Mike Postle, a 42-year-old poker pro who has been widely accused of cheating on livestreamed games at a Sacramento casino, has never wavered in his claims of innocence. From the moment in late September 2019 when Veronica Brill, a fellow player, tweeted out her suspicion that Postle’s winning streak at Stones Gambling Hall was too good to be true, Postle has maintained that he’s the victim of a conspiracy.
When I reported on his story at length for WIRED, for example, Postle told me that all of the allegations against him were “fake news,” and that he had been inexplicably targeted by people who desire either fame or money.
Now Postle is hitting back at an array of poker luminaries who have publicly branded him a cheat. On October 1, Postle filed a defamation suit seeking $330 million in damages from a dozen named defendants.
Among those in Postle’s legal crosshairs are Daniel Negreanu, a Canadian pro who has won more than $42 million during live games; Haralabos Voulgaris, a former professional gambler who parlayed his success into a job as director of quantitative research and development for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks; and Run It Once, a poker training company founded by Phil Galfond, a three-time World Series of Poker event winner who recently launched a project to analyze thousands of Postle’s past hands. Brill, who told me this summer that she feared being sued by Postle, is also a defendant, as is ESPN, which aired a SportsCenter poker accused cheating wants damages
