From: ahmcs@world.std.com (Alan H Mintz)
Subject: Re: Cheating at Poker
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 21:18:30 GMT

In article <17740047@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM> bruceh@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Bruce Hayek) writes:
>
>I actually enjoy putting on moves like the one you described:
>
>"Checking out of turn and then raising."
>
>I don't know that this is unethical... it's more another form of
>deception to practice to mix up your game, that takes advantage of
>the house rules.  A player who bases his play on your antics deserves
>what he gets....
>
>
>Here's a quickie that's been helpful more than once:
>
>You've got the big blind.  If you get your cards before you place the
>blind bet out and your looking at two rags, declare "raise" and put
>out two bets.  The dealer will throw back one and with any luck you'll
>be checked around to.  Several times when I've done this everybody
>folded, including the small blind.  :->

I assume you mean "folded around to". I have yet to see a dealer throw
back a bet made out of turn. In most of the games I play in, you'd be committed
to the raise. You certainly wouldn't get away with it more than once.

>But my favorite deception play along these lines happened at $10-20.
>I found myself sitting on runner-runner quad nines against a guy
>who had flopped a set of J's (he had nut boat when the turn and river
>came 9-9, and was only beat by quad nines.)
>
>I had slowplayed the turn to set him up for the river, and he really
>had no way to put me on quads.  After a few raises back and forth,
>he was in the process of re-raising me and I pretended that I
>thought he was only calling.  I started to turn my cards over,
>showing only one nine, and said "I've got a nine..."  He assumed
>that I had a 9-J or something, because he ended going at least two
>more bets (one extra raise) than he should've (total of 8 bets).
>To this day I'm convinced that my act fooled him... he really thought
>I had only one nine.  (This story doesn't tell as well as it should;
>circumstances were perfect for the play.)

If I were him, I would have just called your re-raise after that, putting
you on quads. At $10-$20, you don't often find someone who would go 8 bets 
with second set. It's certainly "dirty pool". While the idea, of course, is
to make as much money as possible, dealers and other players remember stunts
like that.  If you play regularly in a particular place, you'll find that
it's not a very pleasant experience after a while. You are also likely to get
the rules stuck to you as often as possible (getting every called hand 
shown, etc.).

Take, for example, the $5-$10 game I was in recently. One player liked to 
break his stack, bring the chips out in his hand,
and then rap the table to check, hoping, of course, to get someone past him to
fold out of turn without costing him a bet. About the second time he did
this, a floorman happened to be standing near the game and heard the
players grumbling about it. The player was advised that, in the future, it
would be considered a bet. In the club in which this occurred, I don't believe
this is a rule, but it's certainly justice (I've heard that this rule is
not uncommon in Nevada).
-- 
< Alan H. Mintz | alan@mq.mq.com      | ...!uunet!ahmcs!mq!alan  BEST PATH >
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