Poker House

Poker House

In a private game the deal goes from player to player and you are betting against each other. Each player may call the game, "dealers" choice.There are times when you are playing against a player paid by the house to play. This player is known as a "Shill". In most cases shills are given one stack of chips by the poker room to start play. From that point on the shill plays with his/her own money. In some casinos the dealers will shill other poker games on their breaks. A casino poker room who uses shills will allow so much per day to bankroll shills.

Common Cheating Methods Be wary of any poker game where you don't know the other players. It was common knowledge in Las Vegas that in certain poker rooms the local players were waiting for tourists to get in the games. The locals would then "Double Team" the inexperienced tourists. (Refer to the question on the "Most Common Cheating Methods in Poker.") Through a series of signals and "Board Talk" the locals would exchange information about their own cards and the possible value of the tourists' cards. One tip off may be that a couple of players are raising the pot with no real strength showing in their cards. They are working with each other to drive you out of the game. The beauty of this type of cheating is that there are no sleight of hand moves and the cheaters always have a simple "Out"... they were just speculating on a bad hand and just didn't draw the cards that's a logical story.

Cheating Related Story Let me relate a story from my past to illustrate that most hustlers have a logical way out of a jam. A couple of years back a television pilot was shot here in Las Vegas called "Nasty Boys." They used my hands to perform the sleight of hand cheating moves and also this story from my youth. "One time in a poker game back home I was holding-out (palming) a pair of Kings. Well somebody at the game decided to count down the deck... of course they counted 50 cards instead of 52.

Great concern fell over the table at this point. If I waited long enough they would of course get to me. I could have dropped the cards on the floor but again it was a pair of Kings... and underneath my chair it still would not have looked good for me... ("Oh my... look at the Pair of Kings on the floor under my chair... I wonder how they got there.") I needed to take control of the situation, as bad as it was. As soon as the guy who counted the cards placed them on the table I grabbed the deck, (added the two Kings back of top) and said, "Let me count those cards." The question is. "How many cards did I count?" Most people say, "Of course you counted 52. If I counted 52 cards the entire table would know that I had added the missing cards to the deck. I finished counting the cards and even though there were now 52 cards I slammed the deck down on the table and yelled... "50 cards... you rotten bastards." By this time the guys running the game had come to the table to see what the trouble was. Well the next poor bastard who picks up the deck counted... you guessed it, 52 cards. He took all the heat. I tried to put the guys running the game on the defensive, and cover myself by changing the order of the count. I said.... "What the F... is going on here? I counted 50 cards....this guy counted 50 cards and now all of a sudden there are 52. (I made it sound like I counted first.) I can't fade this B... S...I'm getting out of here."

Sometimes I wonder if the poor guy who picked up the cards after me realized it was me who added the pair of Kings. Sometimes I wonder... but not very often.