THE WORLD'S #1 POKER MANUAL - Card Games

Poker Book, Why Professionals Cheat
Also, the colluding partners doubled their losses to John whenever they bet as a team into pots
that John won. If they had not colluded, normally only the player holding the strongest hand
(rather than both players) would have been betting into John's winning hand.
To further increase his advantage, John Finn manipulated the readable hands and intentions of
those cheaters against the other unsuspecting players. But John reaped his most profitable
advantages from the cheaters when they bluffed. (Most collusion cheaters are overconfident and
often can be lured into bluffs.) John would keep calling with a mediocre or even a poor hand as
the bluffing partners kept betting aggressively to drive out players who held superior hands. John
would then simply call the final bluff to win the pot. Or when necessary, he himself would bluff by
stepping in with a raise after the final bet to drive out the bluffer and any remaining players to
win the pot with a busted or a poor hand.
In three hours, John Finn converted the two professional cheaters from substantial winners into
the biggest losers at the table and drove them from the game. With a $600 profit, he left that table
to explore other games. He sat down at a table where four professional players were operating as
two separate teams of colluding partners, cheating each other as well as the other three players.
John assumed the role of a slightly drunk, wild-playing tourist--an ideal fish. He promptly broke
the game open by playing all four cheaters against one another and against the other three
players. In an hour, John ripped $900 from the game and then abruptly left the table. As he
walked away, some of the players mumbled about his "unbelievable hot streak" and his "dumb
luck."
John walked over to the highest-stake game in the house--a fast-paced, $30-$60 lowball, seven-stud
game (razz). As he studied the action, he wondered about the unusual house rule that allowed five
raises instead of the standard three. The five raises greatly increased the flexibility and advantage
of collusion cheaters over their victims. John also wondered about the much higher proportion of
professional players and collusion cheaters he observed in this casino. Was the management aware
of their collusion cheating, he wondered. Did the management establish the five-raise rule to
accommodate the cheaters? Or were the professional collusion cheaters drawn to this casino
because of a five-raise rule innocently established by management to increase the betting
action? . . . John assumed the latter to be true.
Standing behind the dealer, John Finn continued to watch the high-stake game. For nearly an
hour, he studied the two biggest winners. From their conversation and style, he knew they were
professionals, yet neither seemed to be cheating or colluding. Still he noticed that in spite of the
large pots, the dealer was not being toked (tipped) when either professional won a pot. John Finn
studied the dealer more closely: Gathering the face-up cards in a routine left-to-right order, the
dealer made no attempt to rearrange the cards. But as players folded, the dealer would make a
pile with their face-down discards and then gather their face-up cards and flip them on top of the
discard pile. He would then flip the later-round face-up cards directly on top of the discard pile
while slipping dead hole or face-down cards beneath the pile. If the hand ended with fewer than
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