Our 4-part article series will offer you an extensive guide to detecting the different ways cheaters may invade and clean up your home poker nights, even if they are friends or acquaintances you have trusted over the years. If you read our first article, you will now be more wary of dealing irregularities; now read on to find out other methods used at home games.

Collusion:

Requiring minimal skill and preparation, collusion is definitely the most used and the easiest way to cheat. It consists of an agreement between two or more players to signal each other at different times of the game how their poker hands are standing and when winning, they split the pot between them.

Maneuvers: Each player agrees on discreetly giving each other signals about the strength of their hands, and when one of them is dealing, the other distracts the other players. Some of the signals to share hand information involves turning the cards faced down after dealing outwards, thus showing their numbers in a split second, but if paying attention, the colluding players can see the cards. In addition, the colluding players may agree to speak using a code that is imperceptible to the other players.

Angling:

Although allowed in some casinos, angling consists of acting when it is not the player’s turn, thus influencing the other players’ actions, and when it is finally the player’s turn, taking back the anticipated action, thus affecting the others’ fate in the hand. Players who use angling are called “angle shooters” and some say it is more unethical than plain cheating.

Marked Cards:

Cards can be marked obviously, noticeably up close, or imperceptibly. In order to mark the poker cards, the cheating player has to own the deck or have at least plenty of private time with it before playing.

For vigilant players, card markings can be classified in 4 types:

Shading. Manipulation of the card design with very fine ink applied with extreme precision, making it almost imperceptible.

Daubing. Available in magic stores, a special ink only visible with special sunglasses is applied to the marked cards, and the cheater plays the poker game wearing the glasses.

Corner Crimp. The cheating player peeks at the wanted card (top or bottom) and discreetly pushes it a small distance away from the rest of the cards, subtly bends the corner closest to the thumb or index finger. The cheat can do this with all aces or kings.

Thumbnailing. This technique consists of inserting the thumb nail inside one of the edges of the card, barely splitting the card but leaving a mark that is visible to the trained eye. 

Misrepresentation of a Hand:

Also called bad calling, a cheat misrepresents a hand by reveling it at showdown but calling it something better than what it is. If unnoticed by the rest of the players, the cheat gets the money; if caught, he/she will innocently pretend to have made a mistake and laugh it off. If not careful, too many of these mistakes can reveal the true agenda of the cheat.

Pot interaction:

Cheating can very easily occur when putting money into the pot or “making change” off of it, which can allow the cheat to take small but frequent amounts of money that favor his/her bankroll.

To avoid inappropriate handling of the pot, players should keep track of the expected pot amount. If the amount is less than expected, each player’s bankroll must be counted.

Prepared Deck:

A cheat can prepare a deck by putting the wanted cards in strategic places before shuffling, and the cheat would usually say the deck has already been shuffled. This trick is frequently used in angling. The most basic deck-preparing includes cards whose back designs are not symmetric, and if the position of the design of some cards differs from the others that will help the cheater figure out which cards those are during the game. However, if he players move the cards or the deck is shuffled again before the next hand, the cheating would lose its course.

Phony Chips:

After a player purchased phony $100 chips from the Rio souvenir shop during the 2005 WSOP, the chips were used by that player for the tournaments, and since then, it has been a cheating trend. The red engraving that identifies a chip as an official WSOP chip is not easily visible in all chips, especially when stacked up, which confuses them with fake ones.

Players may bring phony chips or steal them from previous games and introduce them to the game. In order to avoid this, the host must be very protective of his/her chips and when possible try to purchase unique-looking chips, different from standard color denominations, and keep them locked at all times. The game should be played with the house chips and no one should be allowed to bring their own; unique-looking chips prevent phony chips from being secretly introduced in the game.

Learning about all the ways you can expect a cheat player to boycott your home game creates awareness about how deceitful some of your acquaintances can be. However, detecting cheating and demanding justice in a home game can be difficult and challenging. In our next article, we will show you the ways you can protect your home from poker cheats.

Next: Home-Game Cheating Awareness, Part III: Important Facts about Poker Cheats