A New Poker Cheating Method

[Johnny Hughes 0]

A New Poker Cheating Method

 

　

In Austin, Texas a cheater took thousands of dollars from several of the underground games with a new way to cheat.

 

　

He sat across from the dealer. He had a cell phone looking device sitting on the poker table in front of him. It was really a scanner reader to read the bar codes in the cards.

He wore a tiny ear phone under his large ear phones.

 

The dealers were confederates and were allowed to bring their own cards. The cheater was a well-known personal injury lawyer. Historically, cheating is way more rare than anyone thinks, especially historians.

 

Cheaters give themselves away. He would wait hours for the five seat, across from the dealer. He would sit in for $30,000 cash.His actions and suck outs and weird plays gave me away.

 

The games have been cleaned up in Austin. No cell phones are allowed on the tables. A dealer is certainly not allowed to bring the cards!

 

I have seen cell phones used two other ways to cheat. One had mirrowed edges at a forty-five degree angle to that the guy laying the cell phone on the table could see the bottoms of cards as they were dealt.

 

I've seen a guy walking aroundknocking off hands and texting to a guy in the game. When someone gets behind you and signals anyway, it is called "sending them over."

 

In the Old West, the first telegraphs were used to send messages to the poker table, and send them over. A big Friar's cheating scandal with the show business elite in Los Angeles involved a man in the ceiling sending messages to a radio device worn at the waste in gin rummy games.

 

Nick the Greek was cheated out of $550,000 in late 1949 by Ray Ryan when they played gin and poker outdoors by the swimming pool in Las Vegas. A man with binoculars was sending the Greek over to a radio device worn on Ryan's waist.

 

Cards can be seen on the top by marking, daub, paint, nicks, crimps, and finger waves. The newer plastic cards prevent most of that. Titanic Thompson was the greatest cheater based on his special vision. He could mark the cards with slight waves that only he could see. Plastic cards ended that.

 

When I ran poker games many years, I'd teach the players these two methods of checking for marks. Hold a card up to the ceiling light and move it until the pattern vanishes in all glare. A mark with stick out.

 

 

Hold the deck down with your left hand. With your right thumb on the corner of the deck, lift it up and let it flop back down. It will be like the frames of an old movie, and a mark of different card will stick out.

 

There should be no shiny or mirror-like things on a card table. This is a most common cheating method. Keys, rings, cell phones, fountain pens, music listening devices. If someone needs something mirror-like in front of them, they can cheat.

 

Playing "the light" means they have a mirror in their hand or taped to their fingers. Thieves take a light bulb, spray it with a mirror substance, and break it. They put on a bandaid with a small hole and the mirror under it.

 

The deck should never be rolled over, ever, ever. That is a good way to peek, using your thumb to roll down the corner to the top card and peek at it. A black jack dealer can get a five to the bottom and roll that deck over to catch that five.

 

The most common home game cheating is "the slug." A new dealer memorizes a group of cards, maybe the last flop in hold 'em, the hardest game to cheat at. Then he puts them on the bottom or top and does not disturb them in shuffles and cuts. The cut lets him know they are in hands or maybe coming on the board. Watch for this.

 

An old rule in Texas was the bigger the game the less chance of cheating. The talent knows what to look for. No one is good enough to do it with manipulation of cards.

 

I caught Titanic Thompson's son Tommy Thomas cheating and he was fabulous. He could cold deck, very rare, hold out, and more. But he gave himself away coming in with an Ace as he was studying a hard call. Then he had the nuts.

 

Partners are common but less of a danger at No Limit Hold 'em. They'd be putting up twice your money if they both come into a pot, so they stay out of each other's way.

[Whiskers 680]

That was interesting.

[aucu 3]

No cell phones or MP3s on the felt is a common rule, not always followed.

[answer20 5]

Interesting for sure ... except for the suck-out part. Even with a scanner there is no way to know what is coming in the deck, especially with burn cards covering the next street. You certainly COULD know what is out, which helps you better predict what might come out, but it is hard to think that he knew he was going to suck out on someone. Why wouldn't seat 4 or 6 work as well?

 

There are still 'teams' that play NL but I have never really felt 'squeezed' by them ... good luck going forward.