Mike Postle's Biography & 2019 Stones Live Cheating Scandal

– General Information –

Mike Postle was an American professional poker player. His exact age is unknown, but he’s estimated to be around 40 years old.

He made a number of dubious and unverified claims about his success as an online poker player. From what we know now, it is likely that he was a professional online player for years before Black Friday took place in 2011. He then switched to live poker.

However, Postle’s real “claim to fame” is his 2019 cheating scandal. That is the only thing poker fans know him for.

In October 2019, an employee of Stones Gambling Hall in Sacramento, CA, Veronica Brill, alerted the online poker community that one of the players in the live streamed cash games, Mike Postle, is likely cheating by receiving information about his opponents’ hole cards.

What ensued was one of the greatest scandals in poker history. For that, Mike Postle is our first and – so far – only inductee to our Poker Hall of Shame.

– Key Career Dates –

2004: He quits his job as a dealer and becomes a professional poker player.
2007: He wins a $1,500 event at the Gold Strike World Poker Open in Tunica, MS for $118,743. That is his biggest single live tournament cash.
2019: Former Stones Gambling Hall employee Veronica Brill accuses him of cheating in the live streamed cash games. The online poker community goes on to collect a mountain of evidence against him, and is now considered to be one of the most infamous cheaters in poker history.

– Mike Postle’s “Career” –

→ Beginnings ←

According to a profile piece Ante Up Magazine did on him in February 2016, Postle became a professional player in 2004. Prior to that, he was dealing cards in a Wisconsin poker room. He learnt to play poker at the age of 4.

He was playing online until 2011 when Black Friday hit and all the major online poker rooms in the US were shut down by the DoJ. That, and the birth of his daughter, prompted Postle to move to California to play cards in land casinos for a living.

→ Live Tournaments ←

Postle’s Hendon page shows $536,000 in live tournament cashes. He amassed 120 cashes over the course of 15 years.

His first recorded ITM finish is from August 2005, when he finished 37th place for $735 in a $300 WSOP Circuit event in Tunica.

The first and only time he made a tournament cash for over $100,000 was in January 2007. He won a $1,500 NLHE event at the Gold Strike World Poker Open in Tunica. He earned $118,743 for that victory. Evidently, that is the biggest live tournament score in his career.

He also has a $50,000 cash from another Gold Strike World Poker Open tournament – he came in 3rd in a $3,000 tourney in 2012.

In 2015, he won the Player of the Year Award at Ante Up Magazine’s Poker Tour. He won a $125 Ante Up Norcal Classic H.O.R.S.E. championship for $999, and cashed in 3 other events of the series for a combined $8,097 more. That performance earned the Ante Up POY award.

→ Live Cash Games ←

Postle played cash games almost exclusively on Stones Gambling Hall’s live streams in the past year. He won almost every session, amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit in low, usually $1/$3 and $2/$5 games.

As it turned out, he was able to pull off this impossible feat because he got information about his opponents’ hole cards at the table – more on that later…

→ Online Poker ←

Postle has made many ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims about his online poker career.

For example, in an interview on Mike Matusow’s podcast he said he’s been told by people from UltimateBet that he was the biggest winner on the now defunct poker site. That would mean he’s won millions and millions of dollars, yet he didn’t make this piece of information public until years after the site shut down.

Back then, poker fans around the world would “rail” for super high stakes online cash games on a regular basis. Many online poker legends became known that way – think of Tom “durrrr” Dwan or Daniel “Jungleman” Cates. Yet Mike Postle was virtually unknown before his scandal and his UB screen name remains a mystery to date.

On that note, Postle also claims he beat Dwan for millions – another unproven statement that likely would have widely reported at the time if it were true.

→ Scandals ←

Stones Live Cheating Allegations

This is one of the biggest scandals ever to rock the poker world.

In October 2019, former Stones Gambling Hall employee Veronica Brill took to Twitter to voice her concerns about possible cheating in their live streamed cash game.

If someone is displaying a probability of cheating on a live stream you don't make the entire room not be able to use their cellphones in an attempt to reduce everyone's anxiety and then still promote the player as one of the best.

— Veronica Brill 2.2 (@Angry_Polak) September 28, 2019

Quickly, the online poker community got on the case. A 2+2 thread was made about the issue where users kept posting suspicious hand after suspicious hand.

Joe Ingram also caught on and had a 5-hour-long (!) live stream in which he reviewed Postle’s hands. Shortly after, Doug Polk made a video about it.

Essentially, Mike Postle was making plays at the table that do not make sense from a poker strategic point of view. Yet he was winning money at an impossible rate in these games, finishing virtually every session on the stream with a profit.

His win rate was nothing like what would be expected from an elite professional poker player. The 2+2 Forum posters estimated it to be over 900 BB/100 hands – something that blows out even potripper’s results out of the water. “Potripper” was an infamous and proven online superuser.

People speculated Postle received information about his opponents’ cards during the cash games, that’s how he was able to win money at that rate.

Stones Gambling Hall has RFID card readers built-in on their tables for their live streams. While the streams are evidently on a delay, Postle still theoretically could get that information in real time.

Given the fact that in the footage Postle is often seen staring down at his crotch, it is very likely he had a device in his lap with which the other hole cards were also accessible to him.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence is a hand played by Mike Postle in which the RFID reader wasn’t working properly. In a mixed game, the deal was just switched from Hold’em to Omaha. However, the reader wasn’t reset so it only picked up 2 of the 4 hole cards for each player.

Postle, who playing live shouldn’t have known about the issue, started to get visibly frustrated and can be seen scanning his cards over and over again while staring at his groin for a conspicuously long time.

Mike Postle and Stones Gambling Hall are currently being sued for $30 million in a class action lawsuit by the wronged players and their council.

It is extremely likely Mike Postle was in fact cheating. The pieces of evidence are too numerous to list and explain in detail here: his now deleted Linkedin page linking him to the Stones Live production crew, his completely different play style before he started staring down his lap, his insane win rate, his obvious lies following the allegations, etc.

Mike Postle is one of the worst cheaters in the history of the great game of poker. We’re proud to put him in our Poker Hall of Shame.