If You Go Down In The Woods Tonight

“What do you mean, I need to watch myself”. A very direct question to what had been a very direct warning from me. A close friend of mine called Dave had been playing poker for about a year and he had only ever played online. He had asked me for advice on poker about a year ago as he had told me then that he was seriously interested in taking the game up. I basically told him what I could in the short time that we had together. He was doing rather well in the games that he was playing in but he had now got it into his head that he wanted to try “real” poker in a proper card room.

I didn’t have the time to go with him as I don’t play much live poker these days myself. Nearly all of my time now is spent either playing online or teaching and writing about poker. I did not like the thought of Dave going off on his own without me. I sort of felt a responsibility towards him because he used to listen to my stories of how well I was doing and this must have spurred him on to actually playing the game because Dave had never been a gambling man.

“So are you saying that I should never play in a real card room Carl?”

“No Dave I am not, it’s just that it won’t be like playing poker like it is on TV which is all gentlemanly and straight up”.

“So your saying that people cheat in real card rooms”

I smiled and told him not to be so naive. “People cheat in life Dave and poker is no exception whether it is played online or in a real card room. It is just that online the site does actually go some way towards protecting you and the other players cannot get hold of the cards which is important”

“So what do I need to look out for then” he replied.

“Well for a start, make sure that you are playing in a cash game that has a house dealer if at all possible. Some of these players can be very slick when it comes to cheating and there are still card mechanics out there plying their trade”.

“What else do I need to look out for?”

“Watch out for players communicating with each other, some of them will blatantly talk in their own language and they are not always talking about the weather either. If you see this then inform them to speak English only and if they refuse then take the matter up with the card room supervisor and if you get no joy from them then a casino manager”.

“Have you ever cheated Carl?” said Dave with a rather cheeky look on his face. I avoided the question by saying that it was a terrible thing to say to a “gentleman” like me. Seriously though, I will take the fourth amendment on that one
“So are there any specific moves that I need to look out for?”

“Well, you have not played any other game online apart from hold’em and you are going to be playing dealers choice in these side games so cheating is not your biggest problem Dave, it is going to be lack of knowledge of certain forms of poker.”

“But to answer your question, one of the things that you need to watch out for are the angle shooters. They will try all sorts to get your money”

“Like what”

“Steal your chips when you are careless stacking them up, ask to borrow money from you, pretend to pass to see what you do, hide their cards from view so you think that the action is on you, hide chips to prevent players from knowing how deep they are, pass chips to one another, soft play each other and I could go on all night Dave”.

“Slow down a bit Carl, your saying that players actually steal chips from you”

“Not all of them Dave but it only takes one. The world is full of thieves and cheats, do you seriously think that people suddenly become angels once they enter a card room. I know of one professional cheat who used to be a pick pocket who earns a thousand pound a week stealing chips and doing other moves”

“Jesus, I never thought playing poker was that dangerous” said Dave.

“Depends who you play with, I have been in games with gangsters where there have been rival gangs pointing guns at each other and I have witnessed lord knows how many fights where people have ended up in hospital”

“I must say Carl that you are doing an excellent job of putting me off going”

“I am not saying that you should never play live because you will probably have a great experience and it would be a shame to miss out on that because live play is a much bigger buzz than online play”

“So why don’t you play more live poker then”

“Because online play pays me more that’s why, I end up getting three times the action online. But live play still has a much bigger buzz to it”.

“You mentioned about players passing chips to one another, how do they manage that?”

“When I say pass to one another I don’t necessarily mean physically passing chips although it is certainly possible that they could do it this way. I mean two players betting and raising and then one of them dropping out and letting the other player take the pot”.

“Why would they do this?” asked Dave.
“Well firstly this is much more frequent in tournaments than cash games but it does sometimes happen in side games as well. It can be very advantageous to have an accomplice have more money on the table. You can use this other player to assist you with trapping another player in the middle”.

Dave looked puzzled, “What do you mean Carl?”.

“Well lets say that I have aces in hold’em and I communicate to you that I have them. You are first to speak and you have junk but you limp in to assist me later on in the hand. Because you have not raised, your limp will encourage other players to limp along with you. I raise with the aces and you re-raise to drive out all of the limpers who may have called a single raise.”

“Your re-raise has helped to protect my aces because the other players have implied weakness by merely calling and I do not want to play my hand in a multi-way pot”.

“Yeah but would it not be better if you only raised a little to entice them in to call and then do the raise and re-raise thing on the flop and trap them for more money?”

“That’s possible but you run the risk of somebody flopping something and wiping both players out” I replied.

Dave listened for a full hour on everything that I had to say about cheating in card rooms and he was like a sponge as he was taking in all of the various bits and pieces of information. Some years ago, I actually had a full blown argument with a gaming manager after no action was taken regarding stopping local players from speaking in their own language.

I was not a local and neither was I a regular player so my complaints fell on un-sympathetic ears. I have not played in that casino since and will likely never play there again. You really need to look after yourself whenever you play poker and this even applies in online games and especially as you start to move up in limits.

Sometimes it is possible that you can just feel when something is not quite right. This “feel” is very difficult to explain and I think that it is the subconscious mind reacting to all of the data that has been processed from past games and experiences and eventually coming to a decision. We sometimes call these thoughts and feelings “instinct” and “sixth sense” but how many of us actually listen to that little voice in our head.

I would just like to point out here that many poker games are entirely straight and played by honest respectable people and I am certainly not encouraging people to be paranoid about playing poker. Otherwise you just start seeing Indians behind every bush and you just end up not playing at all. But be advised that there are Indians out there and they are far from friendly.

So if you are contemplating playing in a poker game irrespective of where it is, it pays to do a little bit of research first and check the game out and the players as well if that is possible. Armed with a little knowledge, your journey into the world of live card room poker can be both an enjoyable and a rewarding one. For the record, Dave had a great time and actually won a bit of money.

This article was produced for Poker Pro Europe magazine and has been reproduced here with their kind permission.