Cheating in Ring Games versus Casino Tournaments

Greater occurrences of cheating occur in casino ring game poker than in casino tournaments. The reasons for this are twofold: a) because arbitrary seating tends to thwart collusion and b) each hand in a ring game provides would-be poker cheats with a chance to exploit the game.

Online Poker's Prime Cheating Categories
Online poker cheats differ in a number of ways from their equally rotten casino poker counterparts. Of these, the four main areas include:

1. Minor Poker Cheats - These small-time crooks inform their friends of each others' hole cards over the telephone or via instant messaging.

2. Moronic Poker Cheats - More card rooms are quicker to fold hands today than in the past whenever player time out. These losers will always be losers.

3. Clueless Colluders - This is where stupid poker cheats meet. They conspire together in ways that are so obvious that they are found out and nailed sooner rather than later.

4. Skilled Colluders - Skilled Colluders are highly adept poker cheats and to be avoided like the plague whenever possible. These criminals collude in more effective ways, of which one is known as "self-collusion." In this scenario, the poker cheat competes in the same game, but under two different identities/accounts.

Types of Poker Cheats:

Card Marking - Cheaters take brand new decks of cards and use a dye that is only visible to a player with special glasses. Some players may also try and punch cards. A 'punched' card has an almost undetectable indentation in a specific location. This cheating technique can be easily avoided by always using your own cards. Online poker rooms are relatively immune from such techniques.

Collusion - Another commonly used cheating method is collusion. Collusion is actually a general title to a number of deceptive playing techniques. First and foremost, there is chip dumping. This cheating method involves deliberate loss. For example, when a player loses on purpose to someone with whom they have an agreement to split the prize. This type of scam can be found online and off, although high level technologies have been created which can spot colluders.

Hand Mucking - This technique involves two or more poker cheats switching hands. Two players sitting next to each other somehow switch or alter their hands, they can also use signaling. Signaling means exchanging information between partners. Signals may come in different and very sophisticated forms. The most crucial ingredient in successful signaling is the ability poker cheats have to repeat signals without being noticed by others. And, the last but certainly not the least practiced collusion method is soft-play.

Soft play - Soft-play is failing to raise or bet in a situation that would typically call for such a move because your opponent is your friend. Soft-playing a friend is considered cheating because all other participants in the game would prefer your friend to go down which would eventually get them closer to the jackpot. No matter how you look at it, soft-playing is a complicated thing to deal with because usually there is no evident financial (or personal) relationship between the two players involved in the scheme.

It wouldn't be recommended to cheat for a win in poker game. And this information is for the awareness of new poker players. Hard work and honesty always pay back in long term. As one can get short term success using short cut methods like cheating but can't get success in long term.