The world is filled with scandal, some more serious that others. We are used to these scandals happening in the world of acting, music and even the royals. These scandals are what drives the tabloids. So when a scandal comes along that does not involve these areas it seems almost more scandalous. This purely because it is so out of the norm that it really draws attention to that field.
Gambling and surely poker, has not been without scandal. Some of these have rocked the poker world fixing the spotlight on the game and its players. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The age old maxim ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity’, makes sure that any light is a good thing. So let us then take a look at some of these scandals that shook the world of poker.
The Postle Live Stream Scandal
Between late 2018 and September 2019 at Stones Gambling House in Sacramento, during the streamed cash game settings, Mike Postle won 62 out of 69 sessions. His total winnings came to over $250 000 and seemed somewhat too good to be true and when something seems too good to be true it normally is just that.
A commentator at the Stones live stream, Veronica Brill, commented on her twitter feed that something wasn’t right about one of the players. This statement shone a spotlight on him and a jury consisting of only poker players was allocated to the case in a civil lawsuit of $30 million. This live stream cheat was in itself a large scandal and one would think that it could not get bigger or better than this.
What seemed even more scandalous was that the case against him was dismissed. This came as such a huge scandal because it was one of the few times that multiple poker players came together and spoke almost with one voice, to put Postle behind bars for not only cheating but giving the community a bad name. Until this happened, Mike Postle was a relatively unknown name in poker. Now he is infamous if not even famous.
Scandal of Sexual Violence Threats
During the online World Series of Poker, player Mike Matusow had an outburst believing that he was slow-rolled by another player called Wolverine17. He made threats of violence and sexual abuse against this player and was apparently going to execute said threats, if the true identity of the player was found.
A quest that he sent his Twitch followers on. Although it cannot be proven that the identity was published online through social media research, the identity of Wolverine17 came to be a player named Meghan Milburn. Matusow has publically apologised for his threats and Milburn graciously accepted, but the entire affair has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the poker community.
These are just two of some of the biggest poker scandals to have hit the world of poker in recent times. But they were two of the biggest and certainly show us that even in places that you would not expect to find scandal, when people gather, scandal is bound to follow.