books on cheating techniques for poker

[whiskeytown]

I want a book on how to cheat at poker for home games....please gimme lots of good stuff so I can steal from others....

KIDDING /images/graemlins/grin.gif

seriously, though...I'm looking at playing more home games/private tourneys - and I'm a bit concerned about people who might consider themselves card mechanics - I wanna know the basics of what to look out for to be sure I'm not screwed over - all my card experience has been with dealers in card clubs...know what I mean?

I'm not paranoid...but maybe just a little /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

RB

[blackaces13]

This is easy. The next time you get invited to someone's house for a home game just accuse someone of "catching a hanger" (or whatever they said in rounders) in the first orbit, then beat the sh!t out of the guy. From then on no one will ever try to cheat when you're in the game. Its basically the fighting the biggest guy in prison on the first day principle.

[Easy E]

Because you won't find too many games open to you with THIS strategy!

(yes, I know you're kidding)

[whiskeytown]

is there any special trick to this? - I assume I need to pick the girl or the smallest guy at the table to attempt this tactic with?

RB

[Syntax]

Did you see Shade?

[maurile]

The Expert At the Card Table by S.W. Erdnase is still the best book on the subject, and it's rather inexpensive.

See also Gambling Scams by Darwin Ortiz.

The Erdnase book is instructional, the Ortiz book is merely descriptive. Ortiz has also done an annotated version of the Erdnase book (with his own additional comments and photographs), but it's kind of expensive.

[Al Mirpuri]

Scarne On Cards by John Scarne will give you all you need to know.

[blackaces13]

[ QUOTE ]
I assume I need to pick the girl or the smallest guy at the table to attempt this tactic with?

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly, that's why this plan is so much easier to carry out than its prison counterpart. I'd look for a small asian woman who covers her mouth when she giggles. That way, you make your point at minimal personal risk. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Phat Mack]

It's been out of print for years, but Marked Cards and Crooked Dice, by Frank Garcia is excellent if you can find a copy in a used book store.

[nicky g]

Thursday Night Poker by Steiner has some basic stuff on keeping an eye out for cheats and is a good read in general

[Al Schoonmaker]

It is not paranoid to fear cheating in home games. It is a realistic fear. Because I have no idea how to detect cheating, I play almost entirely in casinos. I have played in a few home games, but only with people I know well and trust. If you go to home games with strangers, you are taking a serious risk.
I doubt very much that a book or video will provide much protectin against skilled cheaters.
Regards,
Al

[uuDevil]

Hello Dr. Al,

After watching a video, I became convinced I have a near zero chance to spot a competent cheat. So I won't play in home games either.

--uuDevil

[youtalkfunny]

I found the Ortiz book ("Gambling Scams") early in life, and I'm very glad I did.

I've ALWAYS recommended that anybody who spends a lot of time gambling, should study this book.

No, it won't help you catch a skilled cheat--but right now, I bet you couldn't catch an unskilled one!

[TomCollins]

After seeing the incompentence at many casinos, do you really think they are less likely to have cheats? I've seen partners that casinos are clueless about. Read this forum, there are tons of stories about it. It's a risk anywhere I suppose.

[uuDevil]

[ QUOTE ]
After seeing the incompentence at many casinos, do you really think they are less likely to have cheats? I've seen partners that casinos are clueless about. Read this forum, there are tons of stories about it. It's a risk anywhere I suppose.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wherever there is gambling, there are cheaters. I have sometimes seen suspicious behavior from players in casinos. But it seems less of a risk because the players don't get to deal the cards.

Also, the consequences are different if someone is caught cheating in a casino vs. a home game. Casino security and management can deal with it. In a home game, what do you do? Take the cheater out back and beat the crap out of him?

To whatever degree you can, you should protect yourself. If you can learn to spot a cheat, then it's probably worth doing. I'm just saying I don't think I personally could reliably spot a cheat, so I choose to minimize my exposure and the consequences if and when it does happen.

[AgentBishop]

I know a video that is pretty good not great but pretty good. It's called How to "Beat a cheat" by Mike Joseph. It only costs about 15 bucks. But if you really want to invest some money in this area try Gambler's Protection Series by Steve Forte. It is expensive at $180. Though I haven't seen it, it was next on my list to buy before I decided I should invest my time in other areas.

[maurile]

[ QUOTE ]
But if you really want to invest some money in this area try Gambler's Protection Series by Steve Forte. It is expensive at $180. Though I haven't seen it, it was next on my list to buy before I decided I should invest my time in other areas.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've got these, and Steve Forte is absolutely amazing. If you think you can spot a good second deal or bottom deal, these tapes will convince you otherwise. Forte's technique is flawless.

[Bump-en-Stein]

[ QUOTE ]
I found the Ortiz book ("Gambling Scams") early in life, and I'm very glad I did.

I've ALWAYS recommended that anybody who spends a lot of time gambling, should study this book.

No, it won't help you catch a skilled cheat--but right now, I bet you couldn't catch an unskilled one!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep. Look at the picture of the "Mechanic's grip" Insist that nobody at the table use it. People cheating without using this are probably too good to be caught, but would probably be wasting their time at "your" home game.

[Erdnase]

agreed...That Erdnase guy knew a lot... lol.

Definitely worth checking out (if you want to see the nuts on the subject of cheating) are the Steve Forte Gambling Protection Videos.

For Books I recommend The Annotade Erdnase by D. Ortiz, like you mentioned.

Greets, Erd.

[Erdnase]

Hi,

the best protection you have: about 0% chance of actually running into a competent cheat. To get good at mechanics for cheating, one has to practice literally for years. But that is not the hard part. The hard part is to actually pull it off under immense pressure. And you would have to be a competent poker player in order to make money from it. And we all know how hard that is.

Your best protection is to have a general knowledge on cheating and just be aware of what is happening around you. Watch the shuffle, the cut and the deal, watch unusual activities between games (like someone looking at a number of discards or the rest of the deck) and count the deck down a few times a night (to see if some cards are missing).
If you do that, chances of being cheated EFFECTIVELY (meaning they will win money from you) is very slim at best.

I know quite a bit about cheating, especially the mechanics, but I would never be worried to play in a home game. But if you cannot enjoy the game because of your fears, why bother? Find a nice and comfortable casino and take the fish there...lol.

Do not get too paranoid, it ll ruin the fun.

Sorry for rambling. PM me for further questions or literature on cheating.

Greets, Erd.

[Erdnase]

Hi,

get the Forte Videos, they will blow your mind!

However, keep in mind, there might be maybe half a dozen people in the world capable of doing stuff like that on video, probably less in an actual game worth the effort. So do not get too paranoid about it.

Greets, Erd.

[Erdnase]

Hi maurile,

you are right, the Forte tapes are quite amazing. But they are tapes. You can make many mistakes and do a retake, adjust the angles to eliminate flashes and even use half the deck for easier execution of some techniques (as he does with the center deal). And spotting a bottom deal is not done by burning the deck.

However, Forte is the best there is, no question about it. And the most knowledgable to boost. He could (and probably has) beat every casino game or home game there is (Roulette, BJ, Poker, you name it).

Greets, Erd.

PS: are you a magician, by any chance?

[uuDevil]

[ QUOTE ]
the best protection you have: about 0% chance of actually running into a competent cheat.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Erdnase,

Thanks for the info and advice. There are experts of every kind on these boards-- amazing.

I agree any cheater I'd run into in a home game is not likely to be anywhere near as good as the demos on the videos. On the other hand, he only has to do it and get away with it maybe once or twice per session to be profitable (for him).

I'm sure most people are honest and most of the rest aren't good enough to hurt me much. But overall I still prefer a casino when I play live.

--uuDevil

[maurile]

[ QUOTE ]
PS: are you a magician, by any chance?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yep.

[maurile]

[ QUOTE ]
He could (and probably has) beat every casino game or home game there is (Roulette, BJ, Poker, you name it).

[/ QUOTE ]
And craps, of course. His demonstration with the dice in volume 4 is just as impressive as his card work. (I wouldn't have ordered volume 4, but it got thrown in as a bonus.)

[AgentBishop]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi,

the best protection you have: about 0% chance of actually running into a competent cheat. To get good at mechanics for cheating, one has to practice literally for years. But that is not the hard part. The hard part is to actually pull it off under immense pressure. And you would have to be a competent poker player in order to make money from it. And we all know how hard that is.

Your best protection is to have a general knowledge on cheating and just be aware of what is happening around you. Watch the shuffle, the cut and the deal, watch unusual activities between games (like someone looking at a number of discards or the rest of the deck) and count the deck down a few times a night (to see if some cards are missing).
If you do that, chances of being cheated EFFECTIVELY (meaning they will win money from you) is very slim at best.

I know quite a bit about cheating, especially the mechanics, but I would never be worried to play in a home game. But if you cannot enjoy the game because of your fears, why bother? Find a nice and comfortable casino and take the fish there...lol.

Do not get too paranoid, it ll ruin the fun.

Sorry for rambling. PM me for further questions or literature on cheating.

Greets, Erd.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not completely true. I don't know if i will catch all sorts of crap for telling you this but, I was a cheat for a very short period of time. I practiced for about 6 to 9 months before I first used it. Its really not that hard to locate cards and stack the deck if your creative. BTW I never had the winning hand. My partner did. I could deal him the boat and make sure someone else had trips(second best hand). And that was in Hold'Em with burn cards. Although I was able to, I never had to deal seconds, base deal, mark cards, faro shuffle(hard) or use the mechanics grip. I did need to use shifts now and then when my partner screwed up and missed the crimp but that is it. At the end of the night me and my partner split all money. Its that easy. So things to look for in my opinion are same two people sitting next to each other, one person has big hands(though not always) when another person is dealing, distractions(misdirection) when one particular person is dealing(look to see if the winner is the cause of the distraction), and constant staring at cards while shuffling along with what Erd said to look for.

p.s. that was a long time ago for me. I don't do that anymore. It made me sick to my stomach to do it and the risk was not worth the few extra dollars I THOUGHT I was getting. I can honestly make MORE money now playing honest. If you have any questions or negative comments toward me please feel free to PM me.

[SWE]

The easiest way to cheat in a any game is via collusion. There are no "moves" that can go wrong when you are playing best hand. You also will not be carrying any equipment when you are playing with a partner. Usually there is some code between the two players to let each other know who has the better hand.

As for spotting a mechanic at a table. One possible tip off is the frozen thumb. When one deals a second, center or bottom the top card is usually snapped back into position via the left thumb. So this is a possible tell for a false dealer. Though there are people who can work around this problem. But, those mechanics are the creme de la creme of card cheats and you are unlikely to run across them in a "regular" game.

Cheers,
SWE

[Blarg]

I used to take magic lessons when I was a teenager and I got very good with cards and coins. But let me tell you, it takes a long time to get good at it, and it's not easy. I mean like crazy practice, all the time.

And being good at it is not enough. You have to be as close to flawless as possible, because you could get jailed, beaten, or god knows what if caught. Not that most people would catch you if you got good enough.

It's actually pretty darn hard to catch a good bottom dealer. Probably because there aren't many; it's not something you want to be average at, and most people won't put in the time to be good.

Seconds are actually pretty easy to learn to deal and you can can pull that off with a few hours of practice. But by the time you get good enough to bottom deal, you've put in a lot of hours.

If you want to learn to do passes and things like that, there are quite a few books you can get from magic stores that tell you how to do that. There are many dozens of passes, and they too can take a long time to perfect -- and be a disaster if they go wrong. Doing a pass is when misdirection is often helpful -- that's when you shift the deck around to get a card in a different position.

Sleight of hand is a fascinating, even beautiful thing. I think being dealt seconds might not be an incredibly rare thing; I knew lots of kids even in junior high who could do it very well. But the ability to really do much else is not something many people are going to ever bother to master. Considering the time you spend learning, you could probably make more money spending it elsewhere, and not take a risk doing it either.

Still, having learned to do it myself, I know it can be done. And I admit to being a little leery of home games sometimes -- but actually I'm more worried about other things. Drunken jerks trying to sneak chips off the table or palm them out of the pot, or introduce new chips from outside the game, or new cards. If I was playing in big games I would worry about someone doing some robbing. Real competent sleight of hand used on cards is pretty rare, I'd bet, and is probably not too worth worrying about.

[Erdnase]

Hi SWE,

I really like your nick.
/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Greets, Erd.

[Erdnase]

Hi Blarg,

"I think being dealt seconds might not be an incredibly rare thing; I knew lots of kids even in junior high who could do it very well. "

Must have been one hell of a school for the gifted!

Greets, Erd.

[Blarg]

Hiya Erdnase /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Maybe it was heheh. Kids would ask me to do magic tricks so much the teacher would often just cut a class short five or ten minutes and let me do tricks. So everybody got thrilled with that kind of thing and soon everybody was playing with cards! (Put all the more pressure on me to keep ahead of them.)

As to dealing seconds, I recall now something that made a difference in how fast it would take people to learn to passably deal seconds. I remember that when I practiced seeing if I could get away with fooling friends doing seconds, I used Aviator(I think that's it) cards, the ones with the cross-hatching or little diamonds pattern on them, so it was much harder to see than if you were using a pack of cards where all the corners were different looking or most were, like Bicycle brand cards.

I remember seeing in magic catalogs and other places advertisements for expensive decks of cards that would make dealing seconds easier because of their tight close pattern - and it was basically the same thing you got from the Aviator cards for a a dollar-fifty at the local 7-11 store.

You know what else I notice these days? In the Southern California poker rooms, the mechanic's grip is so common that I wonder if it is taught in poker dealer schools these days. You used to never EVER see that grip back in the 70's that I remember. It was quite a curiosity to see, and chances were as close to 100% as anyone would need that something funny was going on when you saw it. Now, I don't know what to think when I see it anymore.

By the way, in 7-card stud I got dealt three 9's as my first three downcards three times in a row once. I still find it easier to believe the dealer was trying to work out a racket with me than that it was pure chance. The odds just seem better that it was the dealer than that it was random chance.

[SWE]

Thanks,

Yours is pretty cool too.

Once met a magician whose e-mail addy was diagonalpalmshift@xxxx.xxx
Cheers,
SWE

[Talex]

At the risk of outing myself as a magic geek... the latest issue of Genii magazine has an interesting article and interview with Bob Gusias. He's a bit of an 'advantage player' expert, and while most of the article discusses techniques that are likely out of fashion among todays sharps it's an interesting read. He does make a few comments on what he'd be using if he was playing for himself today.

-Tim

[playerfl]

Don't pick the asian women, they know karate or kung fu and will rip your testicles off and serve them to their husbands for dinner to improve their virility.

[guppy]

www.neo-tech.com/neocheating/ (http://www.neo-tech.com/neocheating/)

"Neo-Cheating: The Rising Menace" by Frank Wallace, who also wrote a book on using the "Advanced Concepts" of poker to entice compulsive gamblers to join and stay in your home game (also online at this site).

I haven't looked at this for years other than to verify the web address just now, but my recollection is that it was decent at showing some of the card manipulation techniques found in my collection of magic books.

[MMMMMM]

What is commonly referred to the "mechanic's grip" is actually the grip all dealers in casinos are taught to use. It is good to use because it helps protect the deck. Also, seconds can be dealt without it holding the deck that way anyway. Scarne's advice is very outdated. Also, you DON'T want everyone at the table using the "Scarne cut" because false cuts can be used which emulate it.

[MMMMMM]

Nobody in this thread so far is even close to correct, whiskey.

Your best defense in a home game is playing only with really good friends. But that is well-nigh impossible if the game runs on a regular basis as people will be in and out and new faces will appear.

If you spot true suckers, then you are probably OK playing against them. But not always.

Forget the Scarne book and the videos and all that unless you just find the subject interesting. You won't catch anything if the cheats are good. Nor will you be able to stop it.

Next few times you go to a casino, watch the better dealers and the procedure they use for discards, shuffling and cutting. The closer your home game runs to that exact procedure, the safer you will probably be. This is a very important point.

Even good magicians generally won't spot really good mechanics. Good mechanics are rare but do exist. The number of ways you can be cheated is nearly infinite. And that doesn't even take into account pure collusion and/or marked cards.

There are also stumble-bum cheats who do obvious things which you will see if you just keep your eyes open. A guy might do something like not offer the deck for a cut after placing certain cards near the top, or might try to glimpse an opoponent's hand, or to locate a board card or something like that. These type of guys think they are being slick but all you have to do is watch and be alert.

Bottom line is if you are going to play in a home game or run a home game you are going to have to trust to some extent. Use your judge of character and keep your intuition alert. If these seem like nice people and people you can beat and you are doing OK in the game, great. But be willing to listen and step back if that little voice tells you something feels wrong.

Also, the higher the limit, the more caution you should employ.

With the explosion of poker there are probably tons of home games out there to choose from and most of them are bound to be OK. Just consider it a higher risk proposition than playing in a casino, and set your bankroll or session bankroll limits accordingly. If you find a nice juicy home game you might be very glad you did as they can be softer than casino games at similar limits. The free food can be nice, too (just keep an eye on the rake;-)).

[Blarg]

You might also want to be leery of using those cheapo chips you can buy at a 7-11 or K-mart or most anywhere that sells decks of cards.

There's really nothing to just bringing a few extra chips to the table that you brought from home, sneaking them into the game, and making a guaranteed profit right there.

It could be a big disappointment being the bank and changing chips for cash, then having to cash out more than you started with.

You might be surprised how many seemingly honest guys can't resist the temptation to pull off stupid crap like that.

[MMMMMM]

good point