---

Cheating Methods in Live Poker Games You Should Be Aware Of

As the old story goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry! This article describes the most popular forms of cheating. Don’t get any ideas!

“The times, they are changing”.

Nowadays, professional poker players as well as well newbies go months or years without actually shuffling a physical deck of cards. Whether you’re playing poker online or at a local joint, the cards – virtual or otherwise – are more than often handled for you. Standard rule dictates that the dealer is the only person allowed to manipulate the deck so that the games are clean.

This wasn’t the same back in the day. As there were no professional dealers, the most thriving players were most likely the ones who knew how to ‘influence’ the luck of the draw. You’d like to think that those days are long gone. Well, hate to break it to you, but you are wrong!

Most private games are held without dealers, and while it’s hard to imagine that you’ll be a victim of any of these ‘pools’, there people who are willing to bend the rules to get the rewards. This piece will help you stay wary of these! Even if you never have to use this knowledge in context, card cheating is still a fascinating part of poker history.

False Shuffle – The Zarrow Shuffle

Name’s cool, right? As other worldly as it sounds, The Zarrow Shuffle is the most basic form of cheating while dealing cards. One you can easily spot! As far as cheating is concerned the most popular form of it is to give the other players the impression that we’re randomizing the order of the deck while in reality, we keep the position of some or even all of the cards the same throughout the process of shuffling.  How do they do that? Like any magician, slight of hand (or by watching YouTube). Every type of shuffle can be faked, including the professional table riffle shuffle most casino dealers use. The simplest way of counteracting that is by always making sure that the person behind the dealer cuts the deck after the shuffle is complete. Always read the table (which is anyway a great skill to have as a poker player) and pay attention to the player shuffling the cards.

False Dealing – Strike Second Deal

There are different forms of false dealing; the second deal, the bottom deal and the middle deal. In practice, only the second deal is practically possible to pull off in any private game. The bottom deal is all but impossible and the middle deal requires the most amount of skill and set-up. The second deal, however, is still in play and one you should know how to spot.

False dealing is a tad bit unusual and urbane form of cheating. It can be truly devastating since the move can be far less obvious even to a trained eye and it usually doesn’t require an awful lot of set-up. The cheater doesn’t have to control the whole deck; he just needs to know one or two top/bottom cards.

Marked Cards

Ah, the classic! Remember the good ol’ days where you used to pick out a random card from the deck and place it back without revealing it to the holder, and every time he used to get it right! This is how he did it. In poker, however, there are many different ways of marking a card. Many cheaters prefer it because it doesn’t require skills or preparations. It can be as simple as bending a corner of an ace every time it’s dealt. Other, more sophisticated ways include marking the cards with the use of paint (including types you can only spot using special glasses), a paste that you read by touch or by cutting the cards so that it’s possible to distinguish them by looking only at the back. You don’t need to worry about these when playing low stakes, these are far more complicated and require a whole lot of preparation.

The Shiner

Let’s end this article with a great story. In one of the private crooked poker games, a player always began the night by showing a sharp blade and stating that: “There will be no cheating in this game!” implying dire consequences to all the other players.  Little did they know, said player used the reflective edge of the blade to read the cards as he was dealing them. The shiner (that’s the name of the device used by cheaters to read cards as they are dealing them) can be anything that’s easy to disguise at a poker table like a reflective lighter, card protector or a ring with the bottom half polished to the point that it can reflect card indexes.

In a world dominated by live and online poker games you might not ever have to spot a cheater, and with the level of security provided by online gaming portals it is almost impossible to cheat. It all boils down to one simple point, stick to play poker online!

Keep an eye on GutshotMagazine.com for more such ‘Poker Gyaan’.

---

---