Home poker cheating - how common is it?

[garcia1000]

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Although I am trying to recruit a couple people to go into this bar game that is good structure and $40 and gets almost 50 people every time 3 times a week. Want to more work to gether (sic) than cheat. So I am more on the lookout for 5 total players that are good enough to go in with. Granted we might chip pass, and collude, and if we lose we will jack the winner as he leaves. But never at a home game. That is shady.

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[xSCWx]

I think in high school and maybe college games cheating is a lot more popular than it is in the older crowd.

I can't recall any games in high school where there weren't any people cheating at all. I can think of maybe 20 people I have played with that I have known cheated and all are either in high school or stopped some time after graduating. The only exception I can think of was someone colluding online for a living (he was a college graduate).

It could just be a maturity thing.

It is very possible that the older crowd just tends to be better at it. Most of the high school crowd I've caught has tried to shuffle with the deck face up. That [censored] doesn't fly with people who have some balls and half a brain.

It is pretty easy to rig the deck while shuffling it so that you don't have to deal from the bottom and almost undetectably. The cards on top being shuffled shield the bottom card being pulled from underneath from being seen. I won't add more details for obvious reasons. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[PyramidScheme]

I really do not think there is too much cheating in home games, I\'m a new player to the net and in general, the majority of my play has been \'home\' games and I have never encountered it, I consider myself fairly observant. Perhaps mainly because gettign caught cheating by your own friends is just so devestating.

[dsteff]

I started cheating by stacking the deck in a home game when I was 12. I started playing with a partner when I was 14. I quit cheating due to ethical reasons when I was 17.

At least half of the people in any home poker game you sit in probably have the skills to cheat one way or another. The best way to avoid it is to play with people you trust. Just because people simply have the ability to cheat doesn't mean they will cheat.

[gwhiz_612]

Some cheating I've noticed and suspected in our home game:
Player watching the deck while it's being shuffeled and following the cards. I have a bad habit of shuffling the cards where you can still see them. We use a cut card on the bottom of the deck so I'll cut two or three times more and sometimes add an extra riffle before I deal.
Someone was bringing chips to the game. This was causing our pot to be a couple hundred short at the end of the night. It was always an even number, so the host got suspicious and mentioned it to the players. This hasn't happened again since it was brought up.

I noticed one kid putting his blinds up real close to his stack instead of out in the middle of the table. As the pot would start to build he would simply pick up his blind and put it back into his stack. I confonted him in front of the table about this after I observed him do it a second time. He said it was an accident, of course, but the confrontation slowed him down.
Had a player, when he was dealing, peeking at the cards to come while the players in the hand were acting. One problem with this is that he would do it while his wife was in the hand.

[TrvChBoy]

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Had a player, when he was dealing, peeking at the cards to come while the players in the hand were acting.

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I have seen this myself more than once in a home game.

[Lottery Larry]

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I quit cheating due to ethical reasons when I was 17.

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Care to expound on that a bit more?

[EL Burro Loco]

A good friend of mine cheats a lot especially when he is drinking. He tries to catch glimpses of others cards, shorts pots, steal back chips from pots. When he's not against me i overlook it but if he tries to pull it on me i call him out. I asked him about it and he says i am naive and that everyone is trying to cheat which is a pathetic justification imo. Anyway, all you have to do to catch most cheats is be somewhat observant of the people at the table.

I also play at a cash home game that on other nights has 18+ player tourneys with lots of strangers and noticed that someone in their tourneys is marking the cards. There were little dots on the top of the backs of certain high cards and little dots on the bottom of the low cards. The guy who runs the game has now added a small entry fee for buying replacement decks for the games and they crack open new decks for every tourney.

[Nairb]

We caught a guy bringing chips to the game. A lot of the inexpensive chip sets look the same and he would bring a pocketful of whites(t20000) and after(or during) a break would add them to his stack. We found out after cleaning up we had extra chips and the amount of the extra chips got bigger and bigger after each tourney. When it was his turn to host we were helping count out starting stacks and a whole row and a half of whites from a 600 chip set were missing. When we confronted him he admitted to it and was banned from the game.

As a side note he NEVER finished in the money even with the cheating and we now have plenty of whites.
lol

[TrvChBoy]

Last time I posted on this subject in rec.gambling.poker, I got a lot of haters that claimed the only way to avoid cheating in a home game is to only play with people you know very well. I reject this idea since it is not practical to never allow some type of strangers (friend of a friend, new co-worker, etc.) into a home game. Anyway, I have been cheated by people I would have counted in the “friend” category.

Some things I have done to reduce opportunities to cheat in my home game:

1. Pass the deal. Usually cheaters need the deck in hand to cheat, with the deck changing hands every deal, cheaters get only one chance per orbit to use most of their skills.

2. Shuffle and cut behind. The person two seats to the right of the dealer shuffles, the person one seat to the right of the dealer cuts (cut is not optional), and the dealer just deals.

3. Use a cut card to hide the bottom card from being exposed. Can make bottom dealing more difficult too.

4. Have a lot of different decks and use them randomly. Anyone wanting to sneak a stacked deck into my game better bring about 15 stacked decks on them since it is hard to predict what brand and color of cards I will use on any given night.

5. Don't allow the deck to drop out of sight at any time.

6. Use some oddball chips. My chips are not customized, but they can’t be purchased at Wal-Mart.

7. Keep the stakes low.

8. Keep your eyes on the deck at all times. The most common cheat I have seen is the “peek”, where the dealer riffles up the top cards on the stub to see what is coming on the turn and river. This is easy to spot, but you have to watch!

9. If one of your players is a little sloppy (pitches high, doesn’t protect his hand well or otherwise flashes cards), watch the other players. A cheater at your game will miss no opportunity and will have his eyes glued on the sloppy player. I know, being observant of flashes is not blatant cheating, but you should watch the watcher closely when it comes his turn to deal.

10. Don’t allow players to splash the pot. Bets should be placed neatly in front of each player until all action is complete for the street.

11. Keep track of each player’s win rate. Even Doyle Brunson does not win 100% of the time. A player that wins too often might be cheating.