is this cheating?

[limon]

im sort of a lanky dude so i like to sit in seat 5, all things being equal, (nobody i NEED to be to the left of) so i can slouch a little anb get some legroom. many years ago in a regular game i played i noticed a guy who was peeking over my shoulder to spot my holcards when i checked them w/ one hand. instead of stopping him i went home and w/ the help of a friend perfected giving false holecards to the dude. i can make A4 look like AA, J7 look like JJ and many others. well, needless to say, i really beat up on the peakaboo guy for a while. i dont know if he wised up or just gave up after spying my holecards dozens of different times only to be wrong at showdown. heres the possible cheating part...nowadays when i get bored i purposely induce young players to my left to spy my holecards and give them falsies to keep myself entertained. i spent so much time perfecting the skill i dont want to give it up.

[Boris]

Not cheating.

[amplify]

of course not. lying about your handicap is cheating.

[El Diablo]

All: I think this is an outstanding thread to pose all manner of ethical questions you might have, in or out of the cardroom. If some are of such import that they require a new thread, we'll make that happen.

limon: You never fail to disappoint. I had no idea where you were going with this seemingly mundane post. Definitely not cheating and 100% definitely awesome.

[MEbenhoe]

limon,

not cheating. would you be willing to discuss at all how you did this, as I usually find topics on this type of stuff to be very interesting?

[mjkidd]

Not cheating. Is the guy looking at your cards cheating though? I would say not.

[ahnuld]

more like a sting operation. so definitely not cheating, as you are catching cheaters

[eviljeff]

it seems like this trick might help more at showdown

[tdarko]

limon,

And all this time this is why you couldn't stand online games, you couldn't induce peekers! j/k.

No way this is cheating on your part and like someone already said the better question is if the guy peeking is cheating.

I was in a live hand one time in which my opponent was eating and he had his food in his lap, when he went for his dealt cards he carelessly lifted them up and exposed them to me since he was kind of far from the table, I was watching him and saw his cards. It was him and I in the hand, I had the hand won on every street and the betting was back and forth. On the river he bet into me and for a split second I thought, "maybe I should call since I saw his cards?" But then I realized that it is a game to make money not to let the guy off the hook for being a [censored] and showing me his cards, so I raised him. I don't think he was cheating for looking at your cards and you obviously weren't cheating by owning him.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
limon,

not cheating. would you be willing to discuss at all how you did this, as I usually find topics on this type of stuff to be very interesting?

[/ QUOTE ]

One way, given that he's specifically talking about making unpaired cards look like pairs, would be to look at them one at a time, but fake the swap when you go to switch them up. Given that he specifically mentioned A4, it's also possible that he used the similar looking tops of the characters. I'm guessing the former is more likely, but the latter would be interesting as well.