Home Game Cheating (3 Viewers)

[grantc54]

Well, the host *should* notice at the end of the night that the box isn’t right. But that doesn’t mean s/he knows who cheated.

Say I was using generic injection mold chips, and someone snuck four green $25s into my 2/5 cash game, making the box $100 light at the end of the night.

As a host, the first time it happened I would probably assume that *I* screwed up, and miscounted a buy-in or rebuy, or had two $100s stick together at payout... I could have counted their cash wrong, or had a brain fart and given out too many chips.

So I would review my handling of the box, and be more careful the next time.

The second time it happened, I would be more suspicious. If I concluded it was someone introducing extra chips, I would not know who did it just because the box was light.

I could try to guess who it was, based on their personalities, or who cashed out for more than I expected. But the chips could have been snuck in by a losing player during the game and he busted, so tge cashouts alone wouldn’t tell me anything.

So then I’d have to start watching people’s movements and stack sizes like a hawk. Eventually the person would get caught.

But just having a light box would prove nothing.

One thing I might do is tell the whole group, “Hey folks, the box has been light two games in a row. I’ve been super careful to make sure all cash and chips match up. Everyone please triple-count the cash you hand me and the chips I give back, as I will be doing. I’d hate to think anyone was sneaking chips into their stacks.”

That would at least put the cheater on notice and with hope put an end to it, for a while at least. But I’d have to stay vigilant.

You should also notice the extra chips. That combined with the light box for the same amount should be a huge red flag.

 

[Taghkanic]

In 15 years of hosting, I've only come across one player we suspected of cheating, and only had anecdotal evidence (he played fairly TAGish normally but seemed to make big hands with questionable holdings when he was dealing). Never caught him red handed. We stopped inviting him and later found out he had scammed some people in non-gambling scenarios. After that we changed our shuffle/dealing procedures.

On a side note, what is the consensus on security using a shuffle behind (with a cut card)? I feel like it would be very difficult to cheat since the dealer is using a deck shuffled by another and cut by a 3rd player.

Shuffling behind and having the next person cut the deck to the dealer makes cheating more difficult, but hardly eliminates it.

A player can arrange a deck with certain cards near the top or bottom of the deck. S/he can then try various ways of avoiding the cut, but even if it does get cut, they can watch to see where the cards s/he knows about fall. (Was it a shallow cut? Deep cut? Halfway?)

So even when the person doesn’t know for sure who will get what, a smart, thinking cheat now has more information than the rest of the table.

For example: “Those three aces at the top of the deck before it was cut aren’t likely to get in play now, because of where it got cut. So a flopped middle pair with an A on the board is much stronger than usual and I can bet it aggressively.”

 

[Taghkanic]

You should also notice the extra chips. That combined with the light box for the same amount should be a huge red flag.

Yes, I would notice that as would most here.

But a lot of hosts who use crap chips don’t always have full racks and cases, and don’t make counts before and after games.

I’ve played in home games and social hall cash games where the banker is working out of 2+ semi-full boxes which they’ve had for years, and where they are often handling the money and chips for more than one table. They may not have counted their set in ages. Sloppy yet common.

Another issue is missing chips—which may ***or may not*** point to a problem. When I hosted 2x per month at one point I was convinced for a few months that someone had pocketed a couple chips. They turned up among the dust bunnies behind my chip cabinet during a spring cleaning.

And if I had young kids I would be even more concerned on a regular basis that my chip inventory might vary…

 

[grebe]

I play in a tournament sometimes that has a guy that regularly shorts the pot. He sucks at it, and is a bit dense to start with, then he smokes weed. It's hard to tell if it is on purpose or not. He is constantly watched, though. But at least three times a night, he is told to make the pot right. He splashes the pot too, which makes it harder to tell.

I think he's a cheat. He is definitely a scumbag.

The shame is....the game could be great. It's a $50 buy in tournament with a great structure in a great location that runs almost every Friday. However, the guy that runs it doesnt police it. He's a very kind man that just wants everybody to get along. I have been asked to step outside (to fight) in this game 3 times for telling people to follow the rules. All three by really old dudes that I would absolutely destroy in a fight.....for the simple reason that I am under 60. One guy had terminal cancer. This has never happened to me in any other card game, by the way....but three times here. All for absolute trivial bullshit. But, it's just allowed to happen at this game.

Yeah, I am a rules guy. Because it prevents this type of shit from happening.

 

[Jimulacrum]

I play in a tournament sometimes that has a guy that regularly shorts the pot. He sucks at it, and is a bit dense to start with, then he smokes weed. It's hard to tell if it is on purpose or not. He is constantly watched, though. But at least three times a night, he is told to make the pot right. He splashes the pot too, which makes it harder to tell.

I think he's a cheat. He is definitely a scumbag.

The shame is....the game could be great. It's a $50 buy in tournament with a great structure in a great location that runs almost every Friday. However, the guy that runs it doesnt police it. He's a very kind man that just wants everybody to get along. I have been asked to step outside (to fight) in this game 3 times for telling people to follow the rules. All three by really old dudes that I would absolutely destroy in a fight.....for the simple reason that I am under 60. One guy had terminal cancer. This has never happened to me in any other card game, by the way....but three times here. All for absolute trivial bullshit. But, it's just allowed to happen at this game.

Yeah, I am a rules guy. Because it prevents this type of shit from happening.

Sounds like a great game to never attend again.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Yes, I would notice that as would most here.

But a lot of hosts who use crap chips don’t always have full racks and cases, and don’t make counts before and after games.

I’ve played in home games and social hall cash games where the banker is working out of 2+ semi-full boxes which they’ve had for years, and where they are often handling the money and chips for more than one table. They may not have counted their set in ages. Sloppy yet common.

Another issue is missing chips—which may ***or may not*** point to a problem. When I hosted 2x per month at one point I was convinced for a few months that someone had pocketed a couple chips. They turned up among the dust bunnies behind my chip cabinet during a spring cleaning.

And if I had young kids I would be even more concerned on a regular basis that my chip inventory might vary…

My current games are cheeseburger-stakes cash and tourney at a social club.

There are 3 sets of chips: a shiny new set of dice chips sick, an old set of light plastic chips (think somewhere between interlocking and dice), and a set of NexGens with the Las Vegas Nevada USA edge. They're all stored in an unlocked cabinet that anyone in the club can get into.

We use the NexGens for tourneys. I like the NexGens because they're harder to find than the others, and thus a bit more secure.

We have players who sometimes want to play cash after they bust, and more than once, they've grabbed the leftover tourney chips to get started. On top of that, sometimes one person will start banking but have to leave, and then someone else takes over. It's just a disaster waiting to happen.

I started running a weekly cash game there, and instead of using any of their sets, I use my Rockingham Park ceramics (we use $25 as $0.25 because there are no fracs in the set and we'll never need $25s). Some Rock chips definitely exist outside my set, but they're uncommon to find anywhere, even on eBay.

I have an exact count of all those chips, and no one else has access to them when we're not playing. If I'm ever short cash, and my chip count is somehow over 100 / 500 / 400, it will be immediately evident, and I will know for sure that someone smuggled chips in. If it does ever happen, I don't want to have to wonder if it was my error and wait for it to happen again—like I would if we were using one of the sets at the club.

 

[Poker Zombie]

Why has nobody here mentioned the obvious to prevent smuggling in of chips.

Buy more sets. That way the smuggler doesn't know which chips to bring to the game.

 

[toothpic]

Why has nobody here mentioned the obvious to prevent smuggling in of chips.

Buy more sets. That way the smuggler doesn't know which chips to bring to the game.

This is my main excuse to having so many sets. I rotate them randomly so it's hard to know what set is coming up next.

Most my games are low stakes though (0.25/0.50) and with some of the nicer sets the face value of the chip is far surpassed by the free market chip value lol

Free free to sneak in as many Tiger primary fracs as you'd like to my game. Hell I'd love to have a few racks

 

[philhut]

Why has nobody here mentioned the obvious to prevent smuggling in of chips.

Buy more sets. That way the smuggler doesn't know which chips to bring to the game.

Use a Sharpie on your chips to distinguish them as yours......

 

[TheOffalo]

Why has nobody here mentioned the obvious to prevent smuggling in of chips.

Buy more sets. That way the smuggler doesn't know which chips to bring to the game.

I'm picturing a cheater having a spy briefcase in his trunk, but instead of all different foreign currencies and passports, it has all different kinds of chips: dice, and other slugged plastics, china clay, ceramics, BJ, Matsui, Abbiati, Paulson, TRK, etc...

 

[TomC727]

I play in a tournament sometimes that has a guy that regularly shorts the pot. He sucks at it, and is a bit dense to start with, then he smokes weed. It's hard to tell if it is on purpose or not. He is constantly watched, though. But at least three times a night, he is told to make the pot right. He splashes the pot too, which makes it harder to tell.

I think he's a cheat. He is definitely a scumbag.

The shame is....the game could be great. It's a $50 buy in tournament with a great structure in a great location that runs almost every Friday. However, the guy that runs it doesnt police it. He's a very kind man that just wants everybody to get along. I have been asked to step outside (to fight) in this game 3 times for telling people to follow the rules. All three by really old dudes that I would absolutely destroy in a fight.....for the simple reason that I am under 60. One guy had terminal cancer. This has never happened to me in any other card game, by the way....but three times here. All for absolute trivial bullshit. But, it's just allowed to happen at this game.

Yeah, I am a rules guy. Because it prevents this type of shit from happening.

Guy sounds like total trash. I'd be long gone. Not worth the headaches. I play to get away from the daily BS, not add more.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Guy sounds like total trash. I'd be long gone. Not worth the headaches. I play to get away from the daily BS, not add more.

As I read this post, I was deciding what I'd want to do about the pot-shorting guy. It stops being a mistake when it gets to the point where you can describe it as "regularly," but how do you even deal with that? Once it's clear it's no longer an honest mistake—which I'd say it is, if he only ever shorts the pot and never over-pays—it's cheating, and the guy needs to be gone. Who's managing the invite list? That's who needs to answer for this cheat.

Then I read the rest. A game with no one meaningfully running the show tends to devolve into this kind of shitshow. You've got at least one cheat piled on top of a bunch of what sound like old men who physically threaten people who insist on playing by the rules.

Over the years, I've found that maybe 1 in every 10-ish decisions can be made by letting people sort it out themselves or taking a majority vote. Most of the time, you need a confident leader to establish clear rules and make firm calls, without being influenced by extraneous factors like how upset it will make someone to have his hand killed. If the situation calls for killing the hand, you kill it consistently, every time it comes up. If a player wants to cry about it, direct him to a box of tissues.

Otherwise you end up with this. The most aggressive personalities get the run of the show. It's like what used to be the rule for whether a royal beats five-of-a-kind in my family's old game: whoever yells the loudest wins.

 

[TomC727]

As I read this post, I was deciding what I'd want to do about the pot-shorting guy. It stops being a mistake when it gets to the point where you can describe it as "regularly," but how do you even deal with that? Once it's clear it's no longer an honest mistake—which I'd say it is, if he only ever shorts the pot and never over-pays—it's cheating, and the guy needs to be gone. Who's managing the invite list? That's who needs to answer for this cheat.

Then I read the rest. A game with no one meaningfully running the show tends to devolve into this kind of shitshow. You've got at least one cheat piled on top of a bunch of what sound like old men who physically threaten people who insist on playing by the rules.

Over the years, I've found that maybe 1 in every 10-ish decisions can be made by letting people sort it out themselves or taking a majority vote. Most of the time, you need a confident leader to establish clear rules and make firm calls, without being influenced by extraneous factors like how upset it will make someone to have his hand killed. If the situation calls for killing the hand, you kill it consistently, every time it comes up. If a player wants to cry about it, direct him to a box of tissues.

Otherwise you end up with this. The most aggressive personalities get the run of the show. It's like what used to be the rule for whether a royal beats five-of-a-kind in my family's old game: whoever yells the loudest wins.

Either the pot smoking or the pot shorting would be enough to me to get the hell as far away as possible from that game. Both? Why would anyone tolerate this degenerate. I have no tolerance for a cheat, or drug use. You want to get stoned out of the bejesus in your house, fine by me. Getting stoned out of the bejesus at a poker game, and cheat? That's a hard pass. Where is the host for this dumpster fire?

 

[Jimulacrum]

I have no tolerance for a cheat, or drug use.

Cheating aside (obviously that's unacceptable), do you feel the same about people drinking alcohol while they play?

 

[TomC727]

Cheating aside (obviously that's unacceptable), do you feel the same about people drinking alcohol while they play?

No, the same way I would feel if said player was eating gummies.

 

[NotRealNameNoSir]

No, the same way I would feel if said player was eating gummies.

I getcha, its just that alcohol is a pretty popular and potent drug. For my games, pot/vapes/edibles have caused way less problems than whiskey. Not saying youre wrong, just that drug use encompasses liquor.

 

[Jimulacrum]

No, the same way I would feel if said player was eating gummies.

Okay, so it's presumably about other factors, like the player making everyone else deal with the smell and potential exposure to law enforcement. That's understandable.

Although I will say, in my experience gummies can abruptly send someone off into space. There are some photos of me at one of the BBOTB events where it looks like I'm deep in thought, but I'm actually trying to keep calm and control my blood pressure after a huge dose of edibles slapped me all at once.

 

[JustinInMN]

Shuffling behind and having the next person cut the deck to the dealer makes cheating more difficult, but hardly eliminates it.

A player can arrange a deck with certain cards near the top or bottom of the deck. S/he can then try various ways of avoiding the cut, but even if it does get cut, they can watch to see where the cards s/he knows about fall. (Was it a shallow cut? Deep cut? Halfway?)

How would you propose to thrwart this kind of cheating? I mean that seems to have more to do with how the pack is shuffled moreso than who is doing the shuffling (behind v ahead v whatever all seem prone to possible tracking as you describe.)

Does mandating a certain number of riffles help in your view? Does forcing a wash here and there help?

(Fwiw, I do think shuffle tracking is better in theory than practice, but I can understand more shuffles are probably helpful to thrwart such attempts.)

Cheating aside (obviously that's unacceptable), do you feel the same about people drinking alcohol while they play?

I don't have any moral distinction with alcohol v "other drugs."

However, I do ban smoking "anything" in the house though because we have an asthmatic here and also until recreational weed gets passed, there is more legal risk.

Smoke in the house is also bad for resale.

As for Alcohol, I just ask players to stay sober enough to keep action at a good pace. If they are too drink for that, they need to sleep it off a bit.

 

[TomC727]

I getcha, its just that alcohol is a pretty popular and potent drug. For my games, pot/vapes/edibles have caused way less problems than whiskey. Not saying youre wrong, just that drug use encompasses liquor.

Form of ingestion is what I was referring to. Smoking (any form) is a hard no. Eating or drinking doesn't affect me. Inhaling smoke off of something does.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but someone sitting at a poker table getting stoned (smoking), to me, is a very ballsy move, and would get me to leave quite quickly, and never play at that game again.

 

[NotRealNameNoSir]

Form of ingestion is what I was referring to. Smoking (any form) is a hard no. Eating or drinking doesn't affect me. Inhaling smoke off of something does.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but someone sitting at a poker table getting stoned (smoking), to me, is a very ballsy move, and would get me to leave quite quickly, and never play at that game again.

Ah, that makes perfect sense. Agreed on smoking inside, Ive got a gross set of chips and cards for the poker-smoker games, gross at the table.

 

[TomC727]

Okay, so it's presumably about other factors, like the player making everyone else deal with the smell and potential exposure to law enforcement. That's understandable.

Although I will say, in my experience gummies can abruptly send someone off into space. There are some photos of me at one of the BBOTB events where it looks like I'm deep in thought, but I'm actually trying to keep calm and control my blood pressure after a huge dose of edibles slapped me all at once.

When Illinois decriminalized the sale and use of marijuana a couple years ago, there was a massive increase in ER visits from "overdoses" from edible use. People weren't used to the slow action of the edibles and kept taking more, and then the large dose really hit them hard. LOLLOL.

 

[JustinInMN]

Form of ingestion is what I was referring to. Smoking (any form) is a hard no. Eating or drinking doesn't affect me. Inhaling smoke off of something does.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but someone sitting at a poker table getting stoned (smoking), to me, is a very ballsy move, and would get me to leave quite quickly, and never play at that game again.

Oh man, I have played in games you would hate where absolutely everyone was lit.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Form of ingestion is what I was referring to. Smoking (any form) is a hard no. Eating or drinking doesn't affect me. Inhaling smoke off of something does.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but someone sitting at a poker table getting stoned (smoking), to me, is a very ballsy move, and would get me to leave quite quickly, and never play at that game again.

I can't even remember the last time I played at a game where people were smoking anything at the table. I used to allow this in one game I hosted years ago, but I wouldn't now.

It's so far out of the norm in 2023 that I figured the pot-shorting cheat was going outside by default.

 

[ChipFinderSK]

I play in a tournament sometimes that has a guy that regularly shorts the pot. He sucks at it, and is a bit dense to start with, then he smokes weed. It's hard to tell if it is on purpose or not. He is constantly watched, though. But at least three times a night, he is told to make the pot right. He splashes the pot too, which makes it harder to tell.

I think he's a cheat. He is definitely a scumbag.

The shame is....the game could be great. It's a $50 buy in tournament with a great structure in a great location that runs almost every Friday. However, the guy that runs it doesnt police it. He's a very kind man that just wants everybody to get along. I have been asked to step outside (to fight) in this game 3 times for telling people to follow the rules. All three by really old dudes that I would absolutely destroy in a fight.....for the simple reason that I am under 60. One guy had terminal cancer. This has never happened to me in any other card game, by the way....but three times here. All for absolute trivial bullshit. But, it's just allowed to happen at this game.

Yeah, I am a rules guy. Because it prevents this type of shit from happening.

My money’s on the terminal cancer patient

 

[upNdown]

Either the pot smoking or the pot shorting would be enough to me to get the hell as far away as possible from that game. Both? Why would anyone tolerate this degenerate. I have no tolerance for a cheat, or drug use. You want to get stoned out of the bejesus in your house, fine by me. Getting stoned out of the bejesus at a poker game, and cheat? That's a hard pass. Where is the host for this dumpster fire?

I’ve told this story before, but it’s a good one to show how widespread pot is in poker.
During a tournament at Foxwoods, there was a re-draw when we got down to final two tables. The floor said “go take a break now and we’ll redraw when you get back. Because if I give you new seats right now, you’ll all go outside, get stoned, and you’ll have no idea where your seats are when you come back in.”

 

[Jimulacrum]

I’ve told this story before, but it’s a good one to show how widespread pot is in poker.
During a tournament at Foxwoods, there was a re-draw when we got down to final two tables. The floor said “go take a break now and we’ll redraw when you get back. Because if I give you new seats right now, you’ll all go outside, get stoned, and you’ll have no idea where your seats are when you come back in.”

This is a little too on-the-nose.

 

[Samuel]

 

[Statesvegas]

I have had essentially the same core group of players for about 4 years. I personally know all of my players and their families outside of my game, and every once in a while one of my regulars will ask if they can bring a relative, etc. Since I make a good number of people pretty angry in my line of work, I will ask a lot of questions before giving a thumbs up to a local outsider. Ours is a friendly game in my home where my family lives, and I am not going to have either compromised by some jackass.

Anyway, about 6 months ago one of my "semi-regulars" had a family member in from out of town and expressed interest in he and the family member joining us. Since the extra was from out of state, I wasn't concern that he had a grudge to settle with me and I gave the green light. At the end of the night, the bank came out right and there were no incidents worth commenting about. I left the chips on the table and kicked everyone to the curb and called it a night. When I went to rack up the chips the following day I was short 6 of my custom CPC $5 chips. I have NEVER been short chips before, and there is no way one of my regulars would take them. This extra was not likely to ever be returning to my home in the future, so I do not believe he took them with the intent of bringing them back at some point. The only thing I can figure is that he pocketed them as a souvenir.... They didnt end up under a table or on the floor, and I scoured every inch of the chip cabinet to see if they got moved in somewhere else.

WTF.....

 

[Samuel]

I have had essentially the same core group of players for about 4 years. I personally know all of my players and their families outside of my game, and every once in a while one of my regulars will ask if they can bring a relative, etc. Since I make a good number of people pretty angry in my line of work, I will ask a lot of questions before giving a thumbs up to a local outsider. Ours is a friendly game in my home where my family lives, and I am not going to have either compromised by some jackass.

Anyway, about 6 months ago one of my "semi-regulars" had a family member in from out of town and expressed interest in he and the family member joining us. Since the extra was from out of state, I wasn't concern that he had a grudge to settle with me and I gave the green light. At the end of the night, the bank came out right and there were no incidents worth commenting about. I left the chips on the table and kicked everyone to the curb and called it a night. When I went to rack up the chips the following day I was short 6 of my custom CPC $5 chips. I have NEVER been short chips before, and there is no way one of my regulars would take them. This extra was not likely to ever be returning to my home in the future, so I do not believe he took them with the intent of bringing them back at some point. The only thing I can figure is that he pocketed them as a souvenir.... They didnt end up under a table or on the floor, and I scoured every inch of the chip cabinet to see if they got moved in somewhere else.

WTF.....

Was this the guy?

J/K!

Sorry to hear about your experience!

 

[Statesvegas]

Was this the guy?
View attachment 1130169
J/K!

Sorry to hear about your experience!

It was not....