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Hustler Casino Live (4 Viewers)

Did that Nik/Airball guy know? If so, I guess that would satisfy the "did anyone* know" (*as opposed to "everyone"). But yeah, IMO, since Everyone didn't know - shady AF...
 
Samuel said:
Did that Nik/Airball guy know? If so, I guess that would satisfy the "did anyone* know" (*as opposed to "everyone"). But yeah, IMO, since Everyone didn't know - shady AF...
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Mike X seemed to know
 
Anthony Martino said:
So there's a thread for Vertucci and now one for Feldmen on 2+2 as people try to dig deeper and see if the guys running the show may be involved in any unscrupulous behavoir.

What I found interesting is Ryan is replying in the thread focused on investigating him and I just came across this:

View attachment 1008541


Deeb had asked her on Joeys first show about this whole mess:

"Did anyone in the game know he was staking you in this game?"

And she replied "Yeah"

But I don't believe a single player in the game has corroborated this (even Eric mentioned he didn't know about the staking arrangement). Now we see Ryan confirming neither he nor Nick were aware either.

So it does appear Robbi lied when responding to Deebs question. And while the staking arrangement isn't a humungous deal overall, since staking in high stakes games can be fairly common, the big deal is that it appears she is lying, and you have to wonder why, what is she trying to cover up?
Click to expand...

She also expressly stated on Joey Ingram's podcast that Nick and Ryan both knew about RIP staking her prior to the session. It was one of the podcasts with Dwan and Haralabos. I think it was Dwan who asked her point-blank, "Did Ryan and Nick know you were being staked by RIP?"
 
The plot continues to thicken, saw this on 2+2 in reference to a Reddit thread:

Tldr: The reddit comment is mostly true (with caveats). There were persistent suspicions of foul play involving Ryan Feldman and his former roommate “Luda Chris” when Feldman managed and produced Live at the Bike. A new disgruntled employee emerges. Insiders pieced together tons of red flags and tried to weed out the bad actors, but couldn’t definitively prove the more serious allegations. Relevant parties can’t talk because of professional, personal or other types of repercussions. Vertucci has a cameo at the end.

There was a comment from this subreddit that made the rounds on twitter and 2+2 regarding the events and circumstances surrounding Ryan’s time at the Bicycle casino and about his former roommate known as “Luda Chris”. The link to the original comment is here. No, it wasn’t me. And no, I don’t know who it was.

Ryan responded several times on twitter and 2+2, with a version of events that was mostly false but would sound convincing to people not involved at the time. I worked at the Bicycle Casino and was familiar with some of the day to day operations of Live at the Bike before and after Ryan Feldman became involved. Because many of the parties involved are unable to comment or unwilling to go through the social media circus like others in the J4 debacle, and because I am personally not under an NDA, I felt compelled to speak up and shed light on the matter.

First, I want to refute the idea that Chris was good for the game or for the show at that time. He presented himself as a grinder, and was known as a nit and an action killer. If the table called for a round of straddles, he would routinely be the one to not straddle. The bomb pot story with his weak excuse was also fairly well known, but i don’t know how many times that actually happened. He was pretty anti-social and had a reputation for being abrasive at the table the rare times he would speak. The current version of “Luda Chris” might not be the same as back then, and I don’t know with certainty if he was a net winner or loser in those games. But from 2017-2019 he was certainly not the type of guy you wanted at your table.

Around 2016, Ryan Feldman periodically commentated Live at the Bike shows and eventually became the manager who put lineups for the games together. There was a sort of “honeymoon” period between Ryan and the owners from 2017-2018 while he was managing the show but wasn’t a full owner. Thanks to him, LATB started spreading bigger games (which was also a point of contention due to security and other concerns). Viewership was steadily increasing which was nice, but the priority at the time was the local player pool who came to the casino and regularly filled seats.

Before Ryan, player selection for games was mostly first come first serve like a regular table in the casino. The games were smaller back then and some regs basically always had a seat ready for them. But after Ryan came in, he started soft banning players both in big games, and games as small as 5-10. So we were all wondering, “Why would Ryan push Chris, an awkward anti-social action killer with little to no history or rapport, so hard into these lineups?”. They were roommates and friends with each other, which would normally not have been a huge problem. But players within the pool didn’t like playing with Chris and many expressed concerns about angle shoots, non-specific dodgy plays, and favoritism on Ryan’s part. Viewers would question the roommate connection whenever it came up in chat, but they would mostly just complain that Chris was boring.

Another strange development was that the person who entered cards for LATB during streams was also adamant about having Chris play as much as possible. He was a non-managing employee who was relatively new, but was one of only two people who had access to players' hands in real time. I won’t name him, but he would later follow Ryan Feldman to HCL as part of their original staff, and remained there until recently. He had other duties on LATB when the stream wasn’t going, but had no say in operations. Yet somehow the idea of omitting Chris was a sore spot for him and led to arguments with some owners. I have texts from those times reporting that he said things to the effect of “Chris has to play, Chris IS the show”. Which was comical given Chris’ table image and reputation among his peers in LA, and lack of presence/interaction with the show on social media. This employee complained to anyone who would give him the time of day about his financial state and that he was doing “slave work” for LATB. Odd that someone in his position within the company would react so strongly on behalf of a player, but nothing else came of it.

After a few months, anomalies involving Chris on stream started popping up but there was never a smoking gun which met a threshold to actually accuse foul play. For example, Ryan was caught taking RFID enabled decks from the stream home. He had teamviewer access to the computers in the LATB control room, including the one which ran the card input software. Other red flags included suspicious hands and large cumulative winnings involving Luda Chris over the course of 2017-2018. People within the show who tracked Chris reported the figure as “between 200-300k in a 9 month span”. An eye opening number having only played a couple hundred hours of 5-5 (with $50 ante), and 5-10-20 games on stream, but not a Russ Hamilton (og Postle) level outlier. That said, if you had something similar to a “super user god switch” like Postle or Hamilton, would you use it all the time?
To be fair, I saw a few hands that were mentioned in the reddit post back then. They weren’t conclusive in a vacuum, and the hand histories were slightly different than described (ie: he folded AA to a c/r, not an open fold). I recall the 5 bet bluff, but without specifics. I think there were 2 or 3 other suspicious hands on stream that I had heard about but can’t recall. But people who were familiar with Chris’s play style outside of the stream were certain that they were next to impossible lines to take. The LATB archives aren’t available anymore as far as I know, but hopefully some of the questionable hands will resurface.

People who worked on the stream voiced their concerns but Ryan, who had sole discretion over lineups, continued to be adamant that Chris be put in as many streams as possible. The complaints from players, staff, and co-owners also prompted Mark Ventre, the manager of poker operations at the Bike, to open an internal investigation with regards to the Luda Chris/Ryan Feldman allegations. The focus at the time was mostly related to board manipulation for must moves and main games. In spite of pressure from his peers, Ryan would apparently not budge until around Dec 2018, when the VP of the Bicycle Casino forbade Chris from playing on LATB due to the potential security risks and poor optics. After Chris was barred from the show, Ryan vehemently protested and unsuccessfully petitioned multiple times to have him be allowed back.

By spring 2019, the relationship between Feldman and the rest of the owners deteriorated to the point that they wanted him gone. As I understand it, they each had a handful of unrelated grievances in addition to the rift caused by the Luda Chris connection. The record will officially show that Ryan withdrew, but in reality he was forced out because he had alienated most of the people who operated the show on a day to day basis. The main executives at LATB opted to keep the circumstances surrounding the separation quiet, and to this day never commented on it publicly as far as i know. I imagine it was to avoid fallout, especially since no serious foul play was proven.

After Ryan left LATB, he continued as a house player at the Bike for a few more months (though he liked to refer to himself as a “host”). Security was being strengthened to coincide with the revamping of the LATB room, and in response to some tips regarding RFID breaches in the months leading up to Postle gate.

While Postle-gate shook the poker world, Ryan made tweets related to some on screen anomalies in the Stones broadcasts, implying that they couldn’t have happened unless inside crew members were participating with a bad actor. Fast forward a few years to the J4o scandal, HCL made comments saying basically the opposite. That whatever cheating that may or may not have happened could not have included HCL staff (though it appears they softened their stance or fully retracted some of those statements since then). I know that LATB in earlier years had done commentary live with a broadcasting delay, which would have made changing the HUD possible in real time. Sounds to me like he was needling his kind of former, kind of current co-workers, since any potential fallout wouldn’t have affected him. But take it however you will.

In the wake of the Postle scandal at Stones, the Bike (and many other casinos I imagine) were under heavy scrutiny by the DOJ. This renewed interest in Mark Ventre’s investigation on Ryan/Chris, but the COVID pandemic stopped all progress on multiple fronts. Mark also unfortunately passed away in early 2021 while his investigation was still pending just as LA casinos began to reopen.
The last part of the saga at the Bike was Ryan’s tweet on 6/3/20, complaining that he had been laid off without warning in spite of all the work he did for the casino. It garnered a lot of sympathy and goodwill from poker twitter for the high profile things he did on the show.

Two reality checks here. First, we all got laid off. The casino had been shut down for 3 months during the pandemic and the staff knew layoffs were coming in part so that people could collect unemployment. We knew it was likely temporary. Even the VP who barred Chris got laid off and if it’s any consolation to Ryan, she probably didn’t get a pat on the back or a letter thanking her either.

Secondly, Ryan had been iced for the better part of a year and knew his former employers and coworkers were unable to comment. He also wasn’t jobless thanks to the home game he was running. While the rest of us had a stay at home order, Ryan Feldman was running illegal, unsanctioned home games as high as 25/50 NL with Nick Vertucci and telling people he was still running LATB despite having been removed for over a year.

Side note. I’ve seen multiple places online cite Feldman’s “reputation” as the only saving grace in the J4 scandal. Look on 2+2 and see what rake is like in LA home games. Read up or listen to some podcasts to get an idea of what goes into organizing them, and tell me he’s clean.

“But why did nobody say anything?”. At the beginning of my post, I mentioned that the only people likely to have the full story are bound by NDAs. Ironically, one of the parties who is supposedly under NDA regarding this topic is Ryan Feldman himself. I’m obviously not privy to specifics, but he’s almost certainly bound by similar limitations as others directly involved, probably even stricter ones. Maybe they aren’t enforceable? IANAL.

You might ask, “why now? Why did you wait so long to say anything?”. Well, I’ve been out of poker for a few years now and had no desire to throw myself into this shitshow. And given what many of us know about the characters involved, I just assumed that the house of cards was bound to fall over. That’s obviously not how things panned out. What seems to have happened is that no one took a negative free roll by fighting someone else’s fight. Some of us make our money when the boat doesn’t rock too much. Some of us don’t want our entire social media history getting dug up by overzealous sleuths. Some of us make a living in legal gray areas, or have at some point in our lives exposed ourselves in a way that could come back to haunt us. So why not just let everyone go at it and see what happens? Poker isn’t a team game after all.
“Well, why did no one collect the $250k bounty?”. I don’t have any information on what happened at the Hustler. The story/rumor regarding Ryan and Chris was somewhat widely known, but the people inside couldn’t conclusively prove it. And even if someone could, they wouldn’t win any of the recent prop bets that I saw. The players who were aware of the rumors at the time treaded lightly and approached the situation as a potential cost of business, like they would with anything else.

Circling back to Luda Chris, it appears he is a slight loser on HCL streams. Maybe we were all wrong and there never was foul play. Maybe there was and they got spooked by Postle-gate. Maybe once Feldman got HCL going, he was back on his feet, had a point to prove, and went fully legit (save for the illegal home games during lockdown, but I digress).
One thing that I should mention is that most of the people who work on HCL genuinely do have high credibility within the LA poker community, and some have been targeted unfairly (DGAF/Billy being the main example). But the main operators have somehow rode out the worst of the storm in spite of their sketchy history. Nick Vertucci’s less than flattering real estate ventures are well documented, and we’ve seen that he often responds to criticism with mean tweets or choice words on his podcast. Privately though, Vertucci seeks out people who could potentially become a thorn in his side, and even goes so far as to imply that “something might happen” to them should they raise legitimate concerns.

Nevertheless, Feldman and Vertucci will come out of this more resilient and perhaps more bold than before. Each scandal they face going forward, and there certainly will be more, will be taken less seriously than the last. They will be able to point to the inconclusiveness of past allegations as vindication. Or continue using their platform to attract people with actual integrity as cover.

And to wrap things up, maybe foul play was or wasn’t involved in the J4 hand. I definitely can’t say anything with certainty. But what I do know is that Ryan Feldman left the Bike under a cloud of suspicion and verifiably sketchy behavior. I also know that no one else at the Bike past or present had the ability or desire to speak up. But there it is.
Here's the reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/y7h7fc
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
NotRealNameNoSir said:
Cool find but I cant read all that. TL;DR?
Click to expand...

Ryan Feldman who now runs HCL used to be involved with Live At The Bike

He was roomates with LudaChris who was known as a non-social nit by LA regs

Ryan used his influence to get Luda on stream and suddenly Luda did a complete 180 and was playing more wild but also winning at a big clip

Eventually others at LATB grew suspicious and nixed Luda from streams.

Official story is Ryan left on his own, but unofficially he was ousted as others in the company suspected cheating but couldn't prove it


And now we have Ryan and Nick investigating themselves, which is suspect as well
 
Anthony Martino said:
Official story is Ryan left on his own, but unofficially he was ousted as others in the company suspected cheating but couldn't prove it
Click to expand...
This is a bunch of hogwash and third and fourth-hand gallery yelling. Nothing could be further from the truth, about this, specifically.

LATB almost perished after Ryan left, and the company that bought them made several offers for Ryan to stay. They even tried to stop Ryan from doing another live show legally.

This is a carefully planted piece of LATB propaganda.
 
Windwalker said:
This is a bunch of hogwash and third and fourth-hand gallery yelling. Nothing could be further from the truth, about this, specifically.

LATB almost perished after Ryan left, and the company that bought them made several offers for Ryan to stay. They even tried to stop Ryan from doing another live show legally.

This is a carefully planted piece of LATB propaganda.
Click to expand...

Ryan has responded:

ryan.png


bryan2.png
 
Windwalker said:
LATB almost perished after Ryan left, and the company that bought them made several offers for Ryan to stay. They even tried to stop Ryan from doing another live show legally.
Click to expand...

Just playing Devils Advocate. The company that purchased LATB would have nothing to do with any disagreements or concerns of cheating that may have existed between Ryan and prior owners.

I don't know much about Ryan or LudaChris, but did feel the reddit piece was well written and seemed believable and not outlandish, and Ryan just basically gives a general denial without really addressing a lot of the specifics.

That doesn't point to guilt and again, I don't know the history of LudaChris and his 180-degree pivot from a guy who was terrible for the games to suddenly being good for the games.
 
It's a full 3-ring circus now - between Only Friends, Nick Vertucci, Ingram (somewhat neutral)/Reddit (fun times).

Joey last night had Charlie (finger point signal conspiracy), Berkey on with Beanz and Jungle (painful), then Feldman (decent, but he has produced limited documentation (he's not against posting stuff such as his termination notice) - I lean towards him being good, but I also seem him as squirrely.

Nick Vertucci seemingly wants all the attention that distracts from something - investigation/back of house/stream issues.

1) Attack other content creators without being able to verbalize what is incorrect or disingenuous about the criticism. He just keeps spinning. Sure it's a hit piece when Berkey says the LatB stream is unwatchable. Berkey and HCL obviously have a poor relationship since he's only played there like 3 times and is up 400K (I think)
2) Accuse someone of having integrity issues, then pass it off as a hotheaded moment. - yes, Berkey committed an illegal act with the phone call recording. - I've recorded plenty of things to have reference if needed.
3) Say you need to take a break from Twitter, while posting the breaking news that your investigation has figured out a troll Twitter account owner 'ThePokerKaren'
4) Put out a tweet (pod today) hitting out at the S4Y crew in a very negative tone, then block everyone (Hit piece incoming?)
 
Anthony Martino said:
That doesn't point to guilt and again, I don't know the history of LudaChris and his 180-degree pivot from a guy who was terrible for the games to suddenly being good for the games.
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about how he plays, but I do know that a lot of people think player X, Y, or Z sucks at poker until someone actually starts keeping score and proves them wrong.
 
I was fairly well tired in to the casino industry in WA in my early 20s. I had to deal with the gambling commission regularly and went through the hiring process and background check process numerous times for various employees when I was a poker room manager. One of the biggest head scratches for me in all of this mess is how in the hell Bryan Sagbigsal got the job in the first place? Casinos don't hire people with criminal records, and they sure as shit don't hire people with robbery convictions and stick them on the security team. You can't even clean toilets at a casino if that's on your rap sheet.
 
RainmanTrail said:
I was fairly well tired in to the casino industry in WA in my early 20s. I had to deal with the gambling commission regularly and went through the hiring process and background check process numerous times for various employees when I was a poker room manager. One of the biggest head scratches for me in all of this mess is how in the hell Bryan Sagbigsal got the job in the first place? Casinos don't hire people with criminal records, and they sure as shit don't hire people with robbery convictions and stick them on the security team. You can't even clean toilets at a casino if that's on your rap sheet.
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If I understand correctly, Brian was an employee of High Stakes Productions, not Hustler Casino. Nick Vertucci, whom has said publicly he doesn't do background checks on people he hires, probably hired him.
 
Anthony Martino said:
Just playing Devils Advocate. The company that purchased LATB would have nothing to do with any disagreements or concerns of cheating that may have existed between Ryan and prior owners.

I don't know much about Ryan or LudaChris, but did feel the reddit piece was well written and seemed believable and not outlandish, and Ryan just basically gives a general denial without really addressing a lot of the specifics.

That doesn't point to guilt and again, I don't know the history of LudaChris and his 180-degree pivot from a guy who was terrible for the games to suddenly being good for the games.
Click to expand...
He did give longer answers to that in an another post on 2+2 the other day. Here's the link.
Post 28 in this thread:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/...ldman-hustler-casino-live-1813485/index2.html
 
Tommy said:
Players like this are more entertaining to watch than an Ivey.

Bring back Reza!

View attachment 1009321
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Reza, Dr. Eli, Alan Keating, Eric Persson, Ryusuke, Robbi Lew, and Phil Hellmuth would be my dream 7. The first 4 are action with a capital A, Robbi because, well, you know, and stick Phil in there to have no less than 5 meltdowns during the stream when the others suck out on him.
 
Anthony Martino said:
Just playing Devils Advocate. The company that purchased LATB would have nothing to do with any disagreements or concerns of cheating that may have existed between Ryan and prior owners.

I don't know much about Ryan or LudaChris, but did feel the reddit piece was well written and seemed believable and not outlandish, and Ryan just basically gives a general denial without really addressing a lot of the specifics.

That doesn't point to guilt and again, I don't know the history of LudaChris and his 180-degree pivot from a guy who was terrible for the games to suddenly being good for the games.
Click to expand...
LudaChris didn't actually win much on HCL so I will not be so sure of a one side story

He won $24k from 60 sessions which is about 400 per session which will be about 4 - 8 BB so if he cheating, he been very careful or been dumping chip to other to avoid sus

I remember I was playing like a Nit too when I first started out, only after a long while before I get comfortable with expanding my ranges and making big bluff so this might be the same case with Luda too

1666198629532.png
 
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"Here’s what I think — I think if you notice in the middle of the hand, she asks, ‘can you beat a three?’ So, what I think is that she thought she had jack-three, she misread her hand, and then she didn’t want to say she misread her hand cause she was at a poker table. That is the best, most reasonable explanation for it.” - Phil Ivey.
 
Meddler2 said:
"Here’s what I think — I think if you notice in the middle of the hand, she asks, ‘can you beat a three?’ So, what I think is that she thought she had jack-three, she misread her hand, and then she didn’t want to say she misread her hand cause she was at a poker table. That is the best, most reasonable explanation for it.” - Phil Ivey.
Click to expand...
I’ve made it clear that Ivey’s opinion is worth a lot to me. But two things are worth mentioning:

1) he made that comment that night, without the benefit of reviewing the video.

2) I’m pretty sure his goal in any interview is ending that interview. I’ll bet he could have been 90% that she cheated and he wouldn’t have said a word.
 
If she was being backed in the game, wouldn't it be possible she played looser than otherwise in this hand; not her money after all. Seems like an obvious bluff to me by Adelstein and if I wasn't playing with my money; call. Lol
 
LeLe said:
LudaChris didn't actually win much on HCL so I will not be so sure of a one side story

He won $24k from 60 sessions which is about 400 per session which will be about 4 - 8 BB so if he cheating, he been very careful or been dumping chip to other to avoid sus

I remember I was playing like a Nit too when I first started out, only after a long while before I get comfortable with expanding my ranges and making big bluff so this might be the same case with Luda too

View attachment 1009339
Click to expand...

The story on that is he may have been dumping to Vertucci
 

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