Cheaters in Poker Never Win
The other night I went to play a home game of poker at a place that was advertising the game by handing out flyers and posting them every place you could find near the casino. My and my friend, whom will call Ben, made it there at about 10:00 pm and it was already dark out. The house was a larger house, probably about 2,000 or so square feet and as we approached it there was a barking Doberman Pincher who nearly scared the cash right out of my wallet. We went up to the door and a guy with a long bush beard let us in, he must have been 30 years old, but he was a badass. The house was dimly lit and there was a nice new poker table in the dining room area with a chandelier above it. Ben and I are both very solid players and we expected to rake in the dough all night against these "chumps" but during our stay we noticed some very peculiar activity at the poker table.
Both Ben and I are very quiet people when we are playing poker. Theonly reason that we would ever talk is to pry out our opponent'sthoughts and play our angles at the table. We sometimes talk to eachother like we are out the get each other's money or play the "good guy /bad guy" role during a hand. We know how each other play and we havegood reads on one another. Pretty much, when I raise he gets out andwhen he raises I get out. I never want to be in a pot with him and viseversa because we are both winning players.
After playing completely rock solid and folding about 90% of his hands,this player to my left started getting a rush of cards. He raisedpreflop about 2 times in the first hour and then suddenly raised 3 handspreflop in a row and nobody got to see his cards. I stared down at AQso I reraised him to see where I was. He flat called me and the flopcame down AQJ so, naturally, I bet hard because the last hand I wouldhave put him on was K10. I felt that he had AK and was going to runwith it, but he just called me again. I felt like I was being trappedbecause he called my large bet rather than raising me. The turn cardcame a 7 and I was sure it didn't help either of us, but this time Ichecked my hand because I had this really weird feeling. Ben lookedover me amazed that I checked after betting so hard. He must havethought that I was running a bluff and got caught. The final card wasanother 7 so I figured that I was still in good position with top twopair and I put a "healthy" bet into the pot. This time the other playerraised, but only a minimum amount so I just called. He had beenholding onto pocket aces the entire time and have me completely smashed.
I began to think about how this hand played out and thought about whowas dealing and what exactly happened during these hands. I lookedover at Ben and shrugged my shoulders as I bought in for another $50. Igot dealt right back in and was given 69 on the big blind. The guy whohad recently beaten me was fumbling around with a stack of chips and Ibegan to study him. Over the course of the next 20 hands I was watchingthe stack of chips that he was playing with and shuffling around as hewould call, raise, and fold. His chips were near his stack when hishand was weak and he would stack a colored chip on the top of his chipsand push them out farther than normal when he held a strong hand. Ifelt like I was a kid in a candy store after I picked up on his "tell."Shortly after finding this unique pattern I went to the bathroom andtext messaged my friend Ben about what I had caught on to.
We went outside and spoke about the game while he smoked his cigarette.He went on to say that he too noticed that the guy was doing this withhis chips. I asked him what he thought of it and he said, "I don'tknow, but he takes his hat off and wipes his head a lot too." "What?His hat?!" I exclaimed, "The player who is doing this with his chipsis not wearing a hat!" At that point in time both of our mouths droppedand we knew that we had been the fish all along. The reason that theyposted so many flyers and were so inviting is because they were cheatingand "telling" each other the value of their cards by the way theystacked their chips! Ben and I pondered as his cigarette flew out ofhis hand and into the yard. "Let's work their system against them andwe'll each pool our winnings tonight," I proposed. "If that doesn'twork, we will have some head bashing to do." Ben agreed and we went backinside to play.
Different people started hitting cards left and right and I tried topinpoint which dealer was a mechanic and which players actually knewwhat they were doing when it came to stacking chips. Everybody at thetable except me, Ben, and another player were using their chips to tellothers their hand values. Little did they realize that Ben and I hadcaught on. We went on to steal pot after pot and disappointed peoplewhen we would fold pocket pairs preflop and top pair after the flop. Itwas so easy! The night had come to an end and my original $100investment and Ben's original $50 investment had pooled to equal $353!That just goes to show that cheaters never win and people who are smartenough to bust cheaters do win.
If you are a card mechanic and are doing the same thing as these guysdid to my friend Ben and I, be aware of the consequences and know thatwe let them off easy because it was their house, they had a big dog, andwe ended up winning in the end. If we would have lost all of ourmoney, there would have been a fist fight for sure after we left andcame back. Be careful out there and watch for people working togetherat every home game you go to. Poker players are liars by nature, you can never trust them!
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