I don't believe that we should be overly paranoid about cheating. I see people act like they are confident about a lot of things. I can't count the number of people who have said things like "911 was an inside job," "Obama is a Muslim," and "the regs/dealers/tourists are out to cheat me in the poker room."

if you play how the game is always been played you cant really get scammed or angled.

how can they palm a chip. you always make sure the pot is correct before the dealer turns a card. and the chips are drawn into the center unless you know the player well.

as far as players calling and then saying they didnt. they called me when they put their chips in the pot. unless i know them well. if the dealer says its a bet i say please make the pot right and have the chips put in.

nor do i let players talk to anyone in the hand in a whisper.

when i go for a walk and in a place where my chips can be vulnerable they go with me except for a small stack.

the point is here is that its you who allows yourself to be sharked or not.

I agree with this. The sheer number of people who believe a lot of this crap (like "Obama is a Muslim"), makes me take everything I hear with a big old grain of salt. I'm sure there is cheating going on but it's not as big as people are making it seem in this thread.

And yes, most people who cheat are taking shortcuts and end up taking shortcuts in their cheating too which gets them caught. Whoever mentioned a dealer high pitching to tourists and then meeting locals in the sports book to get a bribe. Seriously, why would they be stupid enough to exchange the bribe under the security cameras of the very same casino. Can't do it in the bathroom or at some off property location?

And I feel that people "catching cheating" is an ego thing for a lot of people so it might be exaggerated for this reason as well.

Last Friday at the Red Rock:

In a limit hold'em game:

Seat One is a regular, ultra tight rock and friend of Seat Five.
Seat Two is an occasional player local, typical rec player.
Seat Three is me.
Seat Four is a relatively new player from California, knows the game some but is still learning, talks about that at the table, usually plays 1/2 no limit.
Seat Five is a regular, ultra tight rock and friend of Seat One.
Rest of the table doesn't matter for this narrative.

I notice that Seat One is entering every pot and his betting patterns seem to be a bit unusual. In a couple of hands I see that For is not practicing good card protection and Seat Five is peeking at Seat Four's cards and making obvious faces, "yes" and "no" motions, at Seat One, apparently indicating how to play.

Seat Four figures this out within a few more hands and says something like, "What is going on here. You can't do that." The dealer gets involved and Seat Four says Five and One have been cheating Four by peeking and then signaling. The dealer says something like, "If you've been doing that stop it. I haven't noticed it, but it's not allowed."

Seats One and Five don't deny Four's allegations, but One begins a "It's just like a home game, we're not doing anything wrong, we're just having fun, it's not that much money," monologue. This incenses Four who calls One and Five cheats and describes what One and Five have been doing as despicable. One then goes into another monologue about how Four ought to respect Five and One because their both war veterans and Five was seriously wounded in the Army. I offer, "Your service deserves respect (I served in the Army), but it's not a license to cheat."

Four asks the dealer to call the floor. The dealer tells Four that the floor won't do anything more than he has, i.e. tell the two to stop, that the management wants the games to be like fun home games and won't take any action against regulars (I think the dealer is correct about this evaluation of what the floor would do). After some more banter with the dealer, Four abandons the request to call the floor; this is clearly what the dealer wanted. Four plays about two more hands and leaves.

I understand that Four facilitated the cheating by failing to protect cards properly, but Five and One were cheating and nothing happens to them as a result of it.

That's obvious cheating at the Red Rock. The annoying thing is that the room management is so desperate for players and rake that all it will do to caught cheaters who are regs is to tell them to stop it.

Was seat 1 an older OMC (minus the coffee), gripe after every hand he had to fold, type? Shorter white hair with glasses? And was seat 5 a taller older guy, always wears a hat, wears a big ring on the right hand, long torso/broad shoulders type? I don't know their names, but anytime I have ever played at Red Rock, I have seen those two and most of the time they are playing together (even in tournaments). I have suspected those two on at least 4 separate occasions engaging in questionable f*ckery.

Seems like Chip @ RedRock is too cool with the regs to care/enforce the rules against the guys in that room that are walking (and in some cases stomping on) that thin line of collusion. I like that room, but if it's not a tournament, I'd never play a cash session there with the "usual suspects".

Just moved from the Summerlin area where the Red Rock is and played there quite a bit. I have seen regs who do this type of stuff consistently and get banned from the room only to get reinstated hours later.

The managers act like they care about rules but their number one priority is to protect regulars. Money wins...integrity loses.

Good to know I'm not paranoid and others have had the same feeling at this room.

I play at RR all the time and would find it very hard to believe that any dealer would say that....RR has the best dealers in Vegas IMO, at least on the night shift (I never play there during the day). Seems the limit players are always the ones fighting about stupid things and causing trouble. The floor people definitely care about any suspicion of cheating since their job is on the line if they don't do anything about it. Pretty sure that's why a certain player got froze out of the rock, but I could be wrong about that.

Is this bit about the floor not caring just conjecture, or have you seen them do that before?

If you don't like cheating there, Nevada has a gaming commission, you know. Red Rock poker room management is not the last word.

BTW, what stakes LHE goes there?

The floor will not do anything....they can't stop players from colluding and don't give a sh*t if they are or not since it won't affect the rake. The only ones colluding are regs that tip the dealers well and give the room business. Floor will protect these guys from cheating accusations before they would threaten to ban them.

Poker players have to police this stuff and be on the lookout for it. People on this thread calling others paranoid are contributing absolutely nothing. Cheating happens. You can still win money even though it happens. You can win a hell of a lot more (or lose less) by making sure your a** isn't the "mark" or the "spot" in the game.

I believe there are tons of posters on here who participate in cheating themselves and won't give info on this since there involvement in cheating provides a bigger edge than any poker strat book could ever provide. The last thing they want to do is "tap the tank" and make thousands of other clueless players aware of their scumbag tricks.

as soon as you see someone showing their cards by accident or not you just say something immediately. that ends it. if he does it again speak up again.

some players will crane their necks to see cards in someones hand. just speak up.

everyone isnt honest but it is easy to keep the game reasonably honest.

I hate players that helicopter there cards into the air as they fold... shyte pisses me off even though you can only see color fro the most part

And if it's a face card.

First of all sorry for my english. I was playing 5 days at red rock and the regs. ( after win some hands)told me to don't bluff them as they will not bluff me. After that i quit red rock. Imagine if they told me that to me what are they doing...

LoL, WTF. At a non-Vegas casino I play at there was an Army officer that stole black chips off another player's stack. Fortunately he was caught in the act by a player at another table as it seems that casino just uses the cameras in the sky to look at tape after incidents have been brought to the floor's attention. His defense after being busted was that he was tired and not thinking clearly. He was sent home for the night, free to return.

BTW, I've seen strange floor rulings at that casino as well. For instance, one time the floor ruled that it's ok to tell other people in the hand what to do, regardless of how many people are in the hand. This was after a reg in the cutoff told the button to fold (pissing off the big blind). This was a 5/T NL game and the floor justified this ruling by saying this isn't the World Series of Poker and everyone is just here to have fun.

Anyways, those incidents were outside of Vegas but I actually think there is probably more cheating going on at Vegas casinos than that casino, particularly in regards to dealers giving regs advantages.

Maybe it's just me but I'm not willing to call the act of buying in with a stack larger than table max "cheating".

"Let's see if gaming considers it cheating" would be my answer to that.

I never complain at the RR because, when I see someone complain, the above is almost always the floor's answer. It's like saying, "You're right, it's wrong, but what's a little cheating among friends."

Part of playing poker is being able to identify and beat the cheats.

You already got bluffed.

I've seen way more complaints about cheating at Red Rock than in any other room in Vegas. If the floor doesn't care then no wonder why that goes on.

Probably because it's the biggest locals casino unless you consider Orleans a locals casino, and people always seem to have the perception that locals are somehow cheating them. I've played at RR for years at $1/2 and $2/5 NL games and never seen anyone complain about cheating. Almost all of them are terrible at poker and could be considered soft playing each other sometimes, but outright cheating seems unlikely and I've never seen it personally. The floor people definitely care, don't know where those accusations are coming from. I've seen people kicked out plenty of times for various BS. RR after 6 PM can have some of the best $1/2 games in town IMO.

One man's soft play is another man's cheating. You're always going to get more soft playing at a place with regulars, and any locals place will be mostly regulars. Some people will see two guys soft playing each other and think it's bad for the game, others will see it and take advantage of these two guys who are 99.99% of the time terrible at poker.

one of the douchey things i've done in the past admittedly that i no longer do

looool at RR having the best dealers in vegas, a good amount of them are horrible

this
i personally hate when players ask me to soft play, **** that, i know of regs who do it with each other and i just decline and note it