Stacked Deck?

Home poker game, $50 buy in, 1-2 NL. Dealer is the resident of the house and he has a friend who is SB. Here is the hand: UTG calls, all fold to CO who raises to $5. SB calls, BB Calls (4 players).

Flop comes Ah Qh 8c

SB bets $5
BB raises to $10
UTG calls $10
CO raises to $25
SB goes all in $125
BB goes all in for $200
UTG goes all in for $100
CO calls all in for $150.

SB has 8s 8d
BB has Qs Qc
UTG has Kh Jh
CO has As Ac.

At this point all three players hit a set on the flop, and the UTG had a nut flush draw, a nut straight draw, and a royal flush draw.

Turn card is an 8h, giving an Aces full full-house, a Queens full full-house, a nut flush, and quads. River is a blank.

My point is the winner with quads was the dealers friend, and seemed pretty shady. once i saw that hand i got up and left the table, because he just won a $400 hand, when most pots were $40 all night. Now I am curious about the game and if there is cheating. What i am wondering is what you can look for to 'know' folks are cheating/colluding.

[neotope]

Who shuffled the deck and who cut the deck? If the dealer shuffles, cuts and deals you better trust him. The safest way to play is to have three different people shuffle, cut, and deal the cards.

[PokerGoblin]

I am sure the cards can be manipulated to the point to achieve what you are implying. However the likelyhood of it actually happening is poor.

I am not a card mechanic, but setting the deck to the point where 12 cards have to be dealt in the perfect order (more if you include burn cards) would take considerable planning. If I saw a guy intentionally setting up the cards and then that hand occured, I would be suspicious.

It just looks coincidental IMO.

PG

[captswifty]

If the dealer is that good at stacking the deck, he should probably be cheating at a bigger game than that. It all comes down to how much you trust him. Did you see anything that would make you suspect that he was stacking the deck?

I've seen things like that happen when I know a game is straight, so it's not like it's impossible for that to happen.

That is what I keep thinking. If he is that good why not play at a game where he can make a lot more than a few hundread dollars? It just seemed to be too much a coincidence at the time.

[FatalError]

this would be a cold, not stacked deck... sounds possible, players at this level WOULD be stupid enough to make such an action inducing deck

[ChuckyB]

No surprise it was the biggest pot of the night. It looks like there was only $20 in the pot before the flop. On that flop there's going to be a TON of action. So that it was a $400 pot isn't at all surprising.

And to be able to manipulate a deck to that degree would take a lot of dexterity, and a lot of smarts that most people I play with just don't have. Too much thinking.

[Richter]

cheating can be (or will become) a problem when you don't have a standard set of rules.

1.] It's much harder (even for a professional cheat) to stack the deck when the dealer ALWAYS has the person to the right cut (while the deck is on the table) and always burns & turns. (*Burning prevents a marked card from being in plain view on top of the deck.)

If you take poker (and money) seriously then you follow these very SIMPLE rules and the game is much LESS likely to be crooked.

*we use a slightly different system that goes very smooth once you get the hang of it.

Use two decks and have the BIG BLIND shuffle the deck while the button deals. When the hand is over a shuffled deck is handed to the right of the person about to deal who then cuts it towards the dealer. The game goes much faster and you can get a quite few more hands an hour in this way.

[TheIrishThug]

i've messed with my friends by rigging a deck if they leave the room for long enough. and it takes a lot of time and double checking to make sure it all comes out right and that was just to get 2 ppl to have big hands. i'm gonna say that its just one of thoes crazy hands that u can tell as a story in future games.

[KenProspero]

Though I suppose it's possible that someone could manipulate a deck this way, anyone who could manipulate the cards this way could make a lot more money in the long term by being more subtle. (For example, set it up so a single player gets a couple of horrible beats to you every session or so)

Unless this was a one-off (where a set-up deck was slipped in), for this to be a set up, you'd need someone who was both incredibly skilled and incredibly stupid.