I know you guys don't really like to talk about cheating in casino and yes I understand playing in a casino is usually very safe but I was reading an interview with Sammy Farha and he was saying he doesn't play much anymore because he feels there is more collusion and cheating in the game.

Lately I have been noticing some regulars always sitting next to each other. They are very friendly with dealers and they know pretty much everyone in the poker room. Now I see them often dumping chips to each other and some times they even check down all the way after pretending to think about making some moves.
Honestly I don't even know how to address this and prob I won't even mention it to anyone since they are well known there.

Once I have seen a regular check down the absolute nuts against his friend. I have mentioned it to the dealer that he replied me with a "meh". Other player in the hand gave me the classic stupid answer "I wouldn't have called if he bet anyway". I just moved table after that.

I was wondering if you guys had any experience with cheaters and how you dealt with them. What do you do to protect yourself in general, what do you guys look out for when playing especially against some dodgy regulars? what are some big red flags that make you change table? Is colluding still the most common way to cheat at poker in casino?

Dealing with real cheating (which for the purposes of this discussion I will define as excluding check-down agreements) is easier. Depending on what kind of cheating you're talking about, either call the floor immediately and cause a major scene (sometimes appropriate), or more often tell the floor away from the table and have them investigate. If you don't see anything happening, follow up with the shift manager, and then make a complaint to gaming if nothing is done.

Dealing with guys checking it down is harder. Yes, it is probably collusive, but no it probably doesn't harm you directly, it just makes for a ****tier game. Change tables, or change rooms. You're unlikely to get any satisfaction or relief by complaining about it. If you're feeling perky, you can tell the table or other players why you're leaving, and maybe that will eventually cause them to stop doing it. Not likely, though.

As to how you best spot real cheating, I don't have much advice other than to keep your eyes open and be vigilant. But in general, especially at lower limits, don't sweat it, because it's orders of magnitude more likely that players are erratic and non-sensical than that they are cheating. Particularly in hold'em, most collusion can only involve sharing hole card info, and that is hard to take much advantage of in hold'em anyway, it gives very little edge usually, and the risk of being caught is great. Whipsawing is the thing you most have to be concerned about, and floors can expose this form of cheating by requiring both hands be exposed (at least to him) to make sure the hands make sense. I don't think I've ever seen this even alleged, let alone penalized, though.

The check down between buddies is so widespread that it is never going away. Yes, it is collusion and shouldn't happen, but it should have no effect on you.

Chip dumping in a tournament is a big deal, and you should alert the TD to watch for it. If this is not a tournament, then chip dumping isn't a thing.

Other than sitting next to each other, are they participating in some other form of cheating?

Sitting next to each other it's harder for them to whipsaw you anyway. if they were good at cheating, they'd sit across from each other.

Yup, it happens. I saw a husband and wife sitting nest to each other when a big pot occurred. One was facing a big bet, and discussed the hand under their breath while action was on the other side of the table. I only heard about half the discussion, but they were absolutely discussing the hand. Another reg was at the far end and involved in the hand.

Afterwards, I told the other reg what happened and he had a hard time believing it. All regs are friends, right? Then I told him exactly what I had heard and it definitely bothered him.

I'm always wary when two people that seem to know each other well are sitting next to each other.

I'm sorry, but if two people sitting next to each other, both in a hand with someone else and you see them talking to each other, you call them out immediately. Loud voice. "Hey! It's not a team game."

Chip dumping in cash games might be not common but I think it is happening in higher stakes.. I might be paranoid.. do you think what I saw make any sense to you? If not I might just be paranoid.
I played 5/5/10 with $2k max buyin 2 weeks ago. Most of us were pretty deep and some player was with over $10k (5+ times buyin). The usual suspects were in game, one of them was pretty deep (I dont remember how much) and the other just went busto. he drops another $2k on the table and shortly after he wins an all in on the flop vs his friend. His friend muck his cards so I am not sure what he had.
Soon after the table broke up I saw him giving some chips to the dumper before cashing out.
Now I am not sure if it was intentional but I can see them wanting to buy in for much more since we were all pretty deep.


Where I play you can use the phone even if you are in a hand, you can even make phone calls. (they used to make you stand or muck your cards if you were on the phone before but it's not happening anymore). Now again I don't really want to believe it is happening but I see a lot of regs with their phone out while in a hand. Are they texting each other? not sure but I find it strange they use the phone so much while playing.

Friends softplaying each other is not a big deal.

I hear players talking in other languages all the time. Some times it's painfully obvious they are talking about the hand in question or how another player is playing in general. Basically it's cheating. Really annoying.

Time-raked games don't really count.

Chip dumping in cash could happen to screw a backer.

What stakes do you play at? I play 1/2, and that comment is lol-paranoid for my stakes! Maybe if you're playing for big money, but the majority of players at 1/2 are there for an evening of fun gamble, it's very common to see 2 or more friends (from outside poker) sit down at the same table. I don't spend any energy trying to look for signs of collusion. Softplaying heads-up between friends is common and generally nobody cares.

I'm quite surprised at the phone and talking about the hand comments though! Both those rules are very strictly enforced at my local casino - sometimes you get a warning, but I've also seen dealers auto-muck players' hands without a single word if they're on their phone while in the hand. And if you talk about the hand while it's going on, every dealer will 100% shut you up immediately.

Actually when two friends (say from a home game) are at the same table at a casino they will often soft play each other. This is NOT news. Then again sometimes these guys are so eager to outplay the other that it almost gets bloody. Just a part of low stakes casino live poker IMHO

Friend's money is the best money to win!

If you removed all softplaying people from the games, the casino might turn into a pretty empty space..

What can you do against them softplaying each other? Don’t fold. If you are in the hand, they can’t do it.

The only thing that’s going to happen if you complain about them is people starting to dislike you. If that’s your thing, go for it.

I feel a massive amount of paranoia from the original poster in this thread.

But...in a bigger game, if you truly feel the guys are dumping chips to each other, tell the floor. They'll keep an eye on things and if it happens often, they'll actually check the hands of the two players involved.

In a 5/10 game locally, two players were banned from the casino for this. The players were betting a third player out of a hand and then the guy with all the chips would end up mucking his hand on the river and his buddy would double up so both of them would have bigger stacks (1500 buy-in, one guy would end up with over 3k when his buddy would be about the same after losing the hand).

The casino will watch. One time they might be able to play it off as the big stack getting caught bluffing but if you see it day after day or week after week, the casino should catch on to what's happening if anyone alerts them to there being a cause for concern.

I had one about 10 years ago back when my home casino had a more active Stud game.

It was nothing major, a 1-5 spread 7 card high game, but it always had the same group of retired gentlemen in it.

For a few sessions, anytime I was in a pot they would jam and jam and eventually show down small one pair hands and the like.

Then after I started playing a little looser, I would get crushed by bigger hands, all the time.

Anyways, I figured out that the all had signals they used with their chips to tell each other what they had. A single $1 chip on their down cards meant a pair. A single $5 chip was Aces. Two $1 chips were 2 pair, a $1 and a $5 was Aces up.

Anything larger than 2 chips on the hole cards were trips or better.

I managed to play that game and crush it once a week for a few weeks until all of a sudden they weren't around anymore. Maybe they chose a different day, I dont know.

Slow playing is one thing, but working as a team is another. Might take some doing to make sure it's one over the other.

Exchanging chips after the game breaks is very common if one player had to borrow a re-buy from another to avoid going to the cage. I don't really see this as a horse/backer moment, but maybe. And certainly in game it could be an agreed dump by a horse to 'a friend' to screw over a backer.

These 'thoughts' do seem to creep into Player's minds when you get to the 5/10 and above stakes. Hey, there are shared interests and bankrolls in tournaments all the time that we hardly speak of so it certainly could be happening in cash as well.

Case in point .. PHellmuth 'probably' was staking MikeMouth in the PokerGo cash game last week, and yet was playing back at him. If not that game in particular, they were openly discussing an arrangement on a live stream. GL

Lol I used to grind at the stone. That game literally died off.

That's the problem with signals. If anyone other than your dodgy in-group figures them out then you're going to get wrecked.

I only know English but was at a table in Miami with a friend and he spoke Hebrew and didn't look like it. There were 3 young guys there 2 was just railing that kept talking, then when my friend got into a hand with the one playing the Kid was saying to his friend in Hebrew that he had nothing but was going to bluff this old guy off his hand then pushed in and my friend called him with a under pair and said in Hebrew that they were fools. They freaked out and started to complain that the old guy cheated them, smh.

First my friend shouldn't have said anything till they had nothing but felt in front of them.

I've seen a few posts where table talk in Florida is an issue and the rooms want the business so it's not enforced 'at all'.

Yes, your friend should've waited until they were leaving to send them off with a little 'gift' message .. unless he thought they might be back for more a different session.

I know a sheriff that minored in Spanish and he's a pure 'white boy'. He's picked up on plenty of information by just letting folks talk away, thinking that he didn't know what they were saying. Most of the time he works his way around to the information he needs without anyone even knowing. GL

Yes, as mentioned already, a common strategy for cheater/ colluders, is raising and re-raising you off your hand.
Villain bets, you call, his buddy re-raises, forcing you into a difficult decision.
If I notice something like that happening, I just quit or table change, although speaking to the floor is probably the correct way to react.

I should have added, fortunately, it's not that common that I'd stop going to a casino or that it's a big problem.
As a matter of fact, I think these things are much more common online.

They probably did all die off by now lol. Used to look strange to have 5 or 6 70-80 year old men and one guy in his late 20s

I just tried to keep quiet and keep raking it, but I probably won too many hands or maybe they figured out they got noticed.

I wasn't really looking for it, but I noticed that each of the players would change how they would cap their down cards during the hand. Usually once someone caps them, it stays the same.

It got me curious and I started to figure it out little by little. I think where they put their chips also told something but I never confirmed it. Like if the chips were back towards them on that side of the cards, it was a low pair. Up front was a high pair.

I've never really understood why checking down is considered prima facie evidence of malicious collusion. Seems to me the opposite--if you're colluding with your partner to raise and reraise people out of pots or for value, the last thing you'd ever want to do is call attention to yourselves by checking it down. Wouldn't you want to go to the river where the partner with the good hand bets and the bad hand hems and haws and mucks? You can always divide up the spoils in the parking lot.

Yes, technically playing tougher against some players than others is dishonest and it hurts the third player but it's really hard to draw the line if they both have somewhat legitimate hands without trying to regulate psychology.