm five. Let's just try to, let's go like nine years old here. Cause I want to be very, uh, I know the poker people listening to this, you know, may, may feel like it's a little slower, but I want everybody to feel like they're involved and be able to keep up. So as I set up that timeline, feel free to correct anything. But I think that's fairly accurate as the origin of trying to figure out what the hell was going on with this kid that was winning all of the time. Yeah, I think that sounds pretty right. Basically, there was a guy playing on a poker live stream that not many people really watched. And he has been, as you said, kind of winning at this absurd win rate that, you know,

this girl, the employee of Veronica, she became really suspicious of what was happening. So at some point in time, she went to her superiors and she said, like, hey, you look into this. Like, I think something's happening. And they basically said that you're a fucking idiot. You don't know what you're talking about. You have like this little brain or she's kind of said like a little girl brain. You don't really know what you're saying. And she was like, OK, sure, whatever. And she keep having these suspicions

over time because the guy just kept winning, like something just seemed off with it. So at some point in time, about maybe like a week or two, I think about two weeks ago now, she sent me a message. She says, hey, I'm going to go public with this. And when I go public with this, it's going to cause a lot of issues in the community where I'm from. People are going to be angry at me. And I just want to let you know and see if you can have my back. So when I post this, can you take a look at some of these hands and can you just dive in there and tell me if maybe there's something there? So once she did that, she posted it. I started watching back this guy stream from about last August. And I just noticed this guy making the perfect decisions and perfect plays and all of these situations that just don't quite make sense.

So, yeah, then from there, it kind of just took on a life of its own, basically. So what did you notice then? You're going back and watching all this stuff. Basically, so kind of when you play poker, when you play a lot of hands, it's unusual to win every single spot, meaning that sometimes it'll be you versus one other player to hand. And sometimes you're going to win. Sometimes you're going to lose. It's just like a normal thing. And also when it goes multi-way, when there's more than one person,

you're not just going to make every right decision in these multi-way situations. But it seemed to me like this guy was able to know when the opponents were weak. So he could bet with hands that he had weak hands himself. And when opponents had strong hands, he seemed to just lose the smallest amount possible in these situations. And the guy overall was playing a lot of hands preflop.

He was calling a lot of hands that maybe a good player wouldn't be calling with. So when you play bad hands preflop, you're supposed to be losing money with these hands. But for some reason, this guy just wasn't losing with these hands. So I started taking notes. I started writing down. I watched about five sessions, which is about 24 hours photos. Every single hand this guy played kind of fed through it and wanted to get a feel for his style. I started just patterning his game plan and trying to figure out if I could understand maybe what he's doing. And I was like, yeah,

it's clearly this guy's doing something that's out of line. Something is happening here. You watch 24 hours of old hands. Well, to be fair, to be fair, it was kind of fun because the guy wouldn't lose. Like he,

he was calling with these hands, like a six, four offsuit and an eight, five offsuit. And he was just blowing these people out of the pot. Anytime they had a weekend that it was kind of enjoyable to watch. Plus he was laughing in their face'5 offsuit. And he was just blowing these people out of the pot anytime they had a weak hand that it was kind of enjoyable to watch. Plus, he was laughing in their face, Ryan.

He was, like, can you imagine being at the table and some guy bluffs you? And before you even make a decision, he starts laughing in your face. Yeah, he talked a lot of shit, right? Like, he was a big-time shit talker. Yeah, huge shit talker. He prides himself on, when you listen to interviews, he said he's a master of psychology. He's a psychological and human behavior genius. And he's just able to know what you have just by looking at you.

He can just identify these things. It's just, some of those are ridiculous. Maybe he is above the rim, 10 levels above everyone else, but it just doesn't seem very possible to me. Okay, so let's just back up a little on some of these stats that you were able to look at here. On these Stone live feeds, he won 62 of 69 events for a total of about $250K. He wouldn't play anywhere else, which is weird for poker players. He would always get up and leave immediately. Then people started noticing something in his hat.

And as he's sitting there crushing everybody, as you're saying, staying in on hands that nobody else would stay in on folding hands that nobody else would fold. They're putting up devil horn graphics on him or an angelic halo and calling him Mike Apostle. So the thing became like, I would watch some of, um, the, the broadcast and the broadcasters are just going, I can't, you know, if you don't play poker and you don't understand the hands and all that stuff, like at first it maybe takes you a little while. And the more I kept watching and

watching him like, okay, none of this makes any sense. And this guy's walking around shit talking people and he won't play in any other tournaments considering this is also everybody's own money here on this very obscure poker feed coming outside of Sacramento. Yeah. Yeah. So basically the guy, so there's tournaments and there's cash games. So he did play some tournaments, but the live stream primarily, there was a couple of times they'd have some tournaments and he was on there, but it was primarily a cash game format, which just between the tournament and cash game is for a tournament that plays down to one winner. Whereas cash games, it theoretically never ends. It's this never ending sort of game. So the stream would last about four to six hours each time. And he had 62 of 69, as you mentioned, winning session, which is, I mean, it's pretty preposterous, especially when

you consider the style you played. And then, as you mentioned, the commentators were just, they treat him like he's a God. They would call him a God, Jesus. They had memes where they put the, as you said, the halo on his head, the devil. It was just, it's absurd. Like this guy is just crushing these poor players, beating them down for money, making the right decision every single time. Right. As you said, and then, yeah, they were just praising him. And it's easy to understand because if you're these commentators and you see this guy who just seems to get away with anything and just fade all the bad runouts and just make the right decisions every time, what else are you necessarily going to think?

Are you going to think something's going on, he's cheating, or are you going to think that he's some poker messiah? Yeah, because at one point people just accepted him as such. And as you said, yeah, I was reading some of his interviews and then reading his defense since. We're going to get to all this stuff where he was just like i have a higher understanding of human behavior i'm able to figure out all these tells and it's like no you might have a fucking microphone in your your hand you know like some sort of earpiece so like look you went over through all this let's let's go over all the theories that everyone has because there's the bulky hat that looks different during the game than from when he does a post-game interview.

I'm just calling it a game or whatever. Whatever. It's the same thing. Right. His key placement, car keys. I'm talking car keys. His phone between his legs. He always looks down. So give me all the sketchy stuff that people are going with here because I don't think anybody's 100% yet on exactly what's happening.

Right. Not 100% yet because I feel like that's something that needs to be confirmed on the investigation side of the casino. But what we did find out yesterday, which was quite fascinating, which was there was another content creator who went back and watched this guy play every session of 2018. And they wanted to find the moment that this guy decided to put his phone between his crotch. As you mentioned, he put his phone down by his crotch area and he would look down during the hand. And we believe he was getting information off of this cellular phone. So this guy went through all the hands, set it all up. And he identified the moment on July 18th, 2018 and two hours and one minute in where he decided to put that phone downstairs. Whereas before that, he would always have a phone on the table. He would have a different body

language. His antics at the table were different. Play style at the table was different. So it seems like something took place that day. And then we also have a spreadsheet compiled with data from every single session that he's played. And if you look at the spreadsheet, ever since that day took place, he turned into some complete dominator at the tables. And as you mentioned, other theories as well, too. It would seem to me that if this was taking place, which it seems incredibly likely at this point, that they use a combination of strategies. Because you'd imagine if you've got a guy who's looking down in his crotch during the hand all the time, you're going to get a little

suspicious. So he developed this hat, it seems like, and there's been speculation he had some sort of bone conductor, which is, it's like a beaker that attaches to your skull. I don't know, it's really weird shit, man. I've never really heard of this before, but someone can relay audio to you instead of you having to look down. So maybe there's some speculation. This guy might've used a mixed strategy and we don't know if the car keys were involved or not yet. Like that's, there's certainly some debate on both sides, but I identified there are a lot of cheating systems that do take place in these poker games and home games where they mark the cards with some sort of infrared uh some sort of infrared kind of kind of ink and then the car this is crazy shit the car keys

are able to identify the cards and then can predict and tell you what cards are going to come next so it's like wow that is completely terrifying because if you play in a game like that you're going to get destroyed and that does take unfortunately, in some of these private games that are out there. So those are all the different theories. As soon as you figured, okay, something's up, you've gone back, you watch all those videos, you start tracking it. And then to look at the win rate once the phone position was different is pretty damning as well. I mean, almost all this stuff is damning if you're just remotely reasonable as a person. Um, but you started digging around some other stuff with him too, correct? That doesn't look good for him. Yeah, I spent about, um,

I think I live streamed to the audience on YouTube about 26, 27 hours and every, every day I would keep going. I would just keep watching sessions and we would keep looking for things that are being said by anyone involved or look for things being said by him or just abnormalities in his overall play patterns and body language and style of action. Then, you know, we all took very deep dives on the internet to find out more information, just kind of figure out more about his past. And we found, you know, there's like the deleted LinkedIn pages out there that sort of linked him to the production side with the casino out there as well, too.

And then people have just kind of went a little nuts with this. They've been accumulating anything they can find and going through any sort of results that they could find in terms of Google for the guy. And I've been asking everyone I know who might know him trying to figure out more if this guy's legit in terms of what he says about himself and what he says about his poker credentials so yeah and it's been this compilation of evidence I feel like and as you mentioned earlier you said that you had to watch for 30 minutes and I think that's how I feel like a lot of people can understand that if you watch these things for 30 minutes and if you have someone like myself or someone knowledgeable pointed out to you what to look for and then point out why it's so unusual, I think over time it's very easy to understand and say, okay, it's clear this guy is doing something that's just not in the ordinary. The Google Assistant is ready to help you get more done with just your voice. In the car, at home, and everywhere you take your phone, with the Assistant, I can send reminders,

hey, Google, add eggs and bread to my shopping list. And then when I'm at the store, just say, hey, Google, what's on my shopping list? A little help, hands-free, just say, hey, Google, to get started. I was reading David Hill's piece on the ringer here, which I would recommend to anybody. And I know why this is different than the ultimate bet and the ultimate poker scandals that were far greater money wise because now we have video of it but how is the

poker community looking at this story the last week which has picked up more coverage mainstream than than some of this other stuff i almost feel like as i was digging into it the poker community was somewhat surprised so many people outside of it cared or fascinated by this story. Yeah, I was actually incredibly fascinated by that because it seemed like Van Pelt was pretty, like right away once we're all about putting out there, Van Pelt kind of chimed in and he seemed interested

and you seemed interested right away. And I was really surprised by that. And then once the story ran on ESPN and Ben Pell talked about it on there, I was just, you know, you kind of just kept growing and growing from there. And I think once I talked with you last night and you sort of explained, and I, and Scott, I talked to him on the phone. He explained that if you're a man who, or a woman who enjoys gambling at all, like you can understand this story. And the story kind of makes you pretty angry because like, what if this has happened to you? It's easy to imagine yourself

being with another player and having them have some access to what cards are going to come. And then they're going to teach out your money that you worked hard for and that you think you're in a fair game. And when you're actually not in a fair game. So I feel like it, to me, it was very surprising. And you mentioned before that there used to be, there was a bigger scandal, which happened back in the early 2000s, back in maybe mid, late 2000s with Ultimate Bet. And I feel like without Twitter, it, this story wouldn't be this big and Twitter wasn't around back then. So I feel like just, it's probably that Twitter is a big catalyst because you get to have this real-time interaction

and the case was sort of building and building. And then I was doing these live streams and the audience kept growing and growing for people that were watching. So I feel like it just sort of built up this momentum very, very quickly. And yeah, now it's kind of, you know, it's interesting to see what's happened, right? It's not necessarily the best for poker in terms of you don't want your industry to be associated with with this sort of thing right if you're just learning more about poker and you immediately see okay like there's a lot of cheating happening i'm gonna never play that i feel like that's a bad thing for poker in general but at the same time maybe this might clean up the operations

a little bit that are a little bit more uh that that needs some cleaning up so hopefully this does more good for the industry than than it does bad did you know postal at all then before this no i didn't know him at all i messaged him straight away i saw he followed me on twitter and i said man like what what's up with these hands and we've exchanged a number of different messages but no i had no no prior knowledge of who he was at all no what is he saying in the messages and the going back and forth with you? Well, that's quite, I mean, it's quite interesting because he's very adamant

that none of this is accurate. He's adamant that the jealous haters are the one who has it out for him. The jealous haters are cherry picking hands. They're just picking 10 hands out of many, many hands that he's played. And every time I try to explain to him, like, hey, no, I've watched the entire stream, buddy.

Like, that's not what I'm doing. Maybe the other people did that, but I'm not doing that because that doesn't make sense. It wouldn't make sense for me to do it that way. He sort of just doesn't acknowledge what I'm saying. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know if you ever talk to someone like that, but you bring something up

and they literally do not acknowledge what you're saying to them. And they just continue on with sort of whatever it is that they want to say. And he just kind of has these main talking points. He sticks to, and that's what he's been sticking with, right? Like it's fabricated that the amount of money is made up. The hands are cherry picked. The haters have it out for him. He wants it. He just has a daughter. He wants to be a good father. He wants to stay under the radar. It's just kind of, he repeats those same things over and over again. Yeah. I'd heard when I was researching a little bit, he was going the parent route where it was

like, because he has a daughter, like, Hey, I don't want to deal with any of this stuff anymore. Like I just, when anybody ever does that, I get so offended in that you can say, what do you, what does that mean? Like I'm'm supposed to you did something wrong allegedly but you have offspring so i'm just supposed to move on what the fuck's that right i i think that's what it is and it's interesting because it kind of works in a way what i've noticed it does work right anytime the daughter's mentioned like ah listen like let's you know like let's let's not get the daughter and and i i don't really bring it up because i don't think it has any merit for the argument one way or the other here but it it certainly does work in terms of like getting some emotional

support for people on your side like oh man he's like he's just like a single father trying to make it he just got custody of his kid like you know that sucks man i mean look i can totally separate how much that sucks you know what else sucks else sucks is driving outside of Sacramento in the middle of the night to sit down to plop down a few hundred bucks and try to double it to pay your rent and some fucking guys reading your cards through some system from someone else. And you leave broke. That also sucks. So unless all those other people don't have kids or don't have any dependents, then maybe I'll side with this argument. So I look, I know I'm, I sound like I'm going at you, Joey. And I'm, I'm not, I just, no, no, no, but you know, I'm not right. I just, no, but no, you're where you're coming from. I've got that same message from people that play with them. They messaged me and say, man, can you like help me out here? Like this guy took me, can you check these hands too? So the passion that you're showing right there is what people have shown to me. I had, I had a wife message me and said, Hey, like, can I husband talk to you? Because he played with this guy and he got fucked over in a couple of hands. So I'm talking with this guy. And as I'm watching the stream back and him play, he's just messaging me constantly. Just watch this. You know what I'm saying? This guy feels the same way you do, man. This isn't like, yeah, this is how people feel out there.

They're not happy about this. So they want some justice to take place, whether it's him just admitting it or him being confirmed by the casino or God willing, maybe they get refunds. I don't know how likely this is, but like these people out there are pretty upset about this, man, for sure. this is, but these people out there are pretty upset about this, man, for sure. And as I was reading about other scandals, what happens now with the investigation? It's officially an investigation through the casino, but also through their own investigators. And then are they supposed to investigate that he did something wrong? So then they're on the hook. Can we talk about that part that seems like it could be really,

I don't know if delicate's the right word. I don't want to accuse them of, but it doesn't seem like it's the perfect scenario leading into the great conclusion that other players who played against him want, and certainly the rest of the poker community. Right, and that's something that I'm just not that quite, I'm not knowledgeable about that. I don't really understand that as much. And what I found kind of fascinating is that on the poker forums and on the poker Twitter world, it seems like everyone seems to be some sort of expert at law. Like they all seem to know exactly what I'm, I didn't know any of these people were

lawyers or anything like that. So it's a little confusing to me, but I'm kind of trying to avoid all the misinformation out there that people seem to bring up about this particular subject. So what it seems like to me, which you were alluding to is that they brought in somebody who is used to be on the prosecution side. Now they're on the defense side. They've worked with the former owners or current owners of stones in some capacity in the past. So they said they're doing a third party investigation, an independent investigation. Obviously the community says, well, this doesn't seem very independent. And I've heard other people allude to that. Well, if they, if they say this did happen, then they're on the hook for some sort of lawsuits. And

I just don't quite have enough understanding of that situation. Me personally, I'm what, what can I do? Right. I've tried to relay them information on my own. I've said, Hey, I'll come in there free of service, free of charge. I'll, I know what I'm looking for here. I know the dates that these things took place, what to look for. I'd be more than happy to help out with my service as well too. And you know, I haven't really heard necessarily from them. It's been very quiet on their end, which would make sense.

So I'm going with the more patient route here. Let's see what they say. Let's see what they uncover. And then we go from there. There's other people that have lawsuits out there as well, too. There's a lawyer who played with PASO as well, who put together a lawsuit right now. I don't know specifics of that lawsuit. So I think we're still in the very early stages of things. It's only been, it feels like it's been two months with how fast we move in social media these days, but it's actually only been about eight or nine days. That's what's crazy about this. I was afraid with how quickly things move.

By the time we had first talked to taping this, I'm like, is everybody going to turn the page on this? And really people haven't. And I think for some people, they're going to hear this podcast and understand this story for the first time. There's a couple other things I still want to get to here. or some people, they're going to hear this podcast and understand this story for the first time. There's a couple other things I still want to get to here. And that is that Postle now, whether it was his messaging with you, which you've described pretty well, that it's just a... I mean, I don't want to keep saying allegedly here, but you know what we're doing.

He is in full denial mode, and that is not the first time we've ever seen this from somebody that's accused of things. And it's like, you know what, that deny and deny until you just can't deny anymore. And, you know, maybe there's some small percentage chance he's vindicated. I don't know that anybody believes that. I agree, right? Maybe that maybe there is. I don't see how it could be now, but I still hold out that tiny slither of hope. And it, this is diminished as the days have went on as the silence has grown as the alleged evidence has not come to light as he did a two hour interview where he basically talked about before 2010 for 35 minutes of the interview. You know, so I feel like I heard heard him talk he had no argument that answered any questions that i had so it's just very hard to believe that that that that it's going to be

proven to not be true but yeah i think like it's full denial mode at this point i mean the math's not on his side the pattern is not on his side the video evidence is not on his side i went through spreadsheets one night and went okay once I finally figured out what the hell they were, I'm like, this is, this is preposterous. It just, it would be like an NBA player, just all of a sudden hitting 70% of his threes for a season. And you know, at least that way it would, it would feel real unless we had some sort of magnet in the basketball, you know what I mean? But that's, that's kind of what this is, but the difference is in basketball, we would just have to accept it. Whereas this you're going, this doesn't make any sense because it would never happen in basketball. It's not supposed to happen in poker this way. And the

other defense that he's going with here, I know Mike Matusow and I don't, I don't know him. I just remember him from way back in the day, first watching the poker thing blow up late nineties, early two thousands, where all of a sudden everybody was playing poker and they were into it and for whatever reason like it got ratings and espn's like we can't put this thing on enough like people were just it was a different level of drama and sports that was so interesting did you play right did you ever did you ever try it out you were play at the casino or play some live or did you ever get into it no no never never ever to that because i once it was hey you're gonna have to memorize all the different things it was crazy my younger brother memorized like all the probabilities in high school really he just went ahead and then he'd be like wrong hand bad hand so I think maybe I'd gone home to visit

my high school brother just clean me out and I went all right I'm not I'm not into this I you know what I can see that I feel like that that's sort of what happens to new players is that if you're if your little brother if your brother didn't know any better feel like that's sort of what happens to new players is that if your little brother didn't know any better and you two were sort of on an even playing field where you two could get better with each other, it would have been way different. But I feel like if you have that experience where you just get destroyed, you're like, yeah, fuck this.

I'm already on a path to something. I'm going to keep on that path. Just to counter the path, I was on the path to nothing good during that time. You're open. I'm not. Yeah. Just to, just to counter the path. I was on the path to nothing good, uh, during that time. So it wasn't, it was, it was just another thing that I was like, so what am I going to do now? I'm going to be a poker guy, you know, cause I don't, I have the days free and I can drive up to Montreal at night. And look, we drove up to

Montreal after we get done bartending, we play cards, but then, you know, for the most part, we wanted to be social and, and yell at each other at the blackjack table. And the dealers in Montreal were such assholes on blackjack. And we would just be yelling, like, it's not your money. But they were like, oh, you guys are the 20 year olds from America. Awesome. You guys are going to sit here and ask if it's last call the whole time. Like, cool. So yeah, my poker. Am I just telling a story now, Joey, or are you listening to any of this anymore so i apologize i'm just trying to imagine you interacting with french canadian blackjack dealers in montreal when you've had a few drinks in you and you guys are fired up and maybe you're

up or up and down a little bit of money and i'm just trying to imagine the back and forth that would be happening in this situation and they sound quite hilarious so well the i just have never understood like mean dealers, but there's mean dealers everywhere. But Montreal seemed to be specifically mean. And we actually, think about this, we were always sober when we drove up because we had gotten off work.

So we would just head up and then once we got there, because we'd be like, all right, maybe we'll just stay over or whatever. And my French was pretty good back then. But yeah, it wasn't, it was never, it was never anything. You know, what's amazing about those trips. And I think back on it every time we said, let's do it.

It was the best idea ever. And then every time we were actually doing it, we're like, this was not the best idea ever. So. Especially that drive home after you lose the money, man. I mean, that's not a, that's not a happy drive home. How long the money, man. That's not a happy drive home. How long was the drive back there? That time of night, you could get

there door to door, two hours. It wasn't horrible, but that Iberville stretch right over the border. As soon as you get into Canada past the Vermont border, you realize what a big role topography has played in all of our lives because

you're like, Oh, this is why America stopped here. And this is where Canada picks up. Cause it's like, all right, you guys can have all of that flat shit. And cause I've definitely,

I've definitely done my, done my fair share of driving through Canada from America. I used to live in Vancouver up there. I moved there for online poker actually back in 2011 when the government cracked down on all those sites out there. So I headed up to Canada up there for about a year or two. And that was one of the best things that ever happened to me. So it was kind of a, yeah,

I've had my fair share of good times in Canada and some bad times too. Yeah. So I want to make sure everybody listening to this, I'm not, uh, any, any kind of card player at all. I do not consider, I listening to this, I'm not, uh, any, any kind of card player at all. I do not consider my, I like to go play a little bit. Um, I had my brains beat in when the money wasn't a ton, but it meant a lot to me at the time. And I think ever since then I went, okay, you know what? Like, I'm just not, I'm not going to expose myself to lose the kind of money that some of my friends are going to have, because I know I'm just going to be so pissed off and competitive about it. And I'll go and play a little bit to be social, but I just, I don't know.

I do like it though. I do enjoy it. I mean, I think every guy that's ever played cards, like watches these scenes in the movie casino Royal and it's like, how would I do in that? You know, and all this kind of shit and you guys are actually doing it. So there's a, there's a coolness to the fact of, of finding a way, like you're able to make a living with this and it's, it's a grind, I imagine, but you can pull this off, Joey? Yeah, I've been playing poker since about 2007, now 2008,

and I got a lot more content in the past few years just because as online poker, the landscape's changed quite drastically. It's not quite what it used to be in terms of just the opportunity out there and the legitimacy of some of the offerings as well as security of some of the offerings as well, too. So I sort of I made my way to the top where I wanted to get to back maybe years ago and then started with content.

And now I'm sort of making my way down this path with content and kind of just deciding, do I want to stay in poker? Do I want to get out of poker? Sort of just this thing I think a lot of people go through in their career. If they're entrepreneurs, they can kind of decide, do you want to do something different? So I feel like that's the point I'm at now is, do I want to stay with poker or do I want to get the hell out of here and maybe pursue something else out there? Maybe down the investigation path, kind of what I've shown with what I did for this particular situation. You know what would be a good idea? You should pitch a show and don't ask me for help because I'm for this particular situation. You know what would be a good idea? You should pitch a show. And don't ask me for help because I'm having my own challenges.

I thought you were a writer, though. You're not. Well, I have a laptop, so we'll keep it at that for now. But you should pitch some sort of show where you do, I mean, you have the pilot already, where you do these investigative things and it's on, I don't know, A&E. This is about the seventh person that suggested this to me because when I watch the investigation, they say I get so passionate and fired up about it. And I just, I feel like I get that way all the time whenever I'm learning something new like that.

So I don't quite know exactly how this process would work in terms of the pitch and the show to out there but it seems like it's greater than a zero percent chance so it could be possible out there especially if they watch these investigation videos i did here i feel like someone yeah okay you never know right that certainly could be an option and there's and obviously now there's many platforms out there in terms of where you can create content whether it's more something like a television show like it's like a and e or if it's a netflix or it's some, one of the, what's the, what's the, what's the, there's all these other platforms, Vudu and all these other kinds of platforms that you can subscribe to for content that are, that are creating content. It seems like the, I can't even keep track anymore of all the options out there. Yeah.

But what you would do is you would just find like 10 card heist, poker heist, gambling thing, casino deals. You find 10 historically, you write out a synopsis of each and every one of them. And then you already have one where you could edit up kind of that version, the budget version of it. And then a show decides to send you to the location, you interview some of the people and then they edit it all up. And then the show becomes, you know, poker scandals where you don't want to limit, you don't want to label stuff that limits your scope. So you would call it like casino scandals or whatever.

That's a great idea. That's actually a really, really good idea because there, there probably like 10, right? There probably are five to 10 that are poker specifically. And then also if you found something interesting that's gambling related, you can kind of do that as well too. So I think that's kind of a good premise to start off with and build an idea from there. Yeah. So there you go, man. I'm doing, I just want an EP credit. That's all. So I interrupted myself with the dumb story there because like I said, I don't want poker people in that world to think that I'm pretending I know this because I don't. But when I saw the Mike Matusow thing, like he's buddies with Postle

and he was sticking up for him. And then Postle pulled the ultimate move on Doug Polk, who was a former pro. And he was like, I'll play you heads up right now. Like that would solve a fucking thing to any of this mystery. I mean, to me that, that almost solidified it more for me

than the spreadsheets and the charting and the video evidence. It's like, it's like getting in an argument with somebody that has nothing to do with basketball than saying like, hey, do you want to play one-on-one? Although this is still them playing poker, so it's a little bit better than the one-on-one basketball challenge. But what is in this other than friendship for some of these other guys that are still sticking up for Postal? Well, so with Matisow, Matisow is sort of going for the more neutral thing here. He's undecided if he thinks he's guilty or not guilty.

And he's just trying to give this guy a platform to plead his case. And they were connected through a mutual friend that they had who has known possible about 15 years. And then, yes, he did challenge Doug Polk, who, as you mentioned, a former poker player, who, yeah, he's retired from the game, it seems like. And I don't know exactly. He's a good friend of mine. I'm not sure when he's going to play again. He's retired from the game, it seems like. And I don't know exactly. He's a good friend of mine. I'm not sure when he's going to play again.

He's speaking of shows, he just kind of, you know, in the process of creating his own show and kind of pitching it to people. So we'll kind of see what happens with that. But yeah, there aren't really many defenders of Postal anymore, Ryan, because I talk with them during the first couple of days. They were very passionate. And I was like, listen, dude, watch the videos. Before we talk, watch the videos before we talk. Watch my investigation. Number one, come back to me after that. Let's have a conversation. And these alleged hundred or 200 people that that possible brings up who say they could speak for his credibility and they could say that he's a crusher and he's crushed all over the country. I've yet to meet one of these people. I don't know where these are.

I've heard that he's not crushed in places, so I'd like to meet the crushers who support this story that he has. But yeah, these people appear to be quiet at the moment right now. I don't know where they're at. Joey, I can't thank you enough, I mean, for not only your work,

but joining us here. And again, he's the host of the poker life podcast and people can follow you on Twitter at, at join your one on Twitter and on YouTube. If you want to see, uh, you know, kind of catch up, figure out what the hell this might be. If this interests you, you can kind of check out the shorter videos on there that I have about it. And then there's the longer videos. Those are, those are very long, right?

And they're very long. So if you want to dig into a live stream, you're going to enjoy yourself. But dig in because you might not get out. It's captivating once it gets you in there. No offense, but I feel like my research part of this story is over. That's it. That's all you got to know, right? Maybe you pay attention to what happens if he gets caught, if something happens, and then kind of go from there. But yeah, in terms of where we're and then, you know, kind of go from there. But yeah, in terms of like where we're at now,

you know, there's, there's, you know, that, you know, the basics of it, you got,

you got to meet, meet and say those kind of things. And that's all you really need. I feel like. Thanks a lot, man. All right, man.

Take care. Thank you. All right, cool. I really liked today's podcast. I hope you guys like it too. We know it's a little bit different, but that's kind of what we're,

we got some book reviews. You may just do the Rosillo book club. I may call it the Danny Connell Book Club on the Rosillo podcast because he wanted to do it, and I was like, that's a terrible idea. It's going to be a bad segment. But I think it was going to be bad for radio, or maybe we were just going to be bad at it. I don't know.

But we've got a couple authors lined up to do that kind of stuff, so hopefully you enjoyed the poker stuff. So check it out, the Rosillo podcast, part of the Ringer Network. Please rate and review and subscribe as always. And as often as you want. Thanks. you