Poker cheating III
Cheating in poker, when done by intelligent and skilled gamblers can lead to serious implications for they know how to use their expertise and get a huge pay-off by taking on some risk. Thus comes the concept of cold deck into play which refers to a pre-arranged deck of cards which is introduced into play once the real card deck has been shuffled or sometimes before a deal if a skilled cheater pretends to shuffle without actually doing so. The latter case becomes risky and need collusion if the gameplay rules or the casino house require a cut in the cards. The tactics of this cheating is to persuade opponents in accepting that shuffling is valid and manipulating the dealing so that opponents get decent cards but not too good ones to avoid suspicion of cheating.
Use of marked cards in poker games is obviously prohibited but still is found in play sometimes which enables the cheating player to know the card value even when the cards are all face down. While card marking can be done in any number of ways, the most common methods employed by dishonest gamblers include drawing a circle on the back of the card. This is then interpreted as a clock with an ace card standing for one o’clock with the king card (13th card) having no such indication.
If a deck of cards is printed then scratching the card surface with a razor or making it dark by exposing it in the sun are other forms of cheating by marked cards. Skilled cheaters can either use juice to mark a deck beforehand prior to introducing it in the game while a ‘daub’ is applied while the game is in progress and sharp players can make out the difference.
Since decks can be marked by bending the cards or tampering them with fingernails, burning the top card is practiced so that a cheat may not use his knowledge by dealing himself or an accomplice a good card or an opponent a harmful one.
