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.
