Collusion is a type of fraud in poker when two or more players 'work as a team' to gain winnings by getting dishonest edge against their opponents. The most common form of collusion is the situation.

Cheating in poker is any behavior outside the rules that is intended to give an unfair advantage to one or more players.

• Collusion is a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading or defrauding others of their legal right. Collusion is not always.
• Playing online poker at Island Poker is easy and safe, plus it only takes a few minutes to get started. Download our free online or mobile poker software, open an account, receive our free signup bonus of $10.00. Make your first deposit, get your poker.

Types of cheating[edit]

Cheating can be done many ways, including collusion, sleight-of-hand (such as bottom dealing or stacking the deck), or the use of physical objects such as marked cards or holdout devices or using AI and high-tech electromechanical devices like shuffling machines to manipulate the deck.

Cheating occurs in both friendly games and casinos. Cheats may operate alone, or may operate in teams or small groups.

Following is a list of terms used to categorize specific card cheats:

• card mechanic: A card cheat who specializes in sleight-of-hand and manipulation of cards, a card sharp.
• base dealer: Also called a bottom dealer, or a second dealer, this relies on two related methods that manipulate the dealing of cards.
• deadlock deck: Use of computer and AI to manipulate the game either with manipulation of RNG in online games by hacking or use of electromechanical devices like shuffling machines to manipulate the deck.
• paper player: A card cheat that exploits the use of marked cards.
• hand mucker: A card cheat that specializes in switching cards.
• machine player: A card cheat that uses mechanical holdouts.
• double deal: dealing a player two or more cards during one round of a deal.

Minimal-skill methods[edit]

The easiest and most common types of cheating require no skill of manipulation, but rather merely the nerve. Such methods include shorting the pot, avoiding house fees, and peeking at other players' cards. However, it is very difficult to prove because when confronted, at least the first time, the cheat often calls the cheating an honest mistake.

One minimal-skill method that occurs in non-casino and casino games happens when a player who has folded appoints themselves the tender of the pot, stacking chips, counting them, and delivering them to the winning player. Check-chopping is when such a 'helpful' player palms a chip. Odorless adhesive can be used for this purpose.

Another minimal-skill method is going south (also known as 'ratholing'), where a player covertly removes a portion of their chips from play while remaining in the game, normally in order to preserve the winnings as profit, or prevent a major loss in 'big bet' games.

Skilled methods[edit]

A cheat may hand-muck a card or more than one card. When a cheat is 'mucking' the cheat is cleverly hiding cards in their hand, to later switch their hand for. This may also be done with a confederate.

A skilled cheat can deal the second card, the bottom card, the second from bottom card, and the middle card. The idea is to cull, or to find the cards one needs, place them at the bottom, top, or any other place the cheat wants, then false deal them to oneself or one's confederate.

One sign of false dealing could be when a dealer grips the deck with the index finger in front of it or their pinky and pointing finger on both short sides of the deck while the other fingers support the deck while the cards are being beveled slightly. This is referred to as the 'Mechanic's Grip'. It not only allows better control of the cards, but provides cover by showing the back of the top card, and without moving the hand holding the deck.

A cheat can place certain cards in a position favorable to the card cheat. This is called 'Stacking'. Stacking is more often done than 'False dealing' because it doesn't look suspicious. There are a couple of techniques for 'Stacking' cards. The most famous are: Riffle Stacking and Overhand Stacking. By Riffle Stacking the cheat stacks the card(s) while doing a Riffle shuffle. This form of stacking is the most difficult to master and the most respected under the card sharps and magicians. The Overhand Stacking method takes little practice, and is more likely to be done in a situation with a cheat. The cheat does a (what looks like) normal Overhand Shuffle. But while the cheat is shuffling they keep track of the cards they want to stack, and with a little practice they can manage to put the exact number of cards in between the cards they want to stack to make the next round of dealing favorable for the cheat.

Even if a cheat deals themselves a powerful hand, they may not win much money if every other player has nothing, so often the cheat will stack two hands, with one player receiving a strong hand and the cheater getting an even stronger one. This is called a 'double duke'.

A slight advantage for a cheat can be to know what cards are placed both on the top of the deck as well as the bottom card, so that information can then later be used to bottom deal or second deal themselves that card. The looking at the top or bottom card without the other players knowing or seeing it is called 'Glimpsing' or 'Peeking'. There are a lot of methods for reaching the same goal. A method that is used most is called the 'Shiner'. A Shiner is a reflective object (such as coffee, a lighter, a blade etc.) that is placed under the deck, so when the cheat is looking into the shiner the bottom card is exposed, and every card that is dealt over the shiner can easily be peeked by looking in the shiner.

One method of cheating that involves both great risk and great potential pay-off is the cold deck—so called because it has not been 'warmed up' by play (and thus randomised). Such decks are usually pre-stacked, and are introduced either at the deal, after the real deck has been shuffled, or before the deal, where a card sharp will make a false shuffle using sleight of hand. The latter method may require collusion or a pass if the style of play or house rules call for a cut. The skill lies both in convincing other players that the shuffle is legitimate and in ensuring that other players receive hands that are good enough to entice them into play, but not too good to arouse suspicion.

Marked cards[edit]

Marked cards are printed or altered so that the cheater can know the value of specific cards while only looking at the back. Ways of marking are too numerous to mention, but there are certain broad types. A common way of marking cards involves marks on a round design on the card so as to be read like a clock (an ace is marked at one o'clock, and so on until the king, which is not marked). Shading a card by putting it in the sun or scratching the surface with a razor are ways to mark an already printed deck.

Juice and 'daub' are two kinds of substances that can be used to mark cards in a subtle way so as to avoid detection, when done properly. While a 'juice' deck is premarked and introduced into play by the cheater, 'daub' is applied during play to any deck. Once trained, cheaters can read the cards from across the table.

Decks can be marked while playing using fingernails, poker chips or by bending or crimping the cards in a position that the cheat can read from across the table. The practice of burning the top card, or cards, is to prevent a cheat from knowing that top card and dealing 'seconds' to either give a confederate a card that helps their hand or an opponent a card that hurts theirs.

Collusion[edit]

Collusion is two or more players acting with a secret, common strategy.^[1] Some common forms of collusion are: soft play, that is, failing to bet or raise in a situation that would normally merit it, to avoid costing one's partner or friend money; whipsawing, where partners raise and re-raise each other to trap players in between; dumping, where a cheater will deliberately lose to a partner; and signalling, or trading information between partners via signals of some sort, like arranging their chips in a certain manner.

In a poker tournament, when one player is all in and two other players are active in the pot, it is common for the two players with chips left to 'check it down', or check on each round of betting through the end of the hand. Unless they explicitly communicate an agreement about checking it down, this is not collusion.^[2]

Online specific[edit]

Online play has allowed for new methods of cheating while other methods based on physical objects such as cards or chips are impossible.

One new form of cheating is the use of bots. These are programs that play instead of a real human. Though their accuracy and their ability to win are disputed, their use normally violates the rules of online cardrooms, so using them is, by definition, cheating.^[3][4]

Collusion in online poker is relatively easy and much more difficult to immediately spot if executed well. Cheaters can engage in telephone calls or instant messaging, discussing their cards, since nobody can see them. Sometimes one person may be using two or more computers to play multiple hands at the same table under different aliases (since many broadband plans offer customers multiple IP addresses, this can conveniently and cheaply be done without the likelihood of immediate detection). Such tactics can give cheaters an advantage that is difficult to work against. However, online poker cardrooms keep records of every hand played, and collusion can often be detected by finding any of several detectable patterns (such as folding good hands to a small bet, as it is known that another player has a better hand). Users who frequently sit at the same tables will be flagged by poker rooms and their play will be closely monitored. Often, such users will be warned they have been flagged, in an effort to deter collusion.

Another online method of cheating is 'multiaccounting', where a player will register several accounts to their name (or, perhaps more commonly, to non-poker-playing friends and family members). This might be done to help enable the collusion previously mentioned, or perhaps to simply enable a well-known player to play incognito. However, another common motive for multi-accounting is to facilitate chip dumping and other methods of equity maximization in online tournaments. A major difference between cash games and tournaments is that tournament winnings tend to be much less consistent over the short to medium term. Because tournaments tend to pay prize money only to the top ten percent of entrants on average and tend to pay the majority of prize money to a very small number of top finishers, in tournament play even the best players are prone to relatively long streaks of overall net losses (or even no winnings at all) between sizable wins. Therefore, for high-stakes players who specialize in tournament play, multi-accounting is one possible means to allow a player to play more entries in major tournaments than they would otherwise be able to, potentially multiplying the player's earnings and, just as importantly, making earnings more consistent over a shorter period of time. However, the risk is that a large win by hitherto unknown 'player' may attract scrutiny from the host (and other players), especially if the winner has no known previous poker experience but does have clear ties to a better-known player. In addition, some sites now offer multi-table tournaments where the same player can enter multiple times under their own name, so as to reduce the incentive to multi-account.

Another concern is datamining. This is the systematic collection of hand histories, enough of which can be used to profile opponents using specially designed software. Two or more players may agree to share their individual hand histories amongst themselves; alternatively some websites offer large quantities of previously-played hands (even millions) for a fee. Using software to analyze one's own histories is generally accepted, however acquiring histories of hands in which a player did not participate violates the rules of most cardrooms.

Poker software, like all software, cannot be assumed to be reliable. It is always possible that a person is exploiting the software to win money from victims. The software may even contain a backdoor which allows a person, perhaps an employee, to view cards. Absolute Poker was engaged in such a scandal along with site consultant and notable poker player Russ Hamilton. As of 2007, Ultimate Bet faces a lawsuit with allegations of employees exploiting the software.^[5] The user agreement of the two online poker sites owned by Tokwiro Enterprises, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet, state they reserve the right to cancel an account if a player plays 'in a professional sense' (and not for personal entertainment only).^[6][7] However, this is not a standard prohibition. For example, it is not in the end-user agreements of the three largest online cardrooms: PokerStars, PartyPoker, and Full Tilt Poker.

Angle shooting[edit]

Angle shooting is engaging in actions that may technically be within the scope of the rules of the game, but that are considered unethical or unfair to exploit or take advantage of another player. For example, an angle shooter might motion as if they were folding their hand to induce other players to fold theirs out of turn.

One form of angle shooting which is exclusive to online poker is to abuse the disconnect protection (DP) rules most sites have in place. DP is a rule exclusive to online poker whereby if a player is disconnected from the site in the middle of the hand their hand is played out as if they were all-in without the player actually having to put any more money in the pot. The online poker rooms that offer DP usually have specific tables set aside for this so that all players at the table are aware that the special DP rules will apply.^[8]

How this is used by angle shooters is if a player is in a hand that they are unsure if they have the best cards and don't want to invest any more money to find out. They can unplug their internet connection and then wait for the hand to play itself out. On a DP table the remaining cards in the hand would be dealt and the pot would be awarded to the player with the best cards. If there were multiple opponents in the hand then they would be eligible for a side pot.^{[citation needed]}

Famous poker cheats[edit]

• Soapy Smith (1860-1898)

Cheating in poker in popular culture[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^T. Hayes, 'Collusion Strategy and Analysis for Texas Hold'em', 2017
2. ^Is 'checking it down' in a tournament implicit collusion?Archived May 10, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
3. ^PokerStars.com: End User License Agreement
4. ^PartyPoker.com: PartyGaming’s Unfair Advantage PolicyArchived 2007-10-16 at the Wayback Machine
5. ^Online poker cheating blamed on employee, by Mike Brunker, at NBC News; published October 19, 2007; retrieved November 25, 2018
6. ^AbsolutePoker: End-User License AgreementArchived October 18, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
7. ^Ultimatebet.com: End User License AgreementArchived October 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
8. ^Bill Rini: The Definitive Guide to Online Poker Cheating

External links[edit]

• Poker Cheating by Arnold Snyder

We’ve all seen the old western movies with the high-stakes poker games. They usually take place in an old saloon at a small wooden table with the bar and piano player in the background and one other common factor: someone is always trying to cheat. I literally could not name an old western poker movie, or any poker movie for that matter, that did not have some sort of attempted cheating in it.

Thankfully, this is an over exaggeration of the amount of cheating and collusion that actually goes on in the game. That being said, it still does go on and it’s important that you are aware of it, so you know what to look for and how to protect yourself. Poker cheating doesn’t just go on in home games or back rooms of bars; it goes on in casinos, card rooms, and online. Though it’s a gentleman’s game, a lot of people refuse to respect that and allow their greed and scum-factor to take over.

Before I get into what you should be specifically looking out for, I want to go over a few important things to remember when reading this article and when applying what you learn from it in the real world. First of all, always initially give other players the benefit of the doubt. Most things that are going to look like cheating are not going to be cheating at all. It’s easy to see what you want to see when you’re looking for something. It’s called the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you get it in your head that someone is cheating, everything you see will get bent and manipulated in your mind to fit that narrative. Be careful that you don’t let this happen or you’re going to end up in some awkward situations and possibly ruin some friendships or relationships. I can tell you from personal experience that I have played poker for a living for 10+ years and have only caught someone cheating twice. I share that to show you that it’s not as rampant as you might think it is, but it still does exist and can be very costly to you if you don’t catch it.

The second thing I want to mention before getting into the specifics is the importance of you never cheating at the game. Hopefully that thought never crossed your mind, but if it did, you need to get rid of it right away. There is no place for that kind of garbage in the game of poker. Even if you don’t care how it affects other people, it can have a pretty profound effect on you. You can be arrested for it. You can forfeit all of your money for cheating. You can be beat up and severely hurt if you are caught cheating. No, this doesn’t just happen in the movies. People take their money very seriously and don’t take kindly to people trying unfairly to steal it from them.

Now let’s take a look at the different types of cheating that you may encounter. I left out a lot of the Hollywood types of cheating as they really don’t happen much anymore and are more of a movie set kind of thing. The cheats and forms of collusion that I’ve included are the ones that you may actually run into in your time on the felt. I’ve also included tips on what to do when you see this and then a section on how to react if you think you have caught someone cheating or colluding.

One last thing I want to mention before proceeding is the difference between cheating and colluding. Typically the words are interchangeable, but when talking about poker, the two terms are usually used to mean different things. Cheating is usually used to refer to a player that is gaming the system by themselves. They usually have no accomplices and are a solo act. Collusion, on the other hand, is used in poker to refer to teams of individuals that are trying to game the system. This can be two players or a lot of players. It can also be between the staff, dealers, and players.

Running Teams

This is the most popular form of cheating you’ll probably see and also the one that can be the most detrimental to your bankroll if you become one of their marks (a mark is the target of a scam or collusion/cheating tactic). This happens when multiple players, usually two or three, at the table will work together in secret to try and gain an unfair advantage. The teams will usually try and accomplish one of two things; they will be looking to either squeeze you out of the pot or squeeze you in the pot.

This is all accomplished through the use of signals that the players will secretly send each other during the hand. This may sound Hollywood, but it actually happens. Players will touch certain parts of their face, touch certain chips, put certain chips on their cards, tap the table a certain number of times, or do any number of things to let their teammate know that they want them to do something in particular. The signals may let them know what cards they are holding or how they want them to bet to manipulate the other players in the pot. We’re going to look at some of the different bet manipulations know and how they might be used.

Squeeze You Out

Collusion teams might employ certain tactics to try and push you out of a pot when they don’t have a strong hand. If they can get you and anyone else not in on the scam out of the hand, then it doesn’t matter which one of them wins the pot as they usually split all their money at the end of the game.

The situation might look like this. You and two other players take a flop, and you are second to act. Player 1 bets and you have a pretty good hand, so you decide to call, but maybe it showed that you weren’t completely sold on your hand. The colluding players notice this and player 3 behind you decides to raise. Player 1 then also re-raises and now the action is back to you. You are forced to fold because you’ve seen a raise and a re-raise in front of you and there is no way your hand can be good. You fold, and player 3 behind you also folds.

You never get to see the hands and just chalk it up to running into some bigger hands. What you didn’t know was that both players didn’t have anything and were working together. Because they showed such extreme aggression, you were forced to fold your hand. They effectively worked in collusion to steal the pot from you and profited the money you put in pre-flop as well as your call on the flop. If they waited until the turn to do this, they would have extracted even more money from you as you can really only continue on in the hand facing that much aggression with the absolute nuts (which you rarely have).

Squeeze You In

This form of betting manipulation is similar to the above except this time they are trying to keep you in the pot and extract more money from you. This will happen when one of the colluding players has the nuts or a super strong hand. They will use raises from other players to help hide their strength and to extract more money.

The situation might look like this. Same set up as before, three players to the flop and you are second to act. On the flop, player 1 bets and you have a pretty good hand, so you elect to call. Player 3 decides to raise, but only a little bit. Player 1 calls, and since the price is great on the pot you decide to call as well. The same thing happens on the turn, and again you call because it isn’t that much more. On the river, player 1 bets and you call and player 3 also calls. It’s a little strange that player 3 just calls here, but not completely out of the ordinary. Player 1 shows you the nuts and you and player 3 muck your hands. You’re a bit confused because player 3 was the one raising the whole time, but player 1 had the goods.

What you were unaware of was that player 1 signaled to player 3 that they had a monster hand and wanted them to help build the pot up. You were worried about player 3 the entire time while it was player 1 with the goods. You ended up making way more calls than you wanted to and put in a lot more money because the price was so cheap and the raises were so small. This is a perfect example of how teams might work together to squeeze you into a pot.

How to Spot This

The reason this form of collusion is so popular is that it is extremely hard to spot and even more challenging to prove. The reason it is hard to spot and harder to prove is that both of the above situations could have just been normal betting patterns from players that aren’t that good. The first pot could have been two morons in a “pissing contest” that you got in the middle of. They could have been running bluffs that made no sense at the same time, and it just looked funky. The second hand could have been player 1 with the nut flush and player 3 with the second nut flush. Granted they probably would have gotten it all in the flop, and it could have played out this way which would explain why player 3 just called on the river.

If that’s the case, then how do you spot this? The answer is in longer term patterns. If these happen once or even twice, it’s not much to think about. If it continually happens and seems to be happening with the same players, then you need to start paying super close attention to it. If you constantly are seeing the same two players in the pot with one other player and the same squirrelly bet patterns, you may be looking at some teams.

If a team is extremely talented, they will do it with lower frequency, and it will be near impossible to catch. However, most teams that I have heard about aren’t that talented and get greedy and try and win too many pots. The higher up in stakes you go, the more sophisticated the teams are you will probably see. The other problem with this type of collusion is there is no real evidence that you can present if you catch it. If they were marking cards or hiding cards up their sleeves, you could check there and catch them red handed. But imagine trying to explain a bunch of hand histories to prove collusion to a floor man at a casino. You won’t get too far with that one even if you are right. I’ll address the best courses of action to deal with collusion of this type at the end of the article.

Chip Dumping

This is another popular form of collusion and again is difficult to spot and even more difficult to prove. This form of collusion is specific only to tournament play. In tournaments, your survival is everything. Once you are out of chips, you are out of the tournament and have no options to recoup your losses. For that reason, collusion teams or even just friends will sometimes try to “help each other” out when it comes down to the pay bubble of the tournament or if a player is really low on chips.

The situation might look like this. It is the bubble of a major poker tournament, and the next player out gets no money, and then everyone cashes. The short stack at your table only has 10,000 chips, and everyone else has over 100,000. One player opens pre-flop to 4,500 chips, and the short stack goes all in. Everyone else folds, and it comes back around to the pre-flop raiser. The player should call with literally any two cards but for some reason decides to fold and the short stack picks up a much needed 45% increase in their stack size.

What you probably witnessed here was chip dumping. The player with all the chips was probably friends with the short stack or was on shared bankrolls or had invested in their tournament buy-in. They were basically giving free chips to that player without them being at any risk of being eliminated. This is completely unfair to the rest of the players in the tournament and is 100% collusion.

There are a few things that make this form of collusion a bit tougher for cheaters to pull off. First of all, tournament seating in multi-table tournaments is random. Two players willing to collude have to end up at the same table. One of the players also has to have a significant amount of chips, so they have some to “spare.” This all has to line up for the collusion to even be possible. The one caveat to this is that in single table tournaments, it is a lot easier to get two colluding players at the same table and therefore this form of cheating is much more popular there.

Secondly, it’s a lot easier to spot this form of cheating because it usually requires the player dumping the chips to do some unorthodox things. Keep in mind, though, this one can also look like collusion when it really isn’t. I personally have been accused of this on the bubble of a tournament two or three times. When I play on the bubble, I am not scared to be eliminated. I have been at tables where the big stack is trying to take advantage of the bubble and people’s fears by raising every hand until the bubble bursts. Imagine this scenario and look at it from the involved player’s perspective and then from an outside player’s perspective.

Blinds are 1k/2k

I have 18k

Big stack has 68k

Hand 1: Big stack opens to 4000, I look down at AK and shove all in for 18k. Big stack has garbage because they are just trying to steal on the bubble and folds.

Hand 2: Big stack opens to 4000, I look down at JJ and shove all in for 25k. Big stack has garbage because they are just trying to steal on the bubble and folds.

Hand 3: Big stack opens to 4000, I look down at AJ and shove all in for 32k. Big stack has garbage because they are just trying to steal on the bubble and folds.

If you’re another player at the table, you might think the big stack is just dumping chips to me. What you’re missing though is this is just a case of a big stack trying to be aggressive on the bubble and another player not scared to bust pushing all in with their hands they feel are ahead. This is almost exactly the same situation I was accused of colluding in. Clearly, they were wrong. The point of the story is that again, most of the time you think you are seeing cheating and collusion, you probably are not.

Soft Play

This one is a hot button topic in the poker world because this happens a lot and a lot of people still don’t realize it is collusion. Soft play is when one player “takes it easy” on another player because they are friends or possibly on the same bankroll. In cash games, this isn’t really a huge deal because once two players are heads up in a pot, it doesn’t really affect anyone else at the table. In tournaments, though, this can be a big deal.

Imagine that two players who are friends are sitting next to each other on the bubble of a major tournament. The player in seat 1 has a huge stack, and the player in seat 2 has a very short stack and is at risk of bubbling the tournament. If everyone folds to player 1 in the small blind, they can either call, raise, or fold to the player in the big blind. If the player elects to fold to “help out their buddy” in seat 2, this is soft play. Imagine how you would feel if you were one of the other short stacks in the tournament trying to make it into the money. The big stacks would not be taking it easy on you, but this short stack gets to win pots uncontested just because their friend wants to be nice.

Unfortunately, it’s extremely hard to prove this, and again there really is no evidence that you can present to get people in trouble for this.

Collusion and Cheating with Staff

It’s important to note that when I say staff, I don’t just mean the hired personnel at the casino. I am also referring to the people that run the home games and home tournaments that you play in. Basically, anyone that is in a position of power in the games you play in is considered staff. This includes the guy who takes your money, any of the dealers, the floors making rulings, and anyone else involved in facilitating the games.

Casino Staff

Collusion with casino staff (at an actual casino or poker room) is a lot less likely to see than at a home game. This is because there are cameras and gaming control that oversee these games. That being said, it is still something that is possible to be on the lookout for. The most common that you should be on the lookout for is floor staff that rules in favor of their friends or regulars. If you know the rules of the game and the specific rules of the card room you are playing in, then you should be able to determine how each ruling or misunderstanding should go. Sometimes floors will incorrectly side with their friends in a disagreement and make an incorrect ruling against you. You cannot allow this to happen and need to stand up for yourself. I will discuss the specific steps to take at the end of the article to protect yourself if you fall victim to this.

Home Games

Homes games are where you’re going to run into a lot more sketchy behavior and probably a lot more collusion and cheating. People realize that in home games the risk of getting arrested or caught is lower because most of the time the games don’t have the same technology to protect them as poker rooms. There is a greater risk for bodily harm if caught cheating, but for some reason that scares cheaters and colluders a little less. For this section, I’m going to hit you with a quick list of the most popular to watch out for.

Mechanics – These are dealers that are capable of manipulating the deck of cards. They can force certain players to get cards they want. The only way to catch these cheats is to be able to spot the mechanic in the action hiding cards or dealing specific cards to specific players. A lot of times they will have a preset deck that they switch in that is set to deal one player a great hand, but the colluding player a slightly better hand. Again, the only way to catch this is to see it happen so you best be paying attention to the dealer.

If you’re ready to be terrified of what a good mechanic can do, here are the opening credits to the movie Shade. It’s a movie all about card cheating, and everything in the credits is real and can be done. The clips actually show you how some of the moves are made.

Check Chopping – This one can actually happen in a poker room as well, but it is more common in home games. This is when someone helps to push the winning pot to a player and actually palms a chip while doing so. They then sneakily move that chip to their stack.

Going South – Going South refers to players in cash games sneaking chips or money off of the table. Let’s say a player starts with $200 and wins a few huge pots and has $600 in front of them. The player might be scared to have that much money at risk and might try and sneak some of that money off of the table. This is against the rules and is cheating. If you’re really scared about that money, you need to pick up your stack and leave the table for at least half an hour and then you can come back with the starting amount again. This can also happen in poker rooms, but not in tournaments as there really is no value to sneaking tournament chips off of the table.

Looking at your cards – You would be shocked at how often this one happens. Players will try and sit in a way that they can catch a glimpse of your cards and gain an insane, unfair advantage.

How to React Protecting Yourself

Spotting collusion and cheating is only the first step of the equation. How you choose to react and protect yourself are much more important pieces of the puzzle. Depending on the type of collusion or cheating and the environment you are in, the reaction will be different.

Provable vs. Non-provable

As you noticed with a lot of the collusion we mentioned above, there is no real evidence that can be presented about it. Things like teams being run or soft play are just near impossible for you actually to prove. Things like people palming chips and improper rulings ARE provable and should be handled differently.

If something is non-provable, your best bet is to leave the game and make mention of it to the host or the poker room manager. There won’t be much they can immediately do about it, but they can keep an eye out for it and maybe do something in the future. If you’re sure of it and don’t want to leave the game, you could publicly voice your opinion and observations to the table which might cause the cheaters and colluders to stop or leave the table for fear of being caught. If this happens in a tournament, you’re unfortunately not going to have the option of leaving the table, so you’ll have to make as big of a stink as possible to try and get the players to stop. Just make sure you are right before you do anything.

If something is provable, you should voice your opinion to the host or poker room manager as soon as possible. If it is something that they’ll need to witness to prove, mention it to them in private so they can begin keeping an eye out for it. If it is something you can immediately prove, you can mention it out loud to the dealer and the table so they can catch the perpetrator immediately.

Collusion In Poker

Collusion Poker Online

Poker Room vs. Home Game

Another big deciding factor on how to proceed is whether or not you are playing in a home game or in a poker room. In a home game, you have significantly fewer rights and fewer ways to attack the situation. If the “floor” makes a ruling you don’t like obviously in favor of a buddy, you’re kind of stuck with it. This is the risk with playing in home games and not in regulated environments. If you’re playing in a poker room, you have the gaming control board to back you up. I had a friend who was confident the casino staff and a player were colluding against him with a ruling about a poker tournament payout. My friend threatened to report the situation to the gaming control board, and the ruling was immediately flipped in his favor. Poker room staff may try and get away with things, but will immediately straighten up when they know their job or an arrest may be on the line.

The Bottom Line

Global Poker Collusion

Here are the absolute bottom line things you need to take from this article to help protect yourself and react properly to potential collusion and cheating.

• Always pay attention to everything. You need to watch everything and everyone including the dealers and all players.
• Watch for patterns and things that seem out of the ordinary. Most of the time when you spot something one-off, it probably won’t be cheating or something you can do anything about. Look for patterns to spot the actual cheaters and colluders.
• Remember that your number one priority is to look out for yourself.
• Only speak up when you are confident that something is wrong. If you just slightly suspect something is going on, you might end up in an awkward situation if you’re wrong.
• If you suspect cheating or collusion in a game but can’t prove it, just leave the game immediately and don’t play in that game anymore. There are plenty of other games to play in or plenty of other tables at the poker room to play in.

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