catching a cheater

Of all my claims to fame in my local poker game, the time I caught a cheater is probably my most well-known.

I hate cheating in any game, but especially in games involving money. It is a thoroughly indefensible, despicable activity.

In this case, it was my regular $1-$2 pot limit game a few years ago in town. There was a player in the game who is a cheater.

One week, at around 4am, he was dealing. At the end of the hand, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him pick up two cards from his lap and throw them back with the rest of the cards as he shuffled. I was shocked, so shocked that I wasn't 100% sure I had seen what I thought I had seen. I didn't say anything.

I kept a more observant eye on him for the rest of the night. I didn't see him deal any more cards into his lap, but one hand I was sure I saw him peek at the top cards of the deck when he was dealing, before the flop was dealt. But as soon as I looked over, he moved his hand, and again I wasn't 100% sure of what I had seen.

The game was over shortly after that, and I hadn't caught him but was pretty certain he was cheating. I remained around after the game and told the host what I had seen. We agreed that we wouldn't bar him, since I wasn't totally sure and had no proof, but would keep a closer eye on him.

The next week, he came again and I was keeping hawk eyes on him. I didn't see any cheating until late in the night. I first noticed it around 3am when he was dealing five-card stud hi-lo. I saw him deal himself a card from the bottom of the deck that made his heart flush, and won him about $25.

I knew for sure now he was cheating, but this is not an accusation one makes lightly, and hopefully not without proof. I wanted to catch him with cards in his lap, evidence that would be irrefutable.

A couple times, I saw him peek at the top cards of the deck again. It seemed amazing to me that nobody else had noticed this, but it was 4am or so by this point and he was good at doing it when the action was on the other side of the table and attention was diverted from himself. I still didn't speak up, though; I really wanted a lock on him before I said anything.

Sure enough, a few hands later he was dealing again and I noticed him deal a card into his lap. Then as soon as the hand started, he peeked at the top cards of the deck as well!

I jumped out of my chair, and yelled "what the heck are you doing?!"

He moved his hand, and said "what are you talking about?", feigning surprise.

I said "you were just looking at the top cards of the deck!!"

Everyone looked surprised, including the cheater; he protested his innocence, and a few of the people at the table even said that they hadn't seen him do anything. Luckily, I had the smoking gun.

"Well, even if you weren't looking at the cards -- which you were -- you have two cards in your lap that you dealt yourself!"

"What are you talking about?" the cheat said, while he threw the two cards on the ground!

"You just threw the cards out of your lap, and onto the floor!"

The cheater looked down, surprised. "Oh -- these cards? They must have fallen out when I dealt! It was an accident!"

What nerve! At this point, I was extremely angry. People who know me know that I very rarely get angry.

"You're CHEATING. I saw you do it last week and now you're doing it again. Everyone knows it."

The host stepped in, and asked what we should do. The cheater maintained his innocence, pretending to be really upset about the allegations, and said he was going to leave the game. The host said that was a good idea.

After he left, everyone agreed that he had, in fact, been cheating. We decided that we would bar him from the game, no matter what he said.

I was pensive. I had found him with cards in his lap, but he still maintained his innocence and could craft a story to possibly cause a big blowup in our poker group, at least among the players who weren't there. At this point in the night, there were about six of us remaining and our group had 20-30 people who played in the game. I didn't want to see controversy; I just wanted the guy to stop playing with us and never come back. We ended the game there, exhausted and anxious about what he would do next.

I went home and sure enough, there was an e-mail from the cheater in my inbox. It was sent to the whole poker list, which had about 200 people from our company on it. I opened it, expecting accusations towards me and an elaborate cover story.

Instead, I was shocked to read these two opening sentences: "Tonight at the poker game, somebody accused me of cheating. He was right." followed by an admission of guilt. He made no excuses, but he did try to justify his cheating somewhat by pointing out that even though he was cheating, he had not made money from his cheating.

This is amazing but true -- he may have been a cheater, but he was a horrible cheater and an equally horrible poker player. Even when he was cheating he wasn't doing it smart enough to actually make real money. It is sort of poetic justice, although it didn't make his transgression any better. He volunteered to stop playing, and I never heard from him again. I saw him at work a few times and didn't say anything to him.

So that was my story of catching a cheater. It's the only time I've seen a cheater in a poker game, and I hope it's my last. It gave me one hell of a poker story though.

Have you ever caught a cheater in a poker game? I'd like to hear from you if you have.

I doubt there is too much cheating at the levels that I play (3-6 to 8-16) but nonetheless last week I swore a few guys were teaming up at a 6-12 table. Of course I have no way of knowing for sure but I believe they were signaling each other by using different tosses into the muck - for example when mucking a K they would use a twist toss, with an A straight across, etc. There was one pot I was involved in that got me thinking about this as a possible method of cheating, and a difficult one to detect. To make a long story short I had suited big slick and he had KK, with a board of AKxxx. I had capped preflop, and we each raised the heck out of each other down the line. I realized at the turn he probably had KK - he should have put me on AA but he was betting like he absolutely knew I could not have both aces. Think of what a huge advantage it would be over time to know when a king or ace was mucked. I hope I was just being paranoid but it seems like an impossible thing for a casino to catch because they don't see the hole cards.

Sounds like a plausible collusion scenario. Definitely difficult to detect, although it seems like it would have limited utility (your beat is definitely one of them though!).

I knew two guys at Penn who tried colluding at 7-stud by putting a specific number of chips on top of their hole cards to signify their down cards. Can't remember their system, but since then I've paid a lot more attention to things like this when at the tables with people who seem to be colluding.

People at these limits probably aren't setting up teams explicitly to make a living at collusion, but at the same time there's little disincentive for cheaters who are playing together at low limits anyway to collude.

My friends and I host a game every Friday night. We usually have about 7-12 players at our games, and 20-40 players on the 2nd Friday of the month. On one of our slower nights, there were only 5 of us remaining. One of our guys doesn't come to many games, but decided to show up that night. He used to be a professional card dealer at Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas before becoming a lawyer. During our 3rd tournament of the night, he noticed another one of our players doing something very unusual and quite clever. All night, our yet to be caught cheater had been getting huge hands: (2) 4-of-a-kinds, (2) Straight Flushes, and a few Full Houses. We were using 2 dealers and 2 decks to keep the game moving faster. When a hand was finished and the cards were strewn about on the table, our cheater would scoop the cards up and place them on top of the remaining cards in the deck. Then he would set the deck aside as the next one was being used. When it came time to use his deck again, he would deal the cards from his deck without shuffling them, acting as though he already did. This allowed him to know the positions of the cards that were left face up in the previous hands. Our pro dealer had caught onto him after 4 hands and was watching him out of the corner of his eye. When the cheater noticed that he had gained this attention, he then performed a "fake" riffle shuffle by taking the cards from the top and pretending to riffle shuffle, but he never moved the cards from the top to any other position in the deck. At this point, our pro dealer called him out on this. The cheater quickly flipped the deck over to show us that he was not base dealing. Our pro never said anything about the cheater base dealing. Our pro wanted his money back from this tournament and left. The cheater said that was fine and that he respected his decision, which seemed strange for someone just accused of being a cheater. After that game, we broke off for the night and went home, but the rest of us talked to each other on our cell phones and discussed what had happened that night and some similarly "lucky" hands our cheater had received in past games. We came to the decision that he would be banned from our games and since then, our poker night has been more fair and exciting now that everyone has an equal chance to win the pot.

i was playing poker with few people in the party and i noticed like one of them was showing his cards to another. And they did it few times. Then i showed them that i know what they were doing. They seemed to be very angry. But since then as i know nobody wanted to play by the same table with these guys.

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