Lon McEachern Faces Backlash After Defending Stones Gambling Hall in Postlegate Scandal

Famed poker commentator Lon McEachern has encountered a significant amount of social-media blowback after making comments on Twitter that appeared to absolve the owners of Sacramento’s Stones Gambling Hall of responsibility in the alleged cheating scandal centering on poker pro Mike Postle.

McEachern’s rough day escalated after increasingly heated exchanges with Abraham “pocketabes” Martin, a former tech worker at Stones Gambling Hall, and Veronica “angry_polak” Brill, who both played in and announced a few of the “Stones Live!” sessions in which Postle allegedly cheated.

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All three primary participants know each other well from their interactions at Stones, though it was Martin who, in McEachern’s words, “crapped on my breakfast.” Martin claims to have witnessed McEachern talking up Stones Gambling Hall and downplaying the Postle situation, to which Martin found affront. That led to Martin going back to a McEachern quote bashing Donald Trump from a day earlier, then mimicking it to illustrate Stones’ dubious legal claims of having no responsibility. 

McEachern tweeted this:

Martin came back with this:

Instead of stepping away from the exchange, McEachern pressed his viewpoint, including further defending Stones’ owners while also trading more shots with Martin and Brill, the lead defendant in the lawsuit targeting Postle, Stones, and Justin Kuraitis. Brill was also the person who first took the cheating complaints about Postle after she and several others took complaints to Kuraitis but were allegedly stonewalled.

Perhaps the tweet of McEachern’s that most bothered many followers was this, directed at Martin:

This and other tweets reinforced McEachern’s assertions that Stones’ owners were not aware of any cheating being done by Postle and Kuraitis (and perhaps others), and thus should not be held liable. However, McEachern’s claims of the Stones owners not being in on the alleged cheating steers far wide of the actual point. Any gambling establishment bears a fiduciary responsibility to its customers to offer a “fair” game in accordance with applicable laws. Stones  is also the employer of Kuraitis (the manager of the “Stones Live!” webstreams), and owns and funds the webstream content and rights.

Despite Stones’ attempts to legally disavow themselves of any responsibility, it’s a stance that’s not only legally dubious, it’s also vastly unpopular with the gambling public. McEachern stirred further anger by offering this claim:

Exactly how Stones was cheated isn’t quite clear. If McEachern is referring to the damage to Stones’ image caused by the Postle saga, the Stones’ owners and employees (including McEachern) are intentionally overlooking Stones’ own central role in operating the “Stones Live!” games. And in direct financial terms, Stones wasn’t cheated at all. Poker is player versus player, not player versus house, and the Postle games appear to have been raked in accordance with California’s rules and regulations.

McEachern, though, also drew heat when he cast aspersions Brill’s way. As the exchange heated up, McEachern tweeted this:

That drew another wave of criticism from others watching the exchange. Poker pro Matt Glantz response was typical:

One point yet to be clarified is the extent to which Kuraitis was able to control discussion about any inquiries into Postle’s alleged cheating. McEachern inferred it would have been easy for Brill to go to Stones’ general manager, Art (Van Loon), and thus go around Kuraitis. Brill, though, speaking directly to this writer, stated:

“Justin ran the show.” 

Brill and McEachern, meanwhile, kept debating previous exchanges as well, including an earlier lunch outing between the two that fell apart as attention to the Postle cheating claims began to grow. This writer has seen some of the text exchanges, though they won’t be published here. The entirety of the context, however, indicates that while the two agreed to cancel the lunch, there wasn’t a complete or satisfactory meeting of the minds as to why. 

Amid this, the once-close friendship between Brill and McEachern has shriveled. McEachern was also contacted regarding his statements but did not respond to the request.

McEachern (pronounced “McCair’n”) is most well known, along with Norman Chad, as part of ESPN’s long-running commentary team on years of the network’s broadcasts of World Series of Poker events. McEachern, who lives not far from Sacramento, is also a compensated spokesman for Stones Gambling Hall, though he is uninvolved in any of the card room’s day-to-day operations. It was an unusual series of outbursts from the well-liked McEachern, a very warm person who is widely known throughout the poker world for his kindness and care toward others. In this instance, though, it may well go down as a matter of carrying one’s loyalty just a little bit too far, when silence, simple silence, might have been the wiser option.