The Rise and Fall of Poker Cheating Glasses in the Gambling World

While chess is embroiled in the strangest of cheating accusations, poker players are in the midst of their own scandals. Accusations about collusion and cheating during live broadcasts of high-stakes poker games have captured the attention of the world. Many famous players have joined the bandwagon.

One of the more interesting claims revolves around sunglasses, and their relationship with marked cards. While the vast majority of players wouldn’t be caught dead wearing sunglasses indoors, the practice is very popular at the poker table. The main reason behind this is to hide tells.

Sunglasses also make up a large part of the arsenals of poker cheaters. Poker cheaters use a variety of methods to mark cards. These include the old-school method of secretly scratching or scuffing the cards, as well as more sophisticated methods such using invisible ink marks that can only be detected by an external camera.

The most notorious example of this occurred in a 2012 live-broadcast high-stakes game that saw professional player Phil “Ivey” Ivey accused of cheating. In this instance, the casino claimed Ivey could see their marked cards and misread the live tells of his opponents.

Ivey denied the charges, claiming he simply had superior card mechanics and a knack for reading tells. But the poker world was not convinced. Numerous streamers and high profile players spent hours analysing the Stones Cash Game footage, finding that Postle made the right decisions time and time again. It was soon discovered that Postle was using a super-user account to see other players’ hole cards, which explained why he was always making the right call.