Pokers 10 commandments part 6: You shall not play with cards up your sleeves
Ever since people came up with the idea to play cards for money, there has been cheating. Nowadays you can read about respected highstakers cheating such as Jungleman and Girah, multiaccount users such as Dilba and Justin Bonomo, superuseraccounts on UB, rumors of Fast_Freddie using trojans, some German dude sending live-reporters to check other players hole cards, collusion, and of course Kengate. The most traditional or infamous cheat is to play with cards up ones sleeve. This is hardly something to worry about in todays poker, but there are other forms of cheating that are still going on.
It’s very naive to think that some people will not give in to the temptation to make big bux in a hurry when the oppurtunity presents itself. It doesn’t make things better that the international and insufficient laws regarding poker let people get away with a lot of things they should be put away for. Beeing banned from a pokerroom, losing a sponsor, beeing trashed on a forum, or have your photo covered during WSOP at the RIO; does that sound like enough punishment for people who has stolen millions? To me it’s about as harsh as somebody putting gravel in your shoes.
Even if poker has had its fair share of scandals over the years I think that the chance of beeing affected by cheating is very small. To minimize it you should in my opinion have a computer only for poker that you keep as clean as possible and if possible don’t let anybody else use. Also keep an eye open for collusion. If you play live look for marked cards and make sure nobody stands behind you when you are looking at your cards.
Todays words of wisdom: Don’t cheat!