Dangerous Knowledge about Poker

I remember a fairly old saying (correct me if I'm wrong) that goes something like this: "to be good at one thing, understand that the other half is bad." Well, to be good at poker, you have to be familiar with how cheaters play a dirty game. What follows are the different folks that do different manipulation strokes.

• Classical and Amateur Manipulations. This technique, often pulled off by solo cheaters and amateurs, is the most detectable of all cheating methods. This is done by deck stacking, or by holding out cards, or by palming, or by bottom dealing or by second top card dealing. Cheaters also manipulate cards through shiners and markers, or sometimes they employ mechanical devices to get information about their opponents' cards. This technique can be effectively employed by a cheater who is highly skilled, experienced and dexterous.

• Flashing of hole and draw cards of the dealer to the partner. This technique is effective in stud poker and hold'em card games. This calls for a perceptive eye to be detected. Here, the dealer is in collusion with a player. He lifts the card smoothly in a way that his partner can see in a fraction of a second. He does this when other players are distracted with their cards and/or their chips. Often, the opening occurs when other players are in a riffle.

• Professional manipulation. Done by a solo artist, this is the easiest to learn. And because it is usually undetectable, it is one of the most effective cheating methods. They do this by simply culling the cards, or by false cutting, false riffling, or by blind shuffling, foiling cuts.

Here are some collusion techniques that most often occurs in poker clubs:

• Partial flashing of hole and draw cards to partners by dealers. This method is known to be effective with high-stakes and lowball draw poker where a player sits low enough to determine opponents cards through a shade of darkness or blur of intensities (e.g. darker shades indicate higher-value cards).

• Collusion betting. Employed often in high-stakes lowball and games with a lot of bluffing. Here, colluding partners signal each other when to bluff, raise or fold. This technique is very hard to detect, especially when cheater employ dozens of different signals for hints.

The following is a combination of card manipulation and collusion, which is common in casino pokers.

• Manipulation and collusion by dealer to the partner. The dealer manipulate the cards by several different methods (shuffling, marking, foiling, false cutting, etc) and collude with a partner. By doing so, both the dealer and the player have an idea or have memorized each of their opponents' cards, depending on the skill and experience of these cheaters. That way, the cheaters know accurately when to raise, fold or bet.