A guide to poker scams '“ how not to get stung

Graham Kendall, University of Nottingham

Winning in a casino is difficult enough when you have the house edge to contend with, but there are people who want to make it even harder. There are legitimate ways that other players can make life difficult for you, even if some of their tactics are not in the spirit of the game and they are within the law. One example is trying to get a player to throw away their poker hand, even though they hold the better hand, all the betting is complete and the player only has to show their cards.

Some of the ways that people try and separate you from your money is not so ethical, and may even be illegal. In his book How to Cheat at Everything, Simon Lovell outlines many scams that both amateur and professional cheats will use to try and part you from your money. Some are simple, some are sophisticated and some you could imagine being successfully used against you.

It is not just gamblers that are being cheated, but also casinos. Last year, Phil Ivey, a leading poker player, lost a court case. He had won almost £8m in 2012 from a Mayfair casino. But they never paid as they accused him of manipulating the deck, even though he never touched it. This was indeed the case but he persuaded the dealer to rotate the most valuable cards by saying he was superstitious. This technique – called edge sorting – enabled him to see small differences in the pattern on the reverse of playing cards so that he could identify certain cards.

In another scam, a player used infrared glasses to detect marked cards. Online poker is also not from immune from scams.

So if you dabble in a bit of poker, what can you do to avoid being stung? There are some scams which make you think you have the upper hand, for example, even though nothing could be further from the truth. I’ll walk you through one example – if you see how one works, you’ll be less likely to fall for similarly attractive traps.

Five card draw

If you understand the rules of poker, see if you can work out this scam before you read how it works. If you are unsure of poker hand rankings, a summary is available here.