Poker Cheats: Beware Of Pot Clipping And The Stacked Deck

Poker cheats come in all shapes and sizes, from the business professional to the much loved grandmother. Poker cheaters are also always coming up with new and innovative ways to try and cheat players out of their money.

One of the ways cheaters try to win is with a move called clipping the pot. This sleight of hand cheat does not involve manipulating the cards at all. Clipping the pot is when the cheater either makes a bet with too little money, or takes too much money out of the pot.

The only way to safeguard against is for the players to monitor all monies flowing into or out of the pot. Some of the friendly get together type poker games allow for players to make change from the pot. This is prime time for a player to clip the pot while his comrades are looking to their cards or are engaged in conversation. Although it may seem something that isn’t done at a friendly game, this is expressly the prime time for the cheater to use this tactic. The cheater knows he is trusted among friends and that no one would suspect or accuse another friend of clipping the pot. Even if caught, the cheater could plead that he simply miscounted, and did not intend to intentionally clip the pot.

The Stacked Deck is perhaps one of the first poker cheats one thinks of when the subject is raised. The stacked deck is an easy to do cheat. It can only be used once in a game, as the deck would be shuffled before the next game. The stacked deck is prepared before hand and can be used to start, or even used in the middle of game play.

The cheater’s deck will consist of a certain number of cards inserted by the cheater into the right places before the deal. It is often used by the cheater who claims that the deck has already been shuffled. It’s also common to substitute a stacked deck after the real deck has been shuffled, or passed among cohorts in the game for their deal. This is of course called collusion, when two or more players team up to cheat the others.

A stacked deck may also consist of something as simple as turning certain cards in the opposite direction when cards that have non symmetric backs on them are used. The target cards are turned as to be upside down from the other cards, marking them for the cheater.

Poker Cheating

When playing poker, one must always be aware of cheats. When playing online, the number of people that don’t play fair is significantly reduced. The dealer can’t be bought because the dealer is a program, that randomly deals the cards and programs don’t care about money, they can’t cheat or have preferences. Unlike real life poker, online poker doesn’t have real cards, so no one can trick you by hiding them down their sleeves or swapping them somehow. Those abilities mean zero here.

Let’s talk a little about hackers, the ones that are so feared amongst some online poker players. In the past, way back there were hacker’s attacks. But many years passed since then and all technologies have improved. If a hacker should try to somehow turn the odds in his favor or influence the program, he wouldn’t be able pass all the way through the poker rooms. Like thieves are stopped in real casinos by security, so are harmful programs stopped by the protection software every online poker room has.

But there is a form of online cheating and it is manifested by players talking to each other, it is a type of player conspiracy. The players involved would tell each other what cards they have and evaluate together the odds, trying to make one of them win. The winnings will be eventually split between them. In real poker rooms this is impossible, but online they can talk on the phone or be sited at adjacent computers.

Luckily the majority of these players are beginners and they are not doing it to cheat the others, but simply because they don’t know how to play or what to do. They don’t know the power they are holding, so they pose no real threat. Anyway there are ways to stop them. Online poker sites usually check players that use the same IP or play at the same time every time in the same poker rooms. If spotted in any of these situations they are either banner or warned or even kicked from the rooms. As this can only be a coincidence, sites do not ban payers before really looking into the situation.

So, here are some thinks to spot when you want to see if you are cheated.

1. Some players that try to get the others players to leave the game. They will raise each other so that they can be left alone in the game.

2. Players that don’t play quick pre-flop. They might be having someone to protect or someone they are teamed with.

But it is very rare to met real online cheaters. If you think they cheat, do not under any circumstance accuse them directly of cheating. Just follow their actions and contact the webmaster, he will deal with this. Or, if you don’t want to get into any complications, just leave that room and enter another one.

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