Is the notorious presumed cheater Mike Postle back at the tables? Most of the poker world seems to think so. If he is, it would appear that he’s now using his middle name, Lawrence.
One thing is undoubtedly true: A player going by Michael Lawrence is at the final table of the Million Dollar Heater. This $1,200 buy-in live tournament at the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, resumes today. First place will receive $200,000.
The information comes from another player in the tournament, Maxwell Young. His friend, Angela Jordison, passed it on to the rest of the poker world through Twitter:
Good Morning Twitter! Welcome to 2023!
I woke up with a message from @Mawkswell
“Unreal just played with Mike Postle he was using an alias floor confirmed it was him”
Postle is in Biloxi. Final table resumes today…he is playing for 200k!@Angry_Polak @Joeingram1 pic.twitter.com/AE4yliakU0
— Angela Jordison (@Angelajordison) January 16, 2023
Additional video evidence has since surfaced which adds more credibility to the claim.
Recapping the Postle Saga
Drama in the poker world rarely reaches a satisfying conclusion. Usually, it just fizzles out. After some time, the people at the center of those controversies may try to make their way back into the community.
For instance, Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer laid low for a few years after Black Friday, but both have since reappeared to play in the WSOP.
Postle’s fall from grace is considerably more recent. For a brief time, he has a poker hero – a regular on the Stones Gambling Hall live-streamed cash games. He was popular with viewers for his unorthodox play and brilliant reads.
Some, however, felt that at times his play was a little too unorthodox, and those reads a little too consistently brilliant to be genuine. Fellow player Veronica Brill was the first to sound the alarm that something suspicious was going on. Following investigations by Joey Ingram, Todd Witteles and others, most of the poker community agreed.
There has never been any formal proof of Postle’s cheating. However, the prevailing belief is now that someone with access to RFID hole card information was feeding it to Postle via his phone. That would imply the cooperation of someone on the production team.
The evidence of this is largely his improbably good track record combined with a pattern of behavior on live stream footage. Just before making his most outrageous moves, Postle consistently appeared to be staring at something in his lap.
Is it Really Mike Postle?
Based solely on Young’s photo, some initially doubted the claim. The man in the picture has his face partially covered. However, his nose appears larger and has more of a hook than earlier photos of Postle.
Nonetheless, Brill was quick to take the report as genuine. Her lawyer, Marc J. Randazza, has said he’s “not convinced.” That said, part of a lawyer’s job is to be cautious about asserting unconfirmed things as facts.
On the other hand, Young says that floor staff confirmed it to be him. Meanwhile, several supporters of Postle have stepped forward on Twitter to defend him, seeming to confirm in the process that it is him and that he now goes by his first and middle names.
Finally, a video posted to Facebook by Gulf Coast Poker includes a better look at the player’s face as he gets eliminated from the tournament. His opponent, Brock Gary, slow-rolls him with top set and tells him “that’s for all the cheating you did” after winning the pot.
Since it seems that everyone at the table was aware of the man’s presumed identity and he has not protested, it seems safe to assume the claim to be true. After all, who would allow themselves to be confused for a notorious cheater without attempting to clear things up?
Finally, as the smoking gun: a photo posted to Twitter of a Beau Rivage chip bag with “Mike Postle” written on it. Rumor confirmed.
He wrote his real name down. Can’t help it if they don’t report it right.
No alias. pic.twitter.com/6xMu68Whtc
— Poker Derelict (@PokerDerelict) January 16, 2023
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