Mike Postle had been a regular at Stones Live Poker for years, but his results began drawing serious attention after an unusually successful run in the livestreamed cash games starting in 2018. His style was highly unconventional: he played many hands, frequently took lines that appeared inconsistent with standard poker theory, yet repeatedly arrived at decisions that worked against his opponents’ exact holdings.
Veronica Brill was in a position to notice the pattern from two angles. She had played against Postle and also worked as a commentator on the Stones stream. By March 2019, she had privately raised concerns about his results with Stones tournament director Justin Kuraitis. On September 21, during a streamed session involving Postle and Marle Cordeiro, Brill openly questioned one of Postle’s unusual folds. Days later, she published clips of questionable hands and explained why she believed his results deserved closer scrutiny.
The allegations quickly grew beyond Brill. Joey Ingram and other members of the poker community reviewed hours of Stones footage, while players compiled statistics and highlighted hands in which Postle appeared to make exceptionally accurate decisions. This turned the story from a dispute over one player’s results into a wider poker cheating scandal involving livestream security, RFID hole-card data, and the possibility of unauthorized access to information.
Understanding what happened to Mike Postle therefore requires separating three questions that were often mixed together: why so many poker players became suspicious, how the alleged cheating could technically have worked, and what the subsequent lawsuits actually established. The Stones Casino cheating scandal produced extensive public analysis, but it never resulted in a court finding that Postle cheated.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| July 2018 | Postle begins an unusually successful run in Stones livestreamed games |
| March 2019 | Brill raises concerns about Postle with Stones management |
| September 21, 2019 | Brill questions his play during a livestream |
| September 28, 2019 | Brill publicly shares clips and her suspicions |
| October 2019 | Brill and other players file a federal civil lawsuit |
| June 2020 | Major claims against Postle are dismissed |
| September 2020 | Most remaining plaintiffs settle with Stones and Justin Kuraitis |
| October 2020 | Postle files a $330 million defamation lawsuit |
| April 2021 | Postle voluntarily dismisses the defamation suit |
| 2021 | Brill and Todd Witteles receive attorney-fee awards |
| January 2023 | Postle attracts attention again with a significant tournament cash |
| February 2024 | Postle publicly denies the allegations again |
| 2026 | Postle continues recording live tournament results |
How Did Mike Postle Allegedly Cheat?
The question “How did Mike Postle cheat?” has no proven answer, because neither a criminal case nor a civil trial established that he cheated in the first place. The main theories instead came from attempts to explain how a player could have obtained opponents’ hole-card information during a livestreamed game.
Stones used RFID-equipped tables that allowed cards to be identified for the broadcast. Viewers and players saw that information on a delay, but the production system necessarily handled the hole-card data earlier. This led to speculation about whether Postle might have received information through a phone, another electronic device, or someone with access to the livestream operation. Technical analysis of the RFID system made the idea of simply intercepting its encrypted signal less plausible and focused more attention on the possibility of access from inside the production environment.
That last scenario is central to Veronica Brill’s version of events. In the GipsyTeam interview below, she argues that the alleged scheme could not have continued for so long without internal help. This remains Brill’s allegation rather than an established account of what happened.
Veronica Brill – I think the reason this went on as long as it did is because there was internal help.
Had there been a competent floor manager who was not involved – and maybe someone in tech was helping Mike – because Mike wasn't doing this alone – it would have maybe lasted a few weeks, and then they would have been like "What the f*** are you guys doing? You're fired, you're off the show." But because it was an internal job, that's what made it last longer, and then the internal job was doing a really poor job of keeping it on the down-low.
Daniel Cates – You gave me a funny idea of imagining two villains in cahoots, just like some goofy guys who got a scheme going on.
Mike Postle Lawsuits: Was the Cheating Ever Proven?
The legal history is important because the outcome is often simplified into either “Postle was proven guilty” or “the accusations were disproved.” Neither description is accurate. No court ruled that Mike Postle cheated, but the central civil cases also ended without a trial deciding whether the poker allegations themselves were true.
The main outcomes were:
- The federal claims against Postle were dismissed in June 2020, largely because California law limits recovery of gambling losses through the courts.
- A separate Nevada case brought by Marle Cordeiro was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.
- Most of the remaining plaintiffs later settled their claims against Stones and Justin Kuraitis for a combined $40,000.
- Postle filed a $330 million defamation lawsuit against Brill and numerous other defendants in October 2020.
- He voluntarily dismissed that lawsuit in April 2021.
- Brill and Todd Witteles subsequently obtained awards for legal fees connected with their anti-SLAPP motions.
The dismissal of the original claims therefore was not a judicial finding that Postle had played honestly. Likewise, the accusations and community analysis did not produce a court judgment establishing cheating. The Stones Casino cheating case ended with that central factual question unresolved.
– There were many lawsuits. I along with everyone else who played on the livestream, sued Stones and we settled out of court. I did not settle because the settlement was terrible, and they wanted us to never talk about it again. I refused to do that. Mike sued me and Joey and Doug and ESPN and everybody and their dog, and then I filed an anti-SLAPP, and he dropped his case the second I filed the anti-SLAPP because he didn't want discovery.
Now he owes me legal fees, and he's accumulating interest on those fees. So, he owes me about $50,000 right now, I think, maybe less.
– For legal fees?
– Yeah, well that's the interest included. I was awarded over $30,000 for my legal fees. I can't remember the numbers offhand because it was a while ago, and they've been accumulating interest. I have a lien on his winnings in three states where he plays, but it's incredibly hard to catch him, so I probably will never see that money. It's actually all going to go back to Bill Perkins because Bill Perkins helped me with my legal fees.
– Oh, that's really nice of him! I had no idea any of this was going on.
– We were supposed to go into discovery, that's why he wanted to do it. As soon as Mike heard about it, he dropped the case and didn't want to move forward.
– This guy just seems better and better the more I hear about him. It just seems like only classy decisions from this guy.
– The biggest frustration with all of this is that the only people who really made money or came out ahead were the lawyers. The lawyers just scooped up all the money. I just hated this entire process in hindsight.
– Well, the lawyers didn't seem to do anything wrong. At least we got some laughs in, I guess. I'm sorry that Mike Postle screwed you and Bill out of a lot of money (and a load of other people). But, it doesn't sound like this guy's got a great life, if I had to guess.
What Evidence Raised Suspicions About Mike Postle?
There was never one definitive piece of forensic evidence publicly shown to prove the Mike Postle cheating allegations. Instead, suspicion grew from a combination of statistical results, individual hands, livestream footage, and behavior that experienced players considered difficult to explain through ordinary poker variance.
The main points repeatedly cited by players and investigators were:
- Postle’s unusually high success rate across streamed cash-game sessions.
- Repeated folds, calls, and bluffs that appeared exceptionally accurate when opponents’ hidden cards were taken into account.
- A loose and unconventional playing style that nevertheless produced extraordinary results.
- Frequent downward glances during hands, often toward the area where he kept his phone.
- Moments in which his behavior around the RFID-equipped table raised questions about whether he knew information connected to the livestream.
- The broader technical fact that opponents’ hole-card information existed inside the production system before it appeared to viewers on a delay.
One of the best-known hands involved Marle Cordeiro on September 21, 2019. Postle folded a strong hand while Cordeiro held a queen-high straight. The fold was possible without cheating, but Brill considered it especially suspicious when viewed in the context of Postle’s wider pattern of results and unusual decisions. Joey Ingram and others subsequently reviewed extensive footage and brought far more attention to the Mike Postle poker controversy.
None of these observations individually establishes cheating. Statistical anomalies depend on the sample and methodology, and unusual poker decisions are not proof of access to hidden cards. The significance of the evidence was cumulative: many experienced players believed there were too many unusually successful decisions to dismiss the pattern easily. Postle has consistently denied wrongdoing.
The interview now turns to a related question: if suspicious patterns can emerge across hundreds of hands, could analytics identify them earlier?
Usually, it's not personal. A cheater is going to cheat. Are you taking any role in preventative measures in the future?
– Well, I was trying to get in that world because I am in the world of analytics, but it's healthcare analytics because my undergrad's in nursing.
I was trying to get a job at DraftKings for their poker risk analytics because apparently, at the time they were planning to open an online poker site. I don't know if that's happened since – I haven't heard anything about it – but they were going to have an online poker gaming site through DraftKings. They were looking for people who worked in analytics and understood poker and were able to identify variables involved in poker and variables involved in cheating within poker and how we would identify that.
It was interesting because I had to come up with – I think I told you about this last time – I used the Jack-Four hand data from all the hands that he played and I did an analysis on that because they didn't even have a database established. They didn't know what to use as a database, or what markers to track, so I kind of had to come up with my own thing.
I'd be highly interested in doing some sort of analysis, not like on the ground with binoculars in the casino ceiling or anything like that, looking at signals. I thought it was funny because that's all the DOJ was interested in when I spoke with them about the Mike Postle stuff. I'm more interested in looking at large numbers, large data sets, and tracking outliers, and seeing potential cheating in the data. Identifying it that way, and not necessarily chasing a guy into the bathroom to see if he has a device on him.
– The DOJ was into that stuff? Finding devices on people?
– Jungle, I can't even tell you the questions that the DOJ asked me because you're gonna laugh so hard you're gonna fall on the ground. They were like, "Was he signaling anybody?" and I'm like, "No, he was on his device getting the livestream on his phone from the tech people and Justin Kuraitis," and they were like "Yeah whatever, but was he signaling anybody? Was he counting cards?"
They came in and they were like "We don't know anything about poker, we just want to let you know, and we do think there's probably a good chance he cheated, but we don't know anything about it." I was like, "Oh great, this is going to go nowhere." There's no incentive to close down Citrus Heights Casino, Stones Casino. It would kill all these jobs and taxes, and there's no incentive there.
You have to look at where incentives are, how everything functions in society. Most of us probably grapple with as an adult is unfairness in society, unfairness in how money is distributed, unfairness in everything. I don't think there was much incentive for the DOJ to find that there was electronic cheating with someone who was working for Stones which would shut down a casino, and then everybody loses jobs, and then Citrus Heights, California loses this big tax nest egg.
This guy didn't cheat the casino – he cheated us, he cheated the people who came to the casino, so I think the DOJ is more interested in finding people who cheat the casino.
– I was thinking that what would have been the right thing to do is have the casino basically be responsible for what happened and just pay the other people who played. You don't really want to close the casino unless they're really corrupt themselves. It's just the two people, right? I mean this one guy's not even associated with them, and then they pay the price – it's basically their fault.
– They kind of did when we sued, but the thing is, there's no world where they can take any sort of responsibility because that would just instantly shut them down. So they have to deny it.
I get why they're denying it, and I get that they probably were blindsided by the fact that their employee was cheating and was helping a guy cheat. They probably wanted to save face and keep the casino open, and I get that. I wouldn't want them to be closed down, but that is just the law in California – they would be closed down if it was electronic cheating by an internal source.
– There are a lot of problems going on here.
– With live poker, besides home games – home games you're probably always going to run into something going on, especially if you're in LA, no I'm just kidding – but like the casinos and cheating, I honestly wouldn't be super interested in that. I would be more interested in looking at online gaming and cheating online. I don't know how good I'd be at it because I'm in healthcare.
– Well, you can try! It feels like a basic conversation would have caught this in the first place. Like, "Dude, how did you know how to fold there with the second nuts?" It seems like that would have revealed Mike Postle.
I'm going to send you two videos. Promise me, pinky swear me right now that you will watch them and get back to me. I just know that the interview that I send you with Mike Postle and Justin Kuraitis, you will hysterically laugh.
The interview with Postle and Justin Kuraitis is 30 minutes, but you don't have to watch the whole thing. You just have to watch him explain one hand and you'll be like "Oh my god."
He was playing in Veronica and Friends every month. I hosted a really big game, and he would come and meet us for dinner. Sometimes he would show up early and I would be there and we would start eating and hang out and talk.
I was like, "So that hand last time I saw you was crazy, right? Like what were you thinking?" "Oh man, yeah, I just had the read." Like it was always just this low-IQ response like "Yeah man, I'm just so good" kind of stuff. It's really portrayed in all the interviews he's done.
– That's a great response actually.
It made sense because Live at the Bike was growing and we never got it! He never promoted anything and we had Matt Berkey and Marley coming to the game. He barely promoted it – he didn't want any eyes on it because he knew it was getting ridiculous – not Mike, but Justin Kuritis.
Where Is Mike Postle Now?
As of September 2026, the clearest answer to where is Mike Postle now is that he is still playing live poker. The controversy dramatically changed his public reputation, but he did not disappear from tournament poker altogether.
Postle returned to wider poker-media attention in January 2023 when he finished seventh in the $1,200 Million Dollar Heater Main Event at Beau Rivage, earning $32,703. His appearance was notable because it was one of his most visible tournament results since the original allegations. In February 2024, he also made a rare extended public appearance in an X Spaces discussion, where he again denied cheating and said he wanted to debate Veronica Brill directly.
The latest Mike Postle update comes from live tournament records rather than another development in the legal case. In 2026, Postle recorded several additional cashes in Las Vegas. His most recent listed result as of September 2026 is a second-place finish in a bounty event at the Venetian DeepStack Championship on July 28.
| Date | Event | Finish | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 20, 2026 | Orleans Summer Open — $200 NLHE Nightly Monster Stack | 9th | $511 |
| July 6, 2026 | South Point Summer Dailies — $95 + $25 Turbo Bounty | 5th | $326 |
| July 9, 2026 | Summer Lucky 300 — $300 NLHE | 33rd | $1,722 |
| July 28, 2026 | Venetian DeepStack Championship — $150 + $50 Bounty | 2nd | $1,781 |
These results do not change the status of the original allegations. Postle continues to deny cheating, and no court ever issued a finding that he cheated at Stones. At the same time, the lawsuits did not produce a trial that tested the poker evidence and concluded that the accusations were false. The Mike Postle poker story therefore remains unusual: the legal battles largely ended, while the central dispute that started them was never resolved in court.
