Generally the only thing stopping you from winning at poker will be either a stroke of misfortune in the form of a bad beat or more skilful opponents. The only other way you can lose money playing poker is by being cheated. Cheating can come in many forms and you should always be on the lookout for the possibility of any type of wrong doing when playing poker. The following methods are often used by cheaters, but it is worth noting that cheating on the whole are few and far between as both tournament directors and playing police their games quite well. Still, better to be safe than sorry.

The most common type of cheating is player collusion. You are exposed to this type of cheating especially when playing online. This may happen when players are in touch with one another via a mobile phone or Skype and tell each other their hole cards. They will not engage in a pot with one another other than to isolate an opponent with raises. Most online poker sites look for bet patterns to avoid this type of behaviour but it is still something you should watch out for and report if you feel something is not right. In live poker players may use subtle signals to signify hand strength. A player with a monster hand will raise and a marginal hand co-conspirator calls on each street, building the pot but by staying in the pot possibly offering good odds for a more marginal unsuspecting opponent to call down, who would fold if in a two way pot with the raiser.

In Poker tournaments chip funnelling or chip dumping can be a problem. Because of the huge prize funds players sometimes work in teams and their aim is to get their chips to a more seasoned professional member of their team so that they can have a shot at winning the final table and get the big prize. Some poker rooms allow players to choose their seats and once the team is on the same table they can the chips to their designated team member. The team will not soft play against each other but play hard as the aim is to amalgamate the chips in one stack so it makes sense to “wage war” on each other as losing chips to a colluding team member is not losing them at all. The concept behind chip dumping is simply to get your chips to your designated best member so they have a potentially tournament winning sized stack.

When the chip dumper goes all-in against the top member of the team, the best player shows their hand and the player exiting the tournament just quickly mucks. The best player then has all the chips. Pressure is being exerted on tournament officials to have all-in cards immediately turned over at showdown to police this type of behaviour but players are resisting this as they do not want to reveal their cards when they go all-in with weak cards. As you know, going all-in as a chip acquiring move is good tournament poker in the right spots so policing this type of behaviour will always be very difficult.

Chip passing is, again, something that you only need worry about if you are playing live. This is when a player removes a high denomination chip from their stack and gives it to an opponent, usually in secret later in the day. They can discreetly place a chip in their pocket and pass to an opponent at the break. When done properly this makes it very difficult to spot. Experienced players can spot this type of activity and if you play many tournaments you will see players caught red handed going to the bathroom with chips in their pockets after alert opponents noticed their stack was missing chips. This is another reason why learning to count players stacks is a good thing to do.

Some players think they find a loop hole in the re-buy tournaments they play by entering as a group and going all-in every hand, sometimes without even looking at their cards. They then re-buy. The aim is to get one or more of their group a big stack for the tournament. Technically it is not cheating as they are not breaking the rules but it is not the most respectful way to play the game. Re-buy dumpers can contribute nicely to your stack if you want to play cheap providing you wait until you have a good hand before playing them.

By Malcolm Clarke

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