If you look at pop culture, you’ll see that a lot of the movies that revolve around the game of poker involve an elaborate con and a talented cheat. Of course, this is pretty understandable. After all, an ingenious plot is always interesting, even if it does deal with a shady topic – and cheats are nothing if not ingenious and shady. To spectators, cheaters in card games may seem amusing, sometimes even outrageously fascinating. But to the good and honest players, these cheats are far from amusing. Cheating is not a laughing matter. It is real, a harsh fact of life. You will, in the course of your life, both as a poker player and as a regular person, encounter these cheaters. It is, therefore, important to arm yourself with the necessary knowledge to spot a cheat so that they won’t be able to steal from you and other honest players.

 

Though the cheaters in movies are usually highly intelligent and incredibly wily, it really doesn’t take much brains to pull off a con. In fact, all one really needs to cheat is enough nerve to actually pull it off. A cheat can peek at another player’s cards and simply deny it when confronted. He can short the pot, and even avoid house fees. A more elaborate, but still quite simple, form of cheating is when the cheater offers to tend the pot for the other players. He will organize the pot, stack the chips, and shifts them over to the winning player. He will seem awfully helpful, but in fact, he’s already palming the chips. This is done with the use of an adhesive that is spread on the cheater’s palms. 

 

Collusion is perhaps one of the most common, but also one of the most effective, forms of cheating. It is not only hard to pinpoint, it is also hard to prove. And what’s more, it’s relatively easy to do. Collusion refers to the cooperation of two or more people in order to shift the game to their advantage. Usually, they communicate through predetermined codes such as the arrangement of chips in certain ways and even through simple text messaging. There are several ways in which collusion can be used to the advantage of the cheaters. One is through soft-playing, a state wherein the player does not raise in a situation that would usually merit it so that the other player, his partner, will not lose money. Another is whipsawing, wherein the partners raise and reraise, fooling the other players into raising as well. Dumping is when one deliberately allows the other to win. Collusion is also rather common in the internet. With the availability of broadband plans that offer multiple IP addresses, users can play on a single table under various aliases, effectively misleading other players. There are protections offered by online sites for this, done usually by flagging the users who play on the same table too often and by monitoring the hand histories as well as the patterns of betting.