SHOCKING CHEATING ALLEGATIONS In $5,300,000 Poker Tournament?!

As a current WSOP dealer this is my take. 1. They are probably using RFID cards that are thicker and very hard to mark 2. The deck is switched up every 30 min when a new dealer comes up, including RFIDs. He would have to mark both A spades or only cheat on the blue or red deck deal. 3. I can feel a fingernail imprint on a card when it comes out of my hand. If I feel one I look at the card and run my finger over the card to see if I did feel a problem. Then I move it in the light to see if the glare picks anything up. I know this dealer. If he suspected anything he would be seen messing with the cards. 4. This guy is annoying AF here, but so are other people. I had another pro use all 30 sec for every decision... when it got brought up he was open with his intention and the table said it was annoying but w/in rules. Conclusion: innocent until proven guilty

As a dealer at the Orleans in Vegas, I found lots of thumbnail-marked wheel cards, and we were the room where locals went to play structured Omaha8, where wheel cards are very valuable. Multiple floormen and even the poker room manager told me I was imagining things, told me it was probably the shuffle machines, and eventually told me to stop finding so many damaged cards. It was extremely frustrating because the poker room manager came from the pit, not from poker, and he even asked me why people would mark low cards, even though he had to know we spread more O8 than most rooms in Vegas. The idea that marked cards could go unnoticed by multiple floormen is completely plausible to me, and it's one of the reasons I didn't go back to the Orleans after the pandemic. So if you're playing O8 at Orleans... Watch out for those fingernail marks. 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the content Doug. A very measured approach toward a player who, while I can't tell for sure if he's cheating, certainly seems willing to angle shoot, and wouldn't hesitate to use any advantage he can gain to win a hand. If I could make a small editing suggestion, whenever you cut to live footage, the volume drops dramatically, and it's difficult to hear some of the things which you're responding to in your commentary. If you could normalize that volume a little bit, it would make the videos much easier to follow in general, without having to adjust the volume or get my ears blasted when you switch back to commentary.

This video is what sets you apart Doug. You'll rip into your own stuff when it's there to be discussed. Keep up the great things and appreciate you

Bro angling people into THINKING you're cheating is a HILARIOUS angle lmfao

He's a troll. He wants people to think he's cheating to mess with their heads. It's not hard to figure this out. His plays does not indicate that he knows what cards they have at all. It's not logically consistent with cheating. He's very likely innocent. People simply want him banned because he's annoying to play against.

I think you nailed this with your breakdown!! Great job! First video of yours that I have watched!

As a magician, scoring cards is very easy to do, and the clip of him applying pressure certainly is the route we’d do to score a card

They were all asked/told not to stand up while in a hand. And he did it multiple times, not just standing up, leaning over, and leering at other players and their cards...all with no penalty. That should have been where the penatlies started. Some sort of discipline..sit a hand, or a round. Something

Tournament manager is 100% to blame. They should NEVER allow this nonsense to continue.

As someone who doesn't play poker professionaly but know a bit about the psychology behind pro games. He is probably purposefully throwing people off their game by acting like he could cheat. In chess, if you know your opponent is cheating, you play differently. In poker is the same thing. Once a thought like that cripples into your mind, you lost

Curious if anybody thought to look at his behavior at the start of each table he was at. If he is only doing all the weird staring behavior after a few circuits and after he has handled key cards and was seen possibly marking them, that kind of leans towards some subtle form of cheating.

I played with a guy who had a really greasy face and he kept touching his face throughout the session. I then noticed that certain cards had shiny stains on them but you can only see if it it catches the light in a certain way. So you kind of have to look at it from different angles. Standing up and trying to look at the cards from different angles based on the light looks like what he's doing.

Reasonable analysis from Polk. If you've played even once at a public poker table you've had to endure annoying players. It sucks, but it sucks worse if you allow it to affect your game. One would hope that an event as large and prestigious as the WSOP would be checking decks at random as well as specifically looking at decks where accusations of cheating have taken place. They did call for a special rule at the final table that players must remain seated when playing a hand (a rule which he broke early and that caused a kerfuffle and a call for the floor manager). Given all that, WSOP is investigating this incident specifically, so we'll see what they find (if anything).

If I were the authorities in charge of poker I'd use some basic counter measures to make the other players a little less uncomfortable about the possibility of cheating. Things like changing the decks more often and restricting the players ability to stand and stare at other players hands. If they are building a case for the gaming commission to make formal charges then I could see them doing nothing until they are ready to strike.

You're really getting better at this. Kudos.

That was not the take I was expecting from you, Doug. I thought you would be mercilessly making fun of this guy and his antics. This was a balanced and fair assessment that was actually very kind to Martin. I admire your range. :)

OBS!!! He could have indented the card very slightly in a way that it's not very visible through the naked eye, I am familiar with this method from a magician. The trick is that It becomes much more visible if he uses the lights from above to look for reflections on the gloss from the cards, thats why he stands up, and by slowly swaying from side to side. Then you can see minute details that other players can't see.. It's only if you know to look for the reflections from the light. Try it yourself under a well lit room. I would want to inform this method to the arrangers , but I don't have the contact information. Perhaps you can take it forward, or anyone else that see's this and knows where to turn to. Please thumbs up this so it get noticed

Thanks, Doug! Always a good show!

The thumbnail made me literally lol😂 thank you Doug