I’m reminded of the short story “Mirror Image” by Isaac Asimov. The detective, Elijah Baley, uses evidence that could be interpreted to support both sides of a dispute to coerce a confession from the guilty party, explaining in the end that he had already determined who was guilty based on psychology.
1 Like
That was me and it’s becoming more true as the days pass.
1 Like
Maybe we can shift gears from repetitive arguments about cheating methods and speculate on how long HCL’s investigation should and will take.
1 Like
If they are really considering “sending all of the evidence” to some degen poker players with youtube channels, it doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence in the legitimacy of the investigation one way or the other imo.
That can’t be what they are proposing as an investigation, right?
They’ve said they will retain a law firm to conduct an investigation and hire a third party cyber security company to look at things.
If they send stuff to YouTubers, it would be in addition to all that, I assume.
1 Like
Yeah that was an in addition thing, but still seemed weird to me. That said, I suppose the cybersecurity experts and lawyers don’t have any knowledge about why this particular hand was so sketchball from a poker perspective.
1 Like
Might be better if they don’t have poker knowledge so that they don’t bring biases into the investigation.
1 Like
I mean, the FBI investigator on the Donaghy doc didn’t understand what he was doing and took his side. (The lead in the case didn’t but apparently can’t talk yet due to not being retired).
People investigating outside their expertise is usually a fools errand
1 Like
relevant when evaluating J high calls for signs of cheating.
2 Likes
I’m guessing 2-6 weeks. There are probably 25-35 hours of footage on 6-8 different cameras that needs to be poured through on that side of things, so you’re looking at a lot of man hours. I have no clue how long it would take on the technological side.
They’re offering to let them come in in addition, yes, in order to provide transparency to the community. Also, live poker experts are best situated to poor through tape looking for suspicious movements and potential signalling.
Like, who would you rather have look for chip signalling and stuff like that? A cyber security firm, a private investigator, or a reputable poker pro with 10-40 years of live poker experience?
Robbi claims to be good at poker, to have studied for 2+ years and to have been playing live cash with a high level of success for at least a year. Obviously a lot of that is likely bullshit, but she’s not totally new to the game. She also played hands that demonstrated that she understands relative hand value on different boards and appears to understand balance on at least a basic level (ie checking top pair sometimes).
Obviously knowing that on some boards doesn’t mean she knows it on all, but it’s not like she’s out there just playing any two cards and stacking off every time she hits a pair or something.
How long without results before you start being concerned about possible shenanigans on HCL’s part?
I think they’re offering to let YouTubers in because it will drive engagement more than because they value transparency.
The way I expect an investigation to go is that a cyber security firm would look for technological weaknesses and identifying which staff members had the necessarily access to cheat. My guess is that they can rule out the possibility of someone cheating without help on the inside. Assuming that is true, the law firm should then be primarily looking into connections between staff and players. If they can conclude that the entire staff is innocent, then looking into the means of potential cheating is unnecessary. If they can identify a potential accomplice, that makes looking for the means easier.
If it is necessary to look into things like chip signaling, I would rather have it looked at by a poker pro hired as a specialist by the law firm and not by a YouTuber who has a financial interest in being as clickbait-y as possible in their coverage. If they are sending all the evidence to YouTubers, then I think they should wait until the law and cyber security firms have finished their investigations and turned in their final report.
1 Like
They should announce who is investigating it ASAP, if they haven’t within a few days then I think that’s an issue.
I don’t see how that’s possible. Why can’t the inside help be from someone at the shuffle machine company or RFID reader company or RFID card company or software company. All it takes is one person building a backdoor into something.
Agreed. I think my top picks would be guys who aren’t likely to do it (Ivey for example), Dwan would be good and seems like maybe he’d agree to do it, but I don’t know if he’d take 2 weeks of his life on it. Andy Bloch might be good, now that I think of it.
I don’t think they’re sending it, they’re offering to let them come in and see it, and not release anything until the investigation is over, at which point they’d be free to release whatever.
Given sufficient access, I would guess that a cyber security investigation could rule out the existence of a backdoor.
But also, someone goes to the trouble of building a backdoor and this is what they use it for?
1 Like
I think RFID data would just look like a bunch of gibberish to anyone snooping - so you’d need a guy that understands the exact software and devices they’re using for that exact game, plus info about the network they’re using - all this data’s likely encrypted across their network, so you’d need a way to break that too. The more you go into how this is possible it doesn’t really seem too much like it is, the way it is being described. I certainly believe that an attack without cooperation of HCL is likely impossible if not extremely extremely unlikely.
So there’s only one developer and no code reviews. Or the whole dev team are in on it. Maybe even the whole company. lol
Afaik we still don’t know how Postle did it exactly either.
I also like the idea that the most sophisticated hack in the history of live poker decided to use Robbi to execute their plan
4 Likes
If they can do that, then that would get my number down pretty low I think. That would rule out most technological methods. Then it would come down to an RFID expert explaining how far away the cards could be read. If a third party confirms it’s like an inch regardless of reader, and confirms no backdoors on any devices, you’ve ruled out most possibilities.
I remain skeptical they can rule out all the different backdoors, but time will tell I guess.
As opposed to?