hello home poker 2+2!!

as some of you read from my thread before where i was properly outted as a douche, ive played in a basic homegame with friends for a year now. we are almost all very good friends, however occasionally we may invite 1 or 2 acquantances when numbers are short. one such person, after he came along with a friend a few months ago, turned out to be good company, and very good for the action. very very good. he quickly became known for his hyper LAG style and seemingly incredible good luck.

to mention again, this is generally a very loud and raucous game among friends. while admittedly this made for an environment where his cheating was made more possible, we had taken it for granted because we were all good friends that cheating would never be a worry.

my first suspicions began the 2nd time he came. early on, im in the big blind with KK, and when theres 5 limpers i make it $10. hes dealing. i watch the limpers begin to fold, and as the action gets back around to late position i notice him reappear from below the table, deck in hand. not exactly subtle hey. but you need to remember this game can be very ad hoc, and so chips falling off the table isnt too unusual. im suss, but since ive got KK i dont want to say something in case nothing is amiss, and he really genuinely dropped something, since i have KK and hed likely give me action anyway.

villain is the only caller and we get it all in on a 952r flop. he flips 95o (says its his "favourite hand") and i dont draw out. im unsure, but i make a comment about keeping the deck above the table (and a mental note to watch him) and decide to move on.

skip a few nights. villain continues to get lucky, making incredible draws in raised pots, where he was usually the dealer. he continues to always leave well up; the games biggest winner. a friend and i start watching him (unknown to the villain) and soon have a good idea about his methods. (i would like to think this list would serve as a good warning for things other games to look out for, but really think its more a testament to our games trustingness)

-best eg is how during a hand if someone decides they want to look through the muck, we wont stop them. villain has taken advantage of this as a perfect opportunity to stack the deck. we also eventually link his insistence to shuffle, to the times he would look through the muck. we eventually starting making sure the deck was always cut.
-at one venue we play, the table is very small, which means the pot is often close to everyones stacks. during a big hand i won, he managed to position his stack next to the pot, and literally steal a stack of chips from it as he shifted and shuffled his whole stack back to the original point (i was unsure at the time, but this was later confirmed when we replayed how the hand played out, and counted how many blue chips should have been in the pot [should have been a lot but there was none])
-finally, when hes dealer and theres a raise to him, he holds the deck riffling the edges. in the biggest hands where theres lots of action and he has a draw, by doing this he is able to see the next cards to come.

it was this last technique that totally confirmed out suspicions, when on a 345r flop in a raise pot 3 handed, utg overshoves, MP reshoves huge, and the villain goes into the tank, head down. eventually he says "*** it, i CALL!".
utg flips the wheel, MP flips bottom set. utg and MP both want to run it for the huge pot, but villain says 'nah lets gamble!!'

turn T
river 6 and villain exclaims how lucky he is.

my friend and i are so shocked we dont know to do. in the end (although we regretted this decision later), we decided to end the game, and wait till villain left and then filled in everyone. we apologize to utg and mp for letting him get away.

talk quickly turned on what to do. although villain is not as a good a friend as the rest of us, (since he went to a different school) we still cannot believe he would steal from his friends. we approximate he would probably have taken almost $1000 off the table over a couple of months (which is huge for us, a group of uni students). being so young we are filled with righteous anger and skewed ideas of justice. a couple of my more violently inclined friends insist we injure him badly. others say we hit him back with cold decks, and then tell him to GTFO. although ive probably lost the most to him, im inclined to take the high road and just never invite him back and let him guess why. karma will surely catch up to him.

villain has indicated since he cant wait for the next home game, and thats hes very keen to "gamble"

comments on our stupidty and how we deserved it, how we let him escape on the last night, and most of all what to do now please


cliffs: i am no longer the biggest douche in my home game

Play deep stacks huge game... Rig the deck so he gets AA u get 27 offsuit. All in pre flop and make quad two's.

make quad two's so its deadly obvious..

"WHY THE **** U GO ALL IN WITH THAT?
"Ahh, ready to gamble i guess"

Damn im good, your welcome

If this guy needs to cheat to win just play a legit deep game and have the game dealt as it should be~cut one behind the dealer and keep the deck above board. If the guy's a cheat & also a good player (which is unlikely from your thread info) then you may have to result in some violence

haha although im against the rigging it back against him, this is very appealing

i feel proud that i created a thread that managed to get out your 6th post for over a year being here.

Option 1: Enforce cutting of the deck by player behind dealer
Option 2: Use a 2 deck system. The shuffle happens 2 players behind dealer, dealer cuts and deals
Option 3: Cheat back at him (don't encourage this)
Option 4: Beat the crap out of him (again, not the best of options)

If you simply enforce the cutting of the deck, or use a 2 deck system, this problem will go away, and most likely, so will your 'friend'.

BTW...I would hesitate calling anyone who has to cheat a 'friend'

Since you've already told everybody in the group that he's a cheater, there's no point to inviting him back to play, even if he's not cheating.

Get it out of your minds that you're going to get some retribution here. I know you're keen on "justice" but there's nothing you could do that would end well here. And besides, maybe he wasn't cheating. But as I said, since everybody suspects him, there's no point in continuing to play with him.

Here's what you do for the future:

• Buy a cut card - you can get them at the same store where you buy a button
• One person shuffles, another cuts
• Deck above the table at all times
• No riffling, no pre-running the board, nothing like that

Good luck. It's never any fun when you suspect a cheater. This is why we have these procedures, so you never even have to suspect anybody.

ahh a button. still gotta get me one of those..

but seriously, we actually do use 2 decks, we have a button and a cut card. we're just really loose on the rules. by the end, the deck was being cut 100% of the time so it was mainly his 'riffling' that was making him money. also as it is, we have a host of other examples where have caught him at it besides the few specific ones i mentioned, so thats not really in contention anymore.

pfap i really feel it depends on your perspective on "end well" here when deciding a course of action haha.. we invite him back, bigger guys have a go at him in the back room, and he leaves behind his buy ins. we're satisfied, and the universe is at peace?

kinda tongue in cheek. but either way it looks like something will go down.

AAARRGGGHHH!!! Do you KNOW how many KITNs I'm dealing out to you fools???


W.C. Fields said it best. Lesson learned.

And STOP LETTING PEOPLE SHUFFLE THEIR OWN DECK!!!

Stop being loose on the rules. You can have a crazy drunken good time while also maintaining proper procedure.

I'm amazed nobody told him to cut it out.

This is an enormous mistake.

Let it go.

set up a higher stakes game so he brings a lot of cash, when he arrives make sure you have a few of your buddies there and tell him you know hes been cheating and that you want all of his cash or you're going to take it from him

Can't believe you're considering violence or that some are advocating it.

Everyone's a tough guy, huh? Well, I've been around enough to have seen this story a few times. I've seen guns get pulled, and people who got the into it, etc.

I can count the times that this made the situation better on one hand (actually, on precisely zero hands).

It's money. You got taken advantage of once or twice. Well, welcome to the club. In life, there are bigger tragedies.

Move on and take comfort in the fact that, unlike the cheater, you are at a place in your life where you can let that amount of money not affect you.

Reminds me of a good quote: "Be water" (Bruce Lee).

Learn a lesson - cut cheating out as soon as you spot it and raise everyone's awareness of it. You shouldn't let it persist so that it continues to harm the honest people in the game. Ban him from furture games obv. I would advise against any form of retaliation for the same reasons as Abhorson. Violence only begets violence.

I had a similar situation at a game I played some time ago during a rebuy tournament and justice was fortunatley dished out from an unlikley source - a beginner totaly scooped his stack by mistake at the same time as the pot while this cheat was getting drinks (we can only assume this was what happend), and then he had his hand mucked later in the evening whilst he wasnt at the table - he arrived back saying "where are my effing cards, they were pocket nines!!" lmao...

A beat down is a VERY bad idea. You're going to escalate to a potential Felony and perhaps change a guy's life forever over a few bucks. You can't even be sure how many times he got lucky vs. cheated. Not saying he doesn't deserve to have his ass kicked - some people need to have their ass kicked and this guy sounds like one of them. However be prepared to suffer the consequences for premeditated action and further escalation.

Cheating the cheater always sounds like poetic justice, but that just lowers you to his level. Cheating for the right reason is still cheating and is passive aggressive chicken ****.

If you feel that you MUST confront him and get some justice. Then man up and inform him that he is no longer welcome at the game.

Invite him back for a $1000 buy in game. When he goes to cash out switch the cash in the box so there's only about $50 in there and give him $1 for every $100 in chips he has. Tell him that he only bought in for $10 and you're just playing 0.01 / 0.02 NL.

wtf i love this

Smack him up a little then kick him out

Option 1 - Don't invite him back. Let it end instead of escalating.

Option 2 - Cold deck him back. This is pretty petty, but I still like it. Then chop up all the money between the real friends.

Option 3 - If somehow you can't stop him from "riffling" when you're all drunk and having a good time. Wait for there to be an all in and him to make a big call when he knows that he is going to hit. Cut the deck before dealing turn, river etc...

So he jacks $1k from you guys clean, and you guys decide to beat his ass... Assault and Battery charges and even a potential hit on hazing or whatever charges related to a group beating 1 person up. Plus the conspiracy to commit that crime for anyone not involved in the process. This really ends poorly for everyone.

It's very unlikely you are being cheated regardless of what you posted in the OP. It's more likely that you and your friends are under the impression that you're good, this guy is awful, and you "should" be crushing him. Your rationalization for this is that he "must" be altering the game in some way.

I'm sorry, but if this were actually occuring and nobody was wise enough to be on top of it so that is stopped occuring, you're all brain dead.

Absolutely brilliant. Possibly having lost a sum of money in poker over months that won't make a difference to you a year from now is surely worth getting arrested and having a record for assault, or worse.

We caught a cheater in our homegame once that was doing something similar. The kid had only come a couple times but was a friend of a friend kind of thing. We called him the locksmith because he sat at the table with these different locks that he would pick. He talked about a lock he was inventing. Very douchey.

He would riffle the deck when dealing and my buddy called him out on it when my friend was holding AA and the locksmith made a big call after looking at the deck.

Some people wanted to beat him up...One guy who they just call E said he would go get his gun which he keeps in his car. Never mess with someone who has a letter as a name. We all squashed that idea and cooler heads prevailed after some yelling.

The locksmith would neither confirm nor deny that he was looking but my friend insists that he was and I trust him obv. Locksmith left soon after and we all talked about what a douche he was. He left a loser so there was no point in kicking his ass and my buddy didn't lose any money on the AA hand so no harm no foul I guess...

Take him down to the basement tie him up and....

BRING OUT THE GIMP.

cant let the thief go unpunished.
when a bank robber robs a bank, does the bank just say "we're not letting you use this bank anymore" and leave it? if the police does nothing about it won't the guy just rob another bank?

i dont suggest turning a cold deck on him because that's cheating him, probably better to confront him

Legal recourse is a big diff in this. If you're participating in an illegal game you can't use legal recourse. Ontop of that physical reaction can lead to retaliation on a MUCH more severe level then $1k lost or whatever. Also they now have legal recourse, as I mentioned above, if you decide to go violent. And if you have a legal game, and he's cheating, what do you tell the police? "Oh he just beat me w/ a straight but I know he looked at the deck and is cheating." And confronting does what?

Seriously I get hot headed/in the moment. But once my head levels, this all just looks foolish as hell. Cut your losses and move on.

Guy sounds like Lester 'Worm' Murphy