Garrett Adelstein Claims New Jack 4 Evidence Before Book Release
GipsyTeam
Today, 02:18
With a new book coming out in September, Garrett Adelstein is refreshing the controversy around the Jack 4 hand on Hustler Casino. He's not giving evidence yet, but he says, it's coming soon.
If you know about the Jack 4 hand on Hustler Casino Live, you know it’s a story with no ending.
The hand hits YouTube on October 1st, 2022, immediately igniting one of the biggest controversies the poker world has ever seen. Perhaps, if it hadn’t involved Garrett Adelstein, it would have blown over more quickly.
But it didn’t blow over quickly. Garrett took to the 2+2 forums, gave an LA Times interview, and firmly stood on business.
Hustler Casino hired Bulletproof, a cybersecurity firm, and apparently spent over $100,000 on their investigation.
Bulletproof took apart the poker table, evaluated the DeckMate 1, checked the RFID system, scoured the workstations, and looked at all areas of the Hustler Casino Live production.
After the investigation, Bulletproof concluded in the J4 Report (https://hustlercasinolive.com/j4report/) that:
While no direct evidence of cheating was found, Bulletproof found that cheating with the Sept. 29 setup was possible.”
However, they found no smoking gun and based on their entire investigation, stated that “no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing related to the Sept. 29 hand was found.”
But almost four years later, ahead of his September 1st “Beneath the Cards” book release date, Garrett Adelstein is stirring the pot again.
In a recent interview, he says there’s “additional circumstantial evidence that's never been released,” and it’s all waiting in his book.
Of course, Garrett wants you to buy his book. He’s not giving out anything very juicy in this interview, just renewing everyone's interest.
But he also downplays the value of the evidence, telling the interviewer that he thinks it’s “the weakest part of the entire book.” Garrett believes that most people buying the book won’t care about the Jack 4 hand, and are more concerned with his career, his rise to the top, and want makes Garrett, Garrett.
We aren’t so sure about that.
Garrett says everything related to Jack 4 is waiting for readers in Part 10 of the book. He says, “The rest of the book has nothing to do with the controversy.”
In the 67-minute interview, he speaks about Robbi Jade Lew and the Jack 4 hand for only a few small snippets:
“Some people are obsessed almost exclusively with all of the evidence. Does Garrett have additional circumstantial evidence that's never been released? Spoiler alert, yes. And then others, probably the majority of people, don't care at all about Jack 4 and are far more interested in the rest of my career and what sort of makes me me, and how I rose to the top of poker, the many pitfalls I had along the way.
I ultimately decided the evidence, as I saw it, was the weakest part of the entire book.
That's why it's all in an appendix, but it is all there for everyone. And the tricky thing, part of the reason that I decided to put all the evidence in an appendix, is because a lot of it is very hard to digest in written form. Video is a much stronger medium, I think, specifically for some of the evidence. There are a lot of examples of this, some from interviews, things like this.
But there are 16 hands that I believe were compromised on HCL, played by Robbi and others who I discuss in the book. And the reality is, no matter how well you write that, for someone who's not a seasoned poker player, getting to see it with graphics showing what to look for is just far more powerful.
This is why I ultimately decided I just had to release a documentary-style video as well. So that'll be out later this year, a few months after the book. And that video, although still quite lengthy, focuses almost exclusively on that evidence. It doesn't touch on everything else in Jack 4, the narrative aspects, all my decision points, everything I went through emotionally.”
He also conceded that the alleged cheating wasn’t a personal attack, just cheaters acting on an opportunity.
“I've come to realize it wasn't about me. This wasn't personal. These are, as I see it, con artists. And in poker, there are a lot of con artists.
It is extremely hard to prove poker cheating. It is extremely hard to find a smoking gun in poker cheating scandals. And so as I see it, a group of alleged con artists found an opportunity, a weakness, and as I discussed in the book, there were a lot of security vulnerabilities with HCL's systems, as the Bulletproof report sort of broke down. And they took their shot.
It wasn't personal. It wasn't about me. It was just some people doing what they do.”
And after reflecting on everything, he’s not as unhappy with Ryan Feldman and Nick Vertucci as he once was. They were the Hustler Casino Live ownership at the time, and quickly distanced themselves from Garrett in the wake of the scandal. He now sees this as a business decision.
“For the longest time, it felt so personal what they did to me. They're discrediting me. They're coming after me. They're really just doing everything they could to bring me down.
It just took me a long time to realize it wasn't about me. That for both of these men, this stream, this company meant everything to them. It was their baby, and so you better believe they were going to do everything in their power to protect it.
I don't want to go down this rabbit hole about the two of them, but these are, as I see it, not the two most upstanding citizens on earth. And so they were fine getting in the mud, doing whatever they needed to do to try to discredit me.”
Vertucci was more vocal than Ryan after the Jack 4 incident, siding with Robbi and saying, “"I think it's horseshit that you call somebody a cheater without proof. If she's a cheater, fucking prove it."
Nick also said on his podcast that Garrett was controlling lineups, forcing straddles, and coercing Ryan Feldman by threatening to play on Live At The Bike instead.
Of course, Nick Vertucci now has an even worse reputation in the poker community, but this was all long before that.
About 40% of the comments don’t think Garrett is correct about the cheating.
About 30% of the comments think Garrett is correct about the cheating.
Almost four years later, our community is still divided over Jack 4.
Garrett Adelstein's Reddit AMA in August 2026
As part of his book’s marketing push, Garrett took to Reddit to answer some questions. If you were hoping for Jack 4 evidence, don’t go looking for it here.
Redditors definitely asked about it, but the most they usually got as an answer was, “read the book, watch the documentary coming after the book.”
Garrett was much happier to give insights on the high-stakes world, starting poker in 2026, and his stint on Survivor.
Therapy is another word you’ll hear or read from Garrett as well. In the interview and AMA, he praises it constantly.
Garrett Talks About His Online Game
In the PokerOrg interview, Garrett also revealed a bit more about his ups and downs playing online poker. He talked about building a seven-figure bankroll before the age of 22, losing it all at high-stakes heads-up, then building his bankroll again from a $10,000 loan.
“Once I sort of found my niche in online cash, I'd built my bankroll up to almost seven figures and I was playing heads-up against many of the best players in the world. I couldn't get action anywhere else at that point. That did not go well.
I don't think I ran the best, but I probably would have eventually lost everything anyway when every day I'm playing Ben Sulsky and Cole South and a lot of the best players in the world. And I was a very strong but not one of the best players in the world at that time. So I ended up going broke, and that was just extremely humbling.
So I started all the way at the very bottom. I was playing $50/$100 before, and then I called up my very close friend Jason Centi at the time and said, "Dude, I lost everything. I made every mistake." And he goes, "No problem. I got you. You want me to transfer you $100K right now?" And I was like, "No, no, no, no, no. I'm just going to lose it again. I need to start at the very bottom here."
I told him I was just going to play $1/$2. Because of that, $10K was all I needed. I paid him back in just a few weeks and then over the next year very slowly built up my bankroll as well as the stakes I played, kind of just finally starting to act a bit like a professional.
Now, remember, I'm still only 22, which is crazy, because I've already had a huge rise and fall. And so there would be numerous stumbling blocks along the way thereafter as well. It's not like it was smooth sailing after that. But there was a real proof of concept there for me, that when things hit the fan, when I really was pushed against the wall, I was able and willing to do what I needed to do.”
Garrett is now 40 years old, so this story would have happened between 2005 and 2008, near the final years of Full Tilt Poker. It’s likely that he played there, but we also know Garrett used the screen name G-Man on PokerStars. After Black Friday, he stopped.
These days, it’s unlikely that he plays online at all.
But not all of us have access to juicy poker games at local casinos, and plenty of players find their action online. Soft games exist, but you need to know where to look.
But, we already know where to look. Our team collects data from all of the best online poker sites and clubs, collaborates with regulars at many different stakes, and is constantly checking the pulse of the best games.
LA Times article
available for pre-order on Amazon
