I spent about 25h following this and I’m also pretty convinced she cheated. I’d probably go to 95% given the info from Garrett’s 2+2 thread, where he claims this RIP person and another person (beanz?) who allegedly is connected with him and Robbi have a reputation for shady stuff. Edit 15/10/2022: Ehh, I think 95% is too high on reflection. I’m at 90%. The lie detector test doesn’t update me more than a percentage point or so, but I saw some people comment on how unusual it would be for someone who actually cheated to keep talking to accusers all the time. I think there’s something to it, but I also think there are people who “enjoy the game” and I could imagine Robbi being like that. I also saw the argument “Sagbigsal had stolen chips from other players in the past.” I’m not sure if this is confirmed or if we only have Robbi’s word for it. If this is confirmed, it would update me downwards a fair bit. (But there’s still the fact that she might have drafted the private message for Sagbigsal [see my other comment here; I’m maybe 70% that she did]) Her saying that she’ll prosecute Sagbigsal updates me a bit, but not by much. Firstly, she hasn’t done it yet. Secondly, if it’s true that he stole on previous occasions, it could be that he’s already getting prosecuted either way and she just makes it look like it’s in her hands. Or maybe she just throws him under the bus and tries to buy his silence somehow, who knows. Overall, there are way too many coincidences here and I’m comfortable that 90% is warranted. I still see people be at “75% innocent” or even “90% innocent” and I don’t know wtf they’re doing.
One thing I found suspicious early on (apart from the hand itself) was that Robbi gave the situation an adversarial spin and played the victim as opposed to going “I didn’t cheat, but I understand why reasonable people might think that I cheated.”
It’s always extra suspicious when someone has perfectly legitimate reasons to be suspicious of someone (as Garrett had from the very start) and that other person doesn’t acknowledge that they might have similar concerns if the tables were turned. It’s a classic shady behavior pattern when someone reverses perceived victim and offender in a situation where it’s clear to everyone else that the accuser isn’t acting in bad faith. Robbi even had a large portion of poker twitter being completely confident in her side for quite a while! (It was perfectly warranted to say “careful, she could be innocent;” in fact, when it looked as though the Casino stream was super reputable and really unlikely to be compromised, I was myself at <50%.) Lots of people were saying “Garrett’s reputation is ruined; he’s100% in the wrong here.” She almost succeeded in mobilizing the masses against Garrett, which is fucking scary. (Even if Robbi is innocent, it seems clear that Garrett didn’t become suspcious for no good reason.)
Combine that with the fact that her explanation of why she called made zero sense, and it looks quite improbable that she’d be innocent.
Sure, if you squint hard enough, there’s plausible deniability for everything. Maybe the reason she couldn’t give a good explanation for why she called isn’t because her true reason is cheating (which she obviously can’t say). Maybe she by coincidence happens to fumble all her explanations of the hand so that it looks suspiciously as though she herself didn’t know why she called. (To anyone who thinks she misread her hand: there are lots of reasons to think she didn’t misread her hand, such as that she doesn’t mention “I misread my hand” until minutes after she turned her cards face up.)
To summarize, it looks like a bit too much of a coincidence when one has to assume that someone is clueless in a very specific way that exactly covers up suspicious behavior not only in the original instance, but also in what happens afterwards (“how the person reacts to being accused”).
I think this scandal illustrates how some people are really bad at reasoning about deception. They only asked themselves “Is her behavior compatible with a version of a person who’s innocent?” rather than also asking “Is the world where she’s innocent typical for an innocent person, or can we imagine lots of similar instances with innocent people who we’d be less suspicious of?”
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It was also really painful to watch people who are clueless about poker give their overconfident takes on the hand. Many people were saying she knew he was bluffing, but the point of the hand is that even if she was certain he’s bluffing, she’d still be way behind his likely range of hands. Besides being completely dead against value hands (e.g., 99, AT, KT, 33) the hand she called with is so bad it would even lose badly against half the bluffs (and when she’s ahead, it’s only slightly so). For instance, some of the best bluffs in that spot include Kc3c, QhJh, 9h8h, Kh9h, 9h7h and Jh8h. Possibly also 5h3h and 4h3h if Garret is playing a bit loose preflop – which he typically is. The only high-frequency bluffs I can think of that she wins against are 8c7c, 7c6c, 8c6c, 8h7h, 7h6h, 8h6h.
Some commenters also asked “Why would she use cheating to call in this particular hand where the graphics show her as being only 47% to win, why would she call when she’s behind?” But (a) she has pot odds that make her call massively profitable if she indeed knew his hand and (b) she’s actually ahead in the hand as far as info she’d likely have if she’s cheating, because the graphics were factoring in cards that other people folded, which she probably wouldn’t know about even if she cheated.
Lastly, some commenters seemed convinced she had a tell on Garrett (i.e., she thought she spotted a behavioral clue that made her confident he’s bluffing) and that Garrett must have acted nervous because he’s bluffing. That’s pretty unlikely because it’s not like he’s doing anything particularly scary. He’s bluffing with an open-ended straight flush draw. It’s easy to sleep soundly when you put it in with a straight flush draw. It would be substantially more scary to bluff with less equity or put in $100k in on the river with a pure bluff (something that Garrett has done successfully against more experienced players than Robbi).
I also saw the argument “Sagbigsal had stolen chips from other players in the past.” I’m not sure if this is confirmed or if we only have Robbi’s word for it. If this is confirmed, it would update me downwards a fair bit.
Turns out Robbi may have lied about this. The stream owner just said a few h ago (around the 2h mark here) that they have no actual evidence that Sagbigsal stole any chips before the day of the J4 incident.
On the poker cheating allegations:
I spent about 25h following this and I’m also pretty convinced she cheated. I’d probably go to 95% given the info from Garrett’s 2+2 thread, where he claims this RIP person and another person (beanz?) who allegedly is connected with him and Robbi have a reputation for shady stuff.
Edit 15/10/2022: Ehh, I think 95% is too high on reflection. I’m at 90%. The lie detector test doesn’t update me more than a percentage point or so, but I saw some people comment on how unusual it would be for someone who actually cheated to keep talking to accusers all the time. I think there’s something to it, but I also think there are people who “enjoy the game” and I could imagine Robbi being like that. I also saw the argument “Sagbigsal had stolen chips from other players in the past.” I’m not sure if this is confirmed or if we only have Robbi’s word for it. If this is confirmed, it would update me downwards a fair bit. (But there’s still the fact that she might have drafted the private message for Sagbigsal [see my other comment here; I’m maybe 70% that she did]) Her saying that she’ll prosecute Sagbigsal updates me a bit, but not by much. Firstly, she hasn’t done it yet. Secondly, if it’s true that he stole on previous occasions, it could be that he’s already getting prosecuted either way and she just makes it look like it’s in her hands. Or maybe she just throws him under the bus and tries to buy his silence somehow, who knows. Overall, there are way too many coincidences here and I’m comfortable that 90% is warranted. I still see people be at “75% innocent” or even “90% innocent” and I don’t know wtf they’re doing.
One thing I found suspicious early on (apart from the hand itself) was that Robbi gave the situation an adversarial spin and played the victim as opposed to going “I didn’t cheat, but I understand why reasonable people might think that I cheated.”
It’s always extra suspicious when someone has perfectly legitimate reasons to be suspicious of someone (as Garrett had from the very start) and that other person doesn’t acknowledge that they might have similar concerns if the tables were turned. It’s a classic shady behavior pattern when someone reverses perceived victim and offender in a situation where it’s clear to everyone else that the accuser isn’t acting in bad faith. Robbi even had a large portion of poker twitter being completely confident in her side for quite a while! (It was perfectly warranted to say “careful, she could be innocent;” in fact, when it looked as though the Casino stream was super reputable and really unlikely to be compromised, I was myself at <50%.) Lots of people were saying “Garrett’s reputation is ruined; he’s100% in the wrong here.” She almost succeeded in mobilizing the masses against Garrett, which is fucking scary. (Even if Robbi is innocent, it seems clear that Garrett didn’t become suspcious for no good reason.)
Combine that with the fact that her explanation of why she called made zero sense, and it looks quite improbable that she’d be innocent.
Sure, if you squint hard enough, there’s plausible deniability for everything. Maybe the reason she couldn’t give a good explanation for why she called isn’t because her true reason is cheating (which she obviously can’t say). Maybe she by coincidence happens to fumble all her explanations of the hand so that it looks suspiciously as though she herself didn’t know why she called. (To anyone who thinks she misread her hand: there are lots of reasons to think she didn’t misread her hand, such as that she doesn’t mention “I misread my hand” until minutes after she turned her cards face up.)
To summarize, it looks like a bit too much of a coincidence when one has to assume that someone is clueless in a very specific way that exactly covers up suspicious behavior not only in the original instance, but also in what happens afterwards (“how the person reacts to being accused”).
I think this scandal illustrates how some people are really bad at reasoning about deception. They only asked themselves “Is her behavior compatible with a version of a person who’s innocent?” rather than also asking “Is the world where she’s innocent typical for an innocent person, or can we imagine lots of similar instances with innocent people who we’d be less suspicious of?”
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It was also really painful to watch people who are clueless about poker give their overconfident takes on the hand. Many people were saying she knew he was bluffing, but the point of the hand is that even if she was certain he’s bluffing, she’d still be way behind his likely range of hands. Besides being completely dead against value hands (e.g., 99, AT, KT, 33) the hand she called with is so bad it would even lose badly against half the bluffs (and when she’s ahead, it’s only slightly so). For instance, some of the best bluffs in that spot include Kc3c, QhJh, 9h8h, Kh9h, 9h7h and Jh8h. Possibly also 5h3h and 4h3h if Garret is playing a bit loose preflop – which he typically is. The only high-frequency bluffs I can think of that she wins against are 8c7c, 7c6c, 8c6c, 8h7h, 7h6h, 8h6h.
Some commenters also asked “Why would she use cheating to call in this particular hand where the graphics show her as being only 47% to win, why would she call when she’s behind?” But (a) she has pot odds that make her call massively profitable if she indeed knew his hand and (b) she’s actually ahead in the hand as far as info she’d likely have if she’s cheating, because the graphics were factoring in cards that other people folded, which she probably wouldn’t know about even if she cheated.
Lastly, some commenters seemed convinced she had a tell on Garrett (i.e., she thought she spotted a behavioral clue that made her confident he’s bluffing) and that Garrett must have acted nervous because he’s bluffing. That’s pretty unlikely because it’s not like he’s doing anything particularly scary. He’s bluffing with an open-ended straight flush draw. It’s easy to sleep soundly when you put it in with a straight flush draw. It would be substantially more scary to bluff with less equity or put in $100k in on the river with a pure bluff (something that Garrett has done successfully against more experienced players than Robbi).
Turns out Robbi may have lied about this. The stream owner just said a few h ago (around the 2h mark here) that they have no actual evidence that Sagbigsal stole any chips before the day of the J4 incident.