Some years ago, there was a TV discussion about the coverage of competitive sport, and a survey of which sports the viewing public most enjoyed watching. It was one of those old-fashioned programmes where four experts were sitting on a couch in front of the cameras in the studio late on a Saturday night, going through the pros and cons of televised basketball, ping pong, darts and snooker. All of a sudden, one of the less geriatric members of the team blurted out that poker was a competitive sport but that, of course, we would never see it on television. He was obviously a card aficionado, but the studio went silent, the mere mention of the game of poker seeming to besmirch the integrity of the BBC.
In those days, the image of poker was that of a game played for large bundles of cash by East End villains in a smoky basement, with the liquor flowing as freely as the bad language, and heavies at the door. If you were foolish enough to get involved in such a game, and you were lucky enough to win, you would be even luckier to leave intact with your ill-gotten gains. In those days, no one could have imagined poker becoming a popular televised commodity, being played all over the world for millions of dollars. Its image was simply too nefarious. However, the viewing public tend to believe that what they see on the television, and hear on the radio, is true – properly researched and monitored, and transmitted clean as a whistle. Ask any convicted con artist which media would be his choice of self-promotion, and the TV and radio will tie for first place. The general public, in their naivety, have also been led to believe that, if a sport is televised, it is being run according to honest rules of engagement and properly supervised to avoid the chance of cheating. Nothing could be further from the truth – especially as far as televised poker is concerned.
Poker has always had the image of a low-life game, practised by players of – shall we say – a dubious background. It was essential that, in order to imbue the game with a presentable image for worldwide television, some of the taboos and myths surrounding it would have to be swept to one side. The introduction of the TV-friendly ‘Texas Hold’em’ version of poker improved the marketability of the game, certainly as far as the TV cameras were concerned; the venues and the style of the competitions, many being played for enormous prize pools by branded players, completed the scenario. The advent of internet poker helped to cement the magic illusion, with entries to these fabulous events available online. Many winners of large prizes had qualified on internet poker sites, for a pittance, which provided a great background story for journalists. The scene was set for a fantastic marketing and broadcasting coup, and today one can hardly turn on Sky TV late at night without finding coverage of a poker game somewhere. However, clever cardsharps and poker old-timers were to prove themselves streets ahead of the tournament organisers and TV directors when it came to stacking the odds in their favour in their quest to get their hands on the enormous prize money on offer.
In the 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, the winner, Jamie Gold, received a prize cheque of $12 million. That’s much, much more than Tiger Woods got for winning the Open recently. Although entry to the World Series cost $10,000, many of the internet poker sites offered incentives and free entries, which made the event more glamorous and marketable – witness the plethora of branded T-shirts and baseball caps. Online poker sites are now even sponsoring film channels. The WSOP is not just about the main multi-million-dollar event, though. There are numerous other high-value competitions that precede it, and many budding poker players from all over the world are keen to take their chances in as many games as possible, for the tantalising possibility of playing against one of the greats, and often making a poker trip to Vegas last for several weeks. However, there is a dark side to the game of tournament poker, even at the World Series level. For the game is rampant with cheating.
Seasoned poker professionals acknowledge that the difference in the standard of play between themselves and an amateur – say, one who has been playing online for a year or so – is maybe only 2 or 3 per cent. That is one of the attractions of the game: an unknown novice can beat one of the best in the world, given a modicum of luck and some skill, in complete contrast to other games of skill, such as chess or backgammon. That is why thousands of hopeful poker players flock to their favourite internet sites and try to qualify for big events such as the World Series, winning satellites in massive fields of hundreds of players to avoid having to stump up the $10,000 entry fee. Some of the poker sites even offer competitions in which the winner receives free travel, hotel and pocket money as well, a fabulous incentive. Recently, Chris Moneymaker won the World Series after qualifying online for a mere $40. He immediately became a (highly marketable) legend in the poker world. The oddest thing about the game of poker at this high level, however, is that the same players seem to keep reaching the final tables, again and again, year after year, with many ordinary players consistently dropping out in the early stages of the tournament. Can this really just be a case of skill and experience triumphing over less experienced novice players? I think not.
To reach the final table in a tournament takes a considerable run of consistent good fortune and skill, often over many days and long hours of play, and in the process you have to win many coin flips during all-in situations. Once you have survived this onslaught, sometimes over a period of several days’ play on many different tables against many different players, you have to go through the whole process again on the final table of nine players itself. Given the odds of winning all the coin flips, and the aforementioned small skill differentials between the top and novice players, there has been suspicion, to say the very least, that all is not quite as it seems in the poker world. Some players have even reached the final tables at spectacles such as the WSOP in several different tournaments in the same year, collecting enormous sums of prize money for their efforts. They must be excellent players, surely… or do they have a hidden secret weapon and agenda? Of course they do, and I am now going to blow the lid off what really goes on behind the scenes of poker tournaments, at the highest level of play, all over the world.
The first thing to appreciate about major poker tournaments is that the leading contestants who make it big time and appear to be winning huge amounts of money actually only own a very small percentage of it themselves, so by the time that they slog it out to the final table their prize fund has been greatly diminished. However, they will have at the same time taken a share or interest in some of their fellow players too, creating a situation in which a certain group of players have a large vested financial interest in themselves as a team, and will go to any lengths to ensure their survival through the ranks. The set-up of players investing in other players whom they are playing against will always happen at major poker tournaments. When entry fees to some competitions are as high as $10,000 or more a go, this is sometimes the only way some of these players can afford to participate in the first place. In some tournaments, some players might have a piece of the action in as many as forty or fifty players, so it is easy to understand how they have a vested interest in reaching the prize-money stages. And, if you analyse the prize structure, you can understand why. Consider 8,500 players put up $10,000 each in entry-fee money. That creates a prize pool of $85 million. The way the prize pool is structured, with $12 million going to the winner, and prize money all the way down to 500th place, the odds of winning the competition are severely diminished. Plus, the organisers will have raked off a decent percentage from the top of the pot, to cover their expenses, and a profit. Obviously, this means that less money is being paid out than has been paid in. And this means that the top players, in order to obtain value, have no choice but to gang up together and agree to play as a team, at the expense of the hapless no-hopers who are going to get burned out of the competition early, and forfeit all those $10,000 buy-ins to the master syndicate. Put simply, this is collusion in its purest form, and it is rife at high-level tournament poker.
This is how it works. Six well-known players – perhaps professionals who battle it out week after week at the poker tables in tournaments all over the world and know each other well – meet up a few days before a tournament is about to begin and agree to play, effectively, as a team. The financial benefits to them are enormous. These players are not after the glory of being televised on the final table in showdowns; although they undoubtedly have large egos, they are far more interested in winning cash. And, by working together, they are stacking the odds tremendously in their favour. Say a smaller event than the World Championship costs $2,500 to enter, and the prize pool is $200,000; playing as a group gives the syndicate far more chance of hitting the jackpot than if they all played solo. So they agree to help each other out, three of the team members being designated as suppliers, and the other three as receivers. The supplier’s role is to provide his chips to the receiver, normally in a ‘heads-up’ situation, to enhance his stack to such an extent that it will make a material difference to his game. As tournaments progress, and the small-blind/big-blind antes go up, short-stacked players become increasingly unlikely to win. It is therefore imperative that at least one member of the team moves through the ranks to the next table with a substantial stack of chips, in order to give him a fair crack of the whip. And the other players in the collusion team are quite happy to sacrifice their chips to one of their team-mates at crucial times of the tournament to assist him in having a fair crack at making the final table – which, of course, would provide a pay day for the entire team.
This form of cheating is known as ‘chip dumping’ and is strictly speaking illegal in poker, but it happens all the time. I have watched hours of video recordings of major poker tournaments and have found evidence of chip dumping, at the highest levels, between many well-known players. Year after year, the same players are involved in this practice. A certain number of these high-class players have reached the final tables so many times that you could be forgiven for thinking that they had entered the competition at the very last moment with a huge pile of chips, and had only to play a couple of hands before moving straight to the final table. So how does the scam work?
Our six friends are intent on the three receivers building up their stacks of chips, to give them the maximum chance when they are approaching the final. As soon as two of the team make the same table, it is the job of the supplier to give up his chips to the receiver at the least obvious but most appropriate opportunity. As soon as he is in a suitable position on the table vis-à-vis the blind structure, the receiver will be looking for an opportunity to go into a ‘heads-up’ battle with the provider. Through the use of sophisticated prearranged signalling, the two players discover what each other’s hole cards are. This is done by placing their chips as card guards on their hands: the exact position of the chips determines the value of the hand. Top left corner A-A, top middle K-K, top right Q-Q, left centre J-J, middle centre 10-10, right centre 9-9 and so on and so forth. This clever strategy of using chips and cards to signal to one’s cohorts the value of pocket cards is almost foolproof, and the team are very careful not to use signalling devices that involve the face or fingers – certainly not for indicating the value of their hands. But they also practise discreet physical signals, such as scratching the nose, rubbing the chin and pulling on the earlobe to indicate other scenarios, such as when they want the all-in call.
Signalling was a little more difficult for high hands that were not pairs, but the scammers found a way around this, too, by using two chips as card guards to give away the secret. What the duo are looking for is the receiver with a strong hand, and the supplier with a strongish one – although the supplier’s hand is not that important, as we will see shortly. The receiver has to quickly add up the number of chips held by the supplier, because this is going to determine the size of his raise. Given a weak betting hand, the receiver will make a large raise, and the supplier will call, to within a whisker of his chip stack. The rest of the table folds, and the pair now see the entire five community cards dealt, having checked throughout. If by the river the receiver knows he has a winning hand, he will put the supplier all-in, they will show their hands and he will be the next one out of the competition, to much commiseration from the other players at the table. If, however, the supplier has fluked the winning hand, he will simply fold his hand, and acknowledge the receiver’s ‘winning hand’. Whichever method, the result is the same, and the receiver has built up his chip stack nicely, ready to take on the rest of the players on his behalf, and on behalf of the rest of his cohorts.
As competitions draw closer and closer to the holy grail of the final table of nine and the alluring prize money, more and more players are knocked out. This sometimes goes in spurts and runs, especially when three players are involved in a showdown, when two may be eliminated at once. Tournament organisers are always keen to have their tables evenly balanced, so players are moved frequently from table to table to keep them full at all times. Sometimes, three of the cohorts end up playing on the same table together, and that is when the real fun begins: the other seven players have no idea of the shock they are about to receive. When the conspirators end up three to a table, their modus operandi changes, and the collusion team’s bad hands protect its good ones. The bad hands have a function, which is to draw extra chips into the pot when the cohorts’ hand is very strong. Members of the cheating team with bad hands play a very important role in raising their bet when it is their turn to act, generating more chips in the pot for their accomplice with the strong hand, and then simply folding at the appropriate time so as to avoid suspicion. A cheating team of three can thus manipulate the betting structure on the table, rope in their unsuspecting challengers into the net, and more than likely win pots with their bully tactics, even if they do not have the best hand. Should one of the team actually have the nuts – three times more likely than a single player, if you think about it – then, again, the maximum can be drawn from the rest of the field. In this way, the cohorts have a very strong chance indeed of getting one of their team through to the next table, high on adrenalin, chips and betting power, ready to take on the rest of the players with his secret ammunition of collusion and betting power with his ill-gotten chips. And, once the field has dwindled down to the vital last couple of tables, the big collusive moves of chip-dumping are executed.
While using chips are the preferred method of signalling hole cards to the other team members, there are other methods used too. Sophisticated players sometimes ‘finger’ their cards on the table, tapping their cards on the correct spot to identify their value. I have seen both these methods used frequently, and would consider them both to be very effective and almost undetectable. As the great casino cheat Joe Classon once said, ‘Never leave any evidence behind when you are operating a scam.’
There is a third method, though, which is also ingenious. Most players at poker tables handle and shuffle their chips while waiting for their next move, with some having perfected clever tricks with their chips and elaborate shuffles. Some of these ‘must-have’ chip-shuffling techniques are even available for sale on the internet. Needless to say, some mechanics and cheats have elaborated a way to shuffle their chips in a certain manner and with specific stacks and denominations to signal their hands to their accomplices. And then there is the verbal collusion. Once a predetermined verbal code has been agreed upon, a simple question about the weather, the last hand, the ball game or the lottery result can have sinister implications for the other players.
Despite the shrewd advice of the legendary Joe Classon, cheating involving the marking of cards is also evident in poker, although it is much less common than collusion. At the 2006 WSOP, which had a record number of entries, the first few days degenerated into a state of chaos, with dealers threatening to walk out over a pay dispute and players complaining bitterly about the quality of the decks being dealt, many for two or three days at a time. There was strong evidence of card marking, attained by putting tiny creases or crimps, or even little nail scratches on the back of face cards.
In fact, a new and highly sophisticated card-marking scam took America by storm recently, one so ingenious that it must surely rank as the ultimate card-marking story ever. An optometrist discovered a colourless liquid that could mark cards in a way that could only be detected by someone wearing a specially designed pair of contact lenses. The beauty of this product was that it was odourless, and it disappeared without a trace after 30 minutes. The problem was how to get the solution on to the backs of the cards during play. One team found the perfect method. A glamorous lady team member kept the solution in her make-up bag, and, from time to time, as all ladies do, she would remove her compact at the card table to powder her nose, and at the same time apply a few drops of the solution to her fingers, undetected. She was then able to mark her cards over a few hands, giving her and the rest of her team a serious advantage over the rest of the unsuspecting players, and enabling the team to clean up, literally. Joe Classon would have approved.
Card-switching is another method of cheating at poker. Clever mechanics can swap a hole card with a partner sitting next to them. Imagine being dealt King-three, with your partner receiving King-six. A quick mechanic team would be able to swap the three for the King, giving him a monster starting pair. These mechanics perfect their acts so the switch goes completely unnoticed, and happens in literally a split second, well disguised with their arms, which are placed at such an angle as to prevent anyone noticing, and ostensibly to protect their own cards from prying eyes!
Dealers are not averse to getting in on bent poker action too, often teaming up with a player at their table in a conspiracy to cut the profits. A slick dealer can keep high cards together in a clump during a fake shuffle, deal his partner a monster hand, and then secretly show – by undetectable and subtle thumb and finger signals – when to check, call, raise or fold. A dealer–player collusion syndicate is probably one of the most powerful moves in poker cheating; it is very profitable, impossible to beat and is extremely difficult to spot. Stealing money at poker is almost the ultimate financial crime, because the advantage is that no money is missing after it has been stolen.
Internet poker is riddled with cheats. Put simply, the integrity of a significant number of the online poker sites sucks. Collusion online is easy, and the poker sites are aware of it. Furthermore, there are computer hackers out there who have devised extremely clever and sophisticated software to enable them to actually see their opponents’ hole cards. And some players don’t trust the honesty of the sites themselves. Many of the online poker businesses were started up by entrepreneurs with, shall we say, dubious track records.
In order to appreciate how vulnerable the actual games of poker offered by these online sites are, one has to look at the software used by these firms. Online poker is dealt by the use of shuffles and deals generated by the use of random number generators. However, these programs are not idiot proof, and a few years ago a group of computer programmers found a gaping black hole in online card-room security. They discovered a means of precisely calculating the order of cards that were to be dealt from a shoe at poker, enabling them to know what every player’s hole cards were, and also the order of cards that were to be dealt for the flop, turn and river. The algorithm that was the starting point for the deal was programmed to the number of milliseconds past midnight according to the system’s clock. All the card-cheating computer gurus had to do was synchronise their program with the computer clock, and they were on to winning without any risk. Online card rooms insist that this trapdoor has now been firmly shut, but I for one am certain that computer experts will find another one soon.
As with live poker games, however, collusion is a much more sinister problem, and online poker sites employ full-time security to stamp it out. However, their ammunition is plainly inadequate, and mainly revolves around checking the IDs, computer addresses and credit-card details of players who frequently play on the same tables. The inference is obvious: a team from the same town playing on the same online table, could actually be huddled round a live dining table in one of the team member’s houses with half a dozen laptops on the go – or, more likely, be disclosing their hands to one another via SMS messages or mobile-phone calls themselves. The poker site security departments are very quick to claim that they shut down such players, but fail to admit that sophisticated cheats are going to simply bypass this obvious system and go to much greater lengths of setting up IDs in different cities, with the use of multiple credit cards, different log-in IDs and much more. From experience, I would estimate that 5 per cent of the online poker games are infiltrated by players who are in collusion with each other. Colluders are always trying to find newer and safer methods of beating the sites, and the stakes they are playing for are high, many millions of pounds changing hands online every day. But they have to be careful, too. If caught, they face being barred from the site, and they also run the risk of having their account balances frozen at the same time.
The most dramatic method of online cheating at poker has to be the ultimate software program, which is available to those in the know. It is expensive, but is worth every penny, and is called ‘Peeker’. This incredible computer program – obviously only available on the black market, and only offered to the most trusted players – actually lets you see the other players’ hole cards while playing online poker from the comfort of your own home.
Wonders will never cease in the hi-tech gadgetry surrounding online gaming, so the next time you sit down at a poker table, be it live or online, be aware that there are forces surrounding you that may not all be legitimate. You could be playing live against colluders, or online against robots.
Nigel Goldman
Great Gambling Scams ...
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