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CHEATING AT CARDS
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Chapter I
THE NATURE OF CHEATING

To gain full benefit from this book, the reader must understand the nature of cheating. This chapter explains the nature of amateur cheating, professional cheating, and Neocheating in poker and in all other card games played for money.

1. Defining Cheating.

To properly define cheating, the nature of poker as opposed to other card games must first be understood. Poker is unique to other card games or situations in that honest poker explicitly permits any behavior or manipulation, no matter how deceptive, except cheating. In fact, the ethical basis of poker is lying and deception. Indeed, the only unethical behavior in poker is cheating.

But where does deception end and cheating begin? Actually a sharp distinction exists. Poker cheating is the conjuring up of advantages unavailable to opponents. Poker deception, however, involves exploiting advantages that are available to all players. When cheating, a player initiates one or more of the abnormal, physical manipulations listed at the bottom of this page. But when deceiving, a player is simply taking advantage of situations already available to his opponents. For example, the normal use of cards produces smudges, nicks, scratches, and creases on their backs. Such natural markings that identify unexposed cards are equally available to all players willing to train their eyes and discipline their minds. The good player willingly exerts that effort to spot, remember, and then deceptively use those natural markings on cards to gain advantages over his opponents. Such actions do not constitute cheating in poker. On the other hand, deliberately soiling, marring, or marking cards for identification would constitute cheating in poker or in any other card game.

Still many deceptive actions that are honest and proper in poker are considered in other games as cheating or dishonest (such as lying, deceit, and other violations of specific ethics or rules). Yet anything considered as cheating in poker would be considered as cheating in any other card game. Cheating in poker or in any card game can, therefore, be defined as initiating any one of the following abnormal manipulations of cards, signals, or money:

• Cards are covertly switched to change the value of a hand.
• Cards are purposely flashed to see the value of un-dealt or unexposed cards.
• Cards are culled or stacked to change their natural sequence.
• Cards are purposely soiled, smudged, nicked, marred, or marked for future identification.
• Mechanical devices are used such as marked cards, strippers, mirrors, and hold-out equipment.
• Secret betting agreements or partnerships are made so that colluding partners can signal each other the value of their hands . . . or when to fold, bet, or raise.
• Money is stolen from bets being made, from the pot, or from other players. Extra change is purposely taken from the pot. Lights are purposely not paid. (These last items are direct theft in contrast to the indirect theft of card and signal cheating.)

And definitions for the different styles of card cheating are--

Classical: A smooth, mechanical style of cheating developed in the 19th century requiring high skill for stacking, palming, and manipulating cards.

Cardsharping: A skilled style of card cheating executed through card manipulations.

Invisible: Cheating moves that are not discernible or visible to the human eye -- previously associated only with classical or highly skilled cheating.

Gaffing: A dangerous-to-use, non-skill cheating style that utilizes marked cards, shiners, and other external or mechanical devices.

Colluding: A non-skill cheating style involving two or more partners covertly signaling information or instructions to one another.

Traditional:

a) Skilled -- A cheating style occasionally used today. Requires extensive practice and experience. Invisible in its ultimate form.

b) Unskilled -- A common cheating style that relies on outside help such as marked cards, holdouts, shiners, and collusion. Sometimes involves crude or low-skill card manipulations, or even stealing.

2. Accepting Cheaters.

Most players fear cheaters. But the good player quietly accepts them if they are losers. In fact, he often welcomes their cheating because, as explained in the next paragraph, they generally lose more money while cheating, particularly in complex games involving split pots and twists. The good player can even convert expert cheaters into financial assets by nullifying their cheating or by beating them with the defenses and counteractions described in later chapters.

Indeed, contrary to popular belief, most players actually increase their losses while cheating because they

• dilute their attention toward the game by worrying about and concentrating on their cheating.
• overestimate the benefits of cheating and thus play looser or poorer poker.
• overlook or miss vital information about their opponents and the poker action.
• make their hands and intentions much more readable.
• use ineffective techniques that do not deliver net financial benefits.

A good player can take profitable advantage of the above weaknesses in cheaters as demonstrated by the anecdotes at the end of this chapter.

So why do players cheat if their cheating increases their losses? Some cheat out of financial desperation, others cheat out of neurotic desires to swindle their opponents, but many cheat simply out of naiveness or stupidity. Neocheaters, however, cheat "smartly" with the sole motive to extract maximum money from their opponents. And Neocheaters do not lose; they must be rejected.

3. Rejecting Cheaters.

If a cheater consistently wins money, he is a financial liability to both the good player and the game. Also under certain conditions, a cheater can financially harm the good player, even if the cheater is a loser. For example, other more profitable losers may become upset and quit the game if they detected someone cheating. Or cheating can cause a profitable game to break up. In such situations, a good player either stops the cheating or eliminates the cheater by using one or more of the nine methods listed in Table 1.

Table 1
METHODS TO ELIMINATE CHEATING

4. Detecting Cheaters.

Cheating will eventually menace all players in public and private card games throughout the world. But much of today's cheating in private games is still done by amateurs using crude, visible techniques that are easily detectable and beatable by methods described in this book. Yet most players ignore even obvious cheating to avoid arousing unpleasant or perhaps violent emotions. When a player detects cheating, he often rationalizes it as a rule violation or a mistake rather than cheating.

Any player, however, can detect all cheating quickly, without ever seeing a dishonest move, even highly skilled professional cheating and highly knowledgeable Neocheating. How can he do that? All cheating and cheaters are betrayed by violations of logic and probability. Cheating is an unnatural injection of distorted action that perceptively jolts the otherwise logically connected occurrences in poker. So if a player monitors and compares the actions of his opponents to the most logical actions according to the situation and odds, he will quickly detect the distorted playing and betting patterns that always arise from cheating. That awareness enables him to sense cheating without ever seeing a suspicious move as demonstrated by the anecdotes at the end of this chapter.

5. Professional and Amateur Cheating.

One of the major differences between private poker and public (club and casino) poker is the collusion cheating routinely practiced by cliques of professional players in public poker. Few outsiders or victims ever suspect professional cheating in public poker because the techniques used are subtle and hard to observe visually. Most public-game professionals execute their collusion so naturally and casually that the management of major casinos and card clubs remain unaware of their cheating, even when it routinely occurs in their own card rooms. Moreover, many public-game professionals practice collusion cheating without qualms. They consider their cheating as a legitimate trade tool that enables them to offset the draining effect of the house rake or collection.

The chart on the next page lists the most important classical and traditional, professional and amateur cheating methods used in public and private card games.

PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR CHEATING METHODS

* Professional cheating methods most commonly used today.

Table 2 on the next page summarizes the most important cheating techniques used in private games as well as in public clubs and casinos. Table 2 also summarizes both the crude cheating techniques used by amateurs and the skilled techniques used by professionals.

Not all professional cardplayers are cheaters. And not all high-stake games have cheaters or professionals present. But any high-stake game, public or private, is vulnerable for exploitation and will tend to attract professionals and cheaters. Yet a player must vigilantly avoid considering anyone a cheater without objective indications of cheating. A player must resist the temptation of blaming tough or painful losses on being cheated (rather than on coincidence or his own errors). Assuming cheating exists when there is none can lead to costly errors. For example, misreading or rationalizing an opponent as a cheater and then implementing the distorted playing techniques used to nullify or counterattack cheaters (e.g., quick folds, extra-aggressive betting, and other techniques explained in later chapters) will result in costly errors.

Table 2
CHEATING TECHNIQUES USED IN PRIVATE, CLUB, AND CASINO POKER

Manipulation Techniques (more common in private poker)

Collusion Techniques (more common in club and casino poker)

Combined Techniques (more common in casino poker)

* Observing flashed cards without the dealer's help or collusion is not cheating. For example, good players train themselves to evaluate the shades of darkness or blur intensities of partially flashed cards (e.g., darker shades or more intense blurs indicate higher value cards - valuable information, especially for lowball). If a player sees flashed cards without dealer collusion, he is not cheating since the same advantage is available to all players who choose to be equally alert. Alert players also watch for flashed cards as the dealer riffles, shuffles, and cuts.

6. Why Poker Players are Prone to Cheating.

The nature of poker -- as generally understood and accepted by every player -- allows unlimited deception to win maximum money from ownerless pots. Therefore, anyone can freely use deception in any poker game and remain honest. But no one can use deception outside of poker and remain honest. Likewise, if a person "plays poker" outside of the game, he becomes a dishonest person. But in poker, a person can be dishonest only by usurping money through cheating.

Many poker players, including most professionals, do not clearly distinguish between what is honest and what is dishonest in and out of poker. For example, many professional players who day after day, year after year, lie and practice deceit in poker ironically do not grasp the rightness of their poker deception. In fact, many professionals and regular players never grasp the sharp difference between poker deception and cheating. Their ethics, therefore, become hazy and ill-defined. The major barrier in crossing the line from deception to cheating is the fear and threat of being caught. By removing that threat (i.e., by using undetectable Neocheating), many easily slip across that line and begin cheating with fearless ease.

Failure to fully distinguish between poker deception and poker cheating is one reason why certain players react so strongly (often violently, sometimes murderously) against a cheater. Without strong anticheating reactions, they believe opponents would step across that line and begin cheating them. Sensing their own capacity to cheat (checked only by the fear of being caught), they assume the same capacity lurks in everyone. Thus, even if they never cheat others, they fear others will cheat them. So, ironically, those who would react most violently against cheaters are often those who would most readily cheat others if not for their fear of being caught and evoking similarly violent reactions from others.

7. Beating All Cheaters.

Most amateur poker players hold the classical but misleading view about cheating. They perceive cheating as being done either by bumbling amateurs who are easily caught or by highly dexterous and invincible cardsharps who have perfected sleight-of-hand skills through years of laborious practice and experience. In holding that misleading classical view, most poker players remain oblivious to the cheating and collusion practiced by professional cheaters, especially those in public casino games. In fact, most players remain oblivious even to the crude and routine cheating of private-game amateurs. So without the information in this book, players today have no chance of detecting the Neocheater.

The alert player familiar both with the traditional cheating techniques and with Neocheating can detect any cheating. He can even detect the most skilled and invisible cheating without ever seeing a dishonest move as demonstrated in the anecdotes at the end of this chapter. Furthermore, the alert player familiar with Neocheating can usually tell who is cheating, what technique is being used, and exactly when the cheating is occurring. He garners that information by detecting patterns and combinations of illogical betting, raising, and playing styles of particular opponents.

But normally to detect invisible cheating, a player must be involved in at least one hand and perhaps several hands in which cheating occurs in order to sense the illogical playing and betting patterns. For that reason, every player must be cautious about high-stake or no-limit games in which he could be wiped out in a big, one-shot cheating setup before detecting any cheating. Indeed, the wise player views with suspicion and is prepared to throw away without a bet any super-powerful hand (e.g., four of a kind, a straight flush) dealt to him in high-stake games with strangers.

Also, as the stakes for card games increase, the motivation for cheating increases. Every cardplayer should increasingly expect and look for cheating as he progresses to higher-stake games.

In any case, when poker players cheat, the quality of their play declines as their time, energy, and thought shifts from analyzing poker actions to executing cheating actions. Also their objectivity, concentration, and discipline diminish as they rely more and more on cheating to win. Their betting becomes distorted and often overly loose. And most importantly, their hands become more readable and their actions become more predictable whenever they cheat. For those reasons, a good player usually has little trouble beating cheaters, especially after detecting their cheating.

8. Protection from Public-Casino Cheating.

The examples on the next eight pages for detecting and countering public-casino cheating provide insights into the nature of all cheating. While occurring two years before Neocheating was identified and isolated, some of the anecdotes illustrate the seeds of Neocheating being sown in public poker. And because of the cosmopolitan and dynamic nature of public poker, it is often an indicator of what will eventually occur in private poker. Indeed, Neocheating is today not only spreading throughout public poker, but is already infiltrating private, home games.

SIX KINDS OF PUBLIC-CASINO CHEATING

Although John Finn played almost exclusively in private poker games because of their greater profitability, he did spend the summer of 1976 playing public poker in the Gardena, California, card clubs and in the Las Vegas, Nevada, casinos. In both the clubs and casinos, he discovered professional cheaters operating in the higher-stake games. John's public-game experiences uncovered six common cheating methods used in public poker. He also learned how to protect himself from professional cheaters in public poker. More importantly, he learned to identify and thus avoid those cheating situations that he could not beat -- the beginnings of Neocheating that would soon invade private poker.

A. Collusion Cheating -- Reciprocal Card Flashing

During his first two days in Gardena, John Finn played in each of its six poker clubs. After the second day, he became aware of a cliquish network of habitual amateur players, professional players, floormen, and cardroom managers woven through those six clubs. The continuous circulation of poker players among the clubs allowed everyone in that network to constantly and effectively communicate (and gossip) among themselves. While most of the habitual amateur players in Gardena recognized they were a part of a clique, few recognized that the professional establishment was using them as fodder.

In the lower-stake games, John Finn found mainly amateurs; the few professionals were usually shills. In those games, he detected no cheating. On the fourth day, he graduated to a $20 blind, lowball draw game. In that game, he discovered from their poker styles and conversations that players in seats 2 and 5 were professionals involved in collusion cheating. Even before identifying them as full-time professionals, he knew they were colluding. Their methods were simple, effective, and unnoticeable. Both players sat low in their seats . . . each slumping a little lower when the other dealt. On dealing draw cards with smooth quicker-than-the-eye motions, the dealer would expose key cards as fleeting blurs perceptible only to his partner. The partner would return the favor on his deal. The cheaters accomplished their card flashing without suspicion despite the great pressure on dealers in the Gardena card clubs not to flash cards. Only once did John observe a collusion cheater being scolded for his "careless" dealing. Ironically, John observed on numerous occasions noncheating dealers being scolded for flashing cards.

By knowing when his own lowball draw card had been flashed, John Finn could outmaneuver the cheating partners by more accurately predicting what they would do as the result of their knowing his draw card. The cheaters, therefore, were constantly misled by John's counteractions -- they repeatedly misjudged what he would do. John Finn exploited and beat both collusion partners by using the cheating counteractions taken from his notes about lowball cheating:

1. Save money by folding sooner against a cheater's more readable winning hand.
2. Lure the cheater into making an expensive bluff when he draws a picture card or a pair in lowball and knows you have drawn a high card such as a ten or a jack. The cheater's overconfidence often encourages him to bluff.
3. Set up the cheater for an easy bluff. For example, a strong lowball bluff position develops when the cheater knows you have drawn a good low card (e.g., a six or lower), but does not know you paired the low card.
4. When you do draw a powerful low hand, the overconfident cheater can sometimes be misled into believing you did pair, causing him to bet into your winning hand, to call your final bet, or to try a bold bluff, especially if the pot is large and if other bluffable players (whose draw cards the cheater also knows) are still in the pot.
5. When the readable cheater bluffs, use his aggressive betting to drive out other players who have you beat. When the other players are driven out, simply call the cheater's bluff. Or when necessary, bluff out the bluffing cheater with a final raise.

Throughout the night, John Finn used those five approaches to exploit and beat both collusion cheaters in lowball. And on occasion, when positioned properly, John saw cards flash between the partners to further improve his advantage. When the game ended at seven in the morning, the two professional players were big losers. They left the table cursing their "bad luck", never realizing that they had been victimized by their own cheating.

B. Collusion Cheating with House Dealer -- Natural-Play Technique

John Finn first encountered professional casino cheating in a large poker room of a major hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas. The cheating involved the dealer, the cardroom manager, and his friend. The collusion setup was unusual because management was involved.

Initially off guard, John Finn was not suspicious of or looking for cheating patterns because (a) the game was at fairly low stakes -- $5-10 seven-card stud (although that was the highest-stake game in the cardroom at the time), and (b) the cardroom manager was not only playing, but was sitting next to the dealer. ... The game seemed safe from cheating.

Moving clockwise from the dealer's left sat (1) the cardroom manager, (2) a professional poker player, who was also a friend of the manager, (3) a poor-playing tourist, (4) a regular player, (5) [an empty seat], (6) an ex-poker dealer, (7) John Finn, and (8) a woman who was an off-duty blackjack dealer.

Within an hour, newcomer John Finn was the biggest winner. He was playing aggressively, winning heavily, and soundly beating the other players -especially the woman player in seat 8, who was playing poorly.

The manager and several other players seemed annoyed and confused over John Finn's unorthodox and unpredictable play. After a shift change of dealers, the woman player switched to empty seat 5. Two hands later, another tourist sat in empty seat 8. He found a loose card beside John's elbow. The card apparently had slid under a napkin left by the woman player, and the dealer never noticed the missing card. (Some dealers can feel when one card is missing by the bulk and weight of the deck.) Several players glanced sharply at John as if they had discovered how he was beating them. The manager left the table and returned moments later.

Before the next hand, a floorman brought two fresh decks of cards to the dealer. John Finn became puzzled on noticing the cards were in a brown box bearing an orange-shield label from the Normandie Club in Gardena, California. Two hands later, John maneuvered into a strong position and was betting heavily. The manager beat him in a series of illogical but infallible calls and bets that did not coincide with the manager's poker style or ability. Staring straight at John Finn, he pushed the large pot to the woman player -- the heavily-losing, off-duty blackjack dealer in seat 5. She took the money without appearing grateful or surprised by the manager's "generous" action.

Several hands later, John Finn again maneuvered into a strong and favorable position; he bet heavily, but once more was beaten in a similar series of illogical calls and raises by the manager's friend -- the professional player. John became alert and suspicious. At first he thought his hole cards were being flashed, especially since the professional player sat low in his seat. Trying to counter that possibility, John was unsuccessful as he lost two more large pots to the manager, who again won through a series of illogical but infallible moves. John then noticed a slight crimp in his cards -- such as might occur if a dealer had crimped for a blind shuffle and then failed to bend out the crimp. In addition, the dealer gripped the cards in a way to facilitate false cutting. Yet John detected no evidence of card culling, discard sorting, or deck stacking. After certain hands, however, the dealer would periodically glance at face-down discards as he gathered cards for the next deal. Still he made no attempt to rearrange any cards.

John Finn lost another large hand to the manager's friend. While assuming that collusion cheating was occurring, John did not know how or when it was occurring. His counteractions not only failed, but they increased his losses. He had lost his winnings and was losing over two-hundred dollars before realizing how the cheating was occurring. The method was simple, essentially undetectable, yet devastatingly effective. After each hand, the dealer simply gathered the face-up stud cards in a natural way, making no attempt to cull, sort, or stack them . . . he merely remembered the value and order of the exposed cards. If too few cards had been exposed, he would simply glance at some face-down cards. By remembering fourteen cards and by positioning them in an unchanged order on top of the deck through blind shuffles, false riffles, and false cuts, the dealer would know everyone's hole cards -- thus, he would know everyone's exact hand right up to the seventh and final card. From that omniscient position, the dealer would then make all of the playing and betting decisions for his partner (or partners) by signaling when to fold, call, bet, or raise. The playing partner would never need to know anyone's hand, including his own; he would only need to follow the signals of the all-knowing dealer.

On losing his third large pot to the low-sitting professional, John Finn realized that he did not immediately know how to beat that kind of collusion cheating. Therefore, his only choice was to quit the game. So he picked up his chips and left.

C. Collusion Cheating with House Dealer -- Culling and Stacking

On the following afternoon, John Finn entered a newly remodeled downtown casino that had introduced poker only a few weeks before. The card area was small and offered only $1-3 stud games. Wanting to examine low-stake casino poker, John Finn sat in the open seat on the dealer's left. Again, he did not expect cheating in a low-stake game. He soon realized that the other four players were locals -- they all knew one another and the dealer. But none of the players appeared to be professionals or good players. The players and the dealer chatted amicably among themselves. John Finn played the role of an inexperienced tourist by asking naive questions about the rules. But he knew that low-stake, local amateurs usually played very tight in trying to survive at casino poker. Yet this game seemed rather loose. On the third hand, all four players stayed until the final card. Sixteen face-up cards were exposed, including a pair of aces and a pair of queens. Another ace and another queen were also among the face-up cards. John Finn watched with narrowing eyes as the dealer picked up the cards -- he picked up an ace and a queen and then three other cards. His hand darted back to pick up the second ace and queen and then three more random cards before grabbing the final ace and queen. He then gathered the rest of the cards.

After carefully squaring the deck, the dealer made several false riffles and a false cut before dealing. John knew what was going to happen. He did not even look at his two hole cards. His first up card was a queen. The first up card of the player on his left was an ace. The player with the ace looked twice at his hole cards and then bet a dollar. Everyone folded to John. He paused and looked at each player and then at the dealer. Everyone was watching him and waiting. The dealer stopped smiling when John placed the edge of his right hand firmly over the lower half of his hole cards and tore them in half. Turning over the two torn queens, he placed them faceup alongside his third queen. John then quickly flipped over his opponent's hole cards, which were aces, and placed them alongside his opponent's third ace. Everyone remained silent.

"Redeal." John ordered. The dealer glanced toward the mirrors in the ceiling over the blackjack tables and then quickly collected the cards -- including the torn ones. He redealt from a new deck. Over the next dozen hands, John Finn aggressively manipulated his now tense and confused opponents. In twenty minutes, he ripped fifty dollars from that low-stake game and left. As he walked down the aisle of blackjack tables, he glanced back toward the poker area. The dealer and the players he left behind were still staring at him.

That was a mistake, John Finn thought to himself. I revealed too much about myself for only fifty dollars.

D. Collusion Cheating through Partner Crossfire Betting

That evening John Finn entered a major casino on the Strip. The casino had a large poker area. The action was heavy. In addition to many low-stake and intermediate-stake games, several high-stake stud games ($30-60 games of high stud, low stud, and high-low stud) were in progress. John began in a $5-10 game, moved up to a $10-20 game and then graduated to a $15-30 stud game before encountering professional cheating.

The cheating was simple collusion between two professionals who signaled the strengths of their hands to each other. The cheater with the strongest hand or position would indicate to his partner when to check, bet, or raise. Their collusion entrapped or drove out players while increasing or decreasing the betting pace -- whatever was most advantageous to the cheaters at the moment. The collusion partners increased their advantages by either sucking in or driving out players to improve their betting positions. They entrapped players and then generated bets and raises to build larger pots whenever either cheater held a strong hand. They lived by constantly bilking tourists and transient players . . . at least until John Finn entered their game.

He promptly detected collusion cheating by the illogical patterns of checks, bets, and raises between the partners. Since the dealer was not involved with card manipulations or flashing, John easily turned the collusion to his own advantage at the expense of the cheaters. He beat the cheaters because their collusion actions markedly improved his accuracy in reading their hands and intentions. When either partner held a strong hand, John read their strength more quickly and folded sooner -- thus saving considerable money. Moreover, when the cheating partners revealed a strong hand and John held a stronger hand, he quietly let them suck him and other players into the pot. He let them build the pot for him with extra bets and raises. On the final bet, John would end his passiveness with a maximum raise.

Also, the colluding partners doubled their losses to John whenever they bet as a team into pots that John won. If they had not colluded, normally only the player holding the strongest hand (rather than both players) would have been betting into John's winning hand.

To further increase his advantage, John Finn manipulated the readable hands and intentions of the colluding cheaters against the other unsuspecting players. But John reaped his most profitable advantages from the cheaters when they bluffed. (Most collusion cheaters are overconfident and can often be lured into bluffing.) John would keep calling with mediocre or even poor hands as the bluffing partners kept betting aggressively to drive out players who held superior hands. John would then simply call the final bluff bet to win the pot. Or when necessary, he himself would bluff by raising after the final bet to drive out the bluffer and any remaining players to win the pot with a busted or a poor hand.

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