Cheating and Other Possibilities in Home Poker Games: Highway to the Danger Zone

One thing that always seems to be true about poker is that once a good scandal fades away, another will soon pop up in its place. In the not-too-distant past, we had the alleged cheating situation at Stones Gambling Hall. More recently, we were mesmerized by the "unique" way J-4os was played at Hustler Casino Live. However, the new poker scandal involving Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and ... shhhhhh ... the Mafia? While the previous incidents I mentioned made headlines in poker and other venues, this new scandal is HUGE! Things will likely get even uglier as this story unfolds.

When I lived in Illinois and worked at a community college, I found out that one of my department's student workers (a woman in her 20's) was a poker player. When she found out that I played poker, she invited me to a private poker game that was in town. Since the nearest legal poker venue was 90 miles away, I jumped at the chance. My wife had made me an excellent poker table that I used for my home games with friends, but this offer exposed me to a whole new group of people. The worker played in what I called my International Poker Game. It consisted of several Iranian students, a few other students from other countries (I had no idea which ones), some regular in-town residents, and the guy who ran things -- a computer educator from India. The majority of the players were college students. We played in a conference room of a nearby public university.

We usually started out with a tournament, then headed into cash games, which were much more popular. Once I had a few sessions under my belt, figuring out the players was pretty easy. There was the tight guy and the engineering PhD student who famously said "All hands have potential." He was terrible at poker, but sometimes got lucky. My student worker was pretty shrewd. There were a few other assorted characters. One Iranian guy, I suspect, was filthy rich and loved to raise, chase, and spew. it was quite a group.

I never had any thoughts that the game was anything but honest. The players were all good people. However, as we played more and more sessions, the amount of money in play started getting bigger. Since we were doing this activity in a conference room at a public university, I had two fears: we might get busted, or we might get robbed. I had already understood that if the game was busted, it was possible that my job would be in peril. I finally decided that the risk was too great and was hesitant to play. Others also faded away, and soon the game was pretty much over. It was fun while it lasted.

An industrious player from the group decided to start his own home game. It was held in the basement of the guy's rented university house. The pot was minimally raked, but pizza, snacks, beer, and soft drinks were provided, so I didn't mind if he made a modest profit on the game. The first potential sign of trouble was that either I miscounted my stack, or someone at the game had pilfered one or two of my green chips. To this day, I don't know if I was ripped off or not. I like to think that I just miscounted.

The guy who ran that game (who I knew was a good guy) stopped at some point, and some other guys who I didn't know very well took over the game. They had names and cell numbers of the players. They called me and I went to a few of their new home games. However, at these games, I was not winning at the same rate as the others. I had not been a total crusher, but I had done okay previously. Things had now shifted, and winning almost any significant hands seemed difficult. Either one of two things happened: I was now the fish at the table, or there was cheating going on. I had a really bad feeling that there was some collusion going on and that I was targeted. I decided that I couldn't trust the game as being on the up and up, and never returned. I was texted several times to recruit me to play, but I held firm. Finally, they stopped texting. Strangely enough, A year or two later, I got a random text, inviting me to a game. I just ignored it.

In looking back now, I think I was pretty foolish to have played in the International Poker Game once the money started getting big. The university police would have had a field day breaking up the game, but I began to worry more that someone would get greedy and conspire to rob the game, or that someone else would catch on to what we were doing and decide to pull off a heist. It was a fun game with great people, but the risk became too big. It certainly wasn't worth the possibility of getting injured or even ... yeah.

Once the game moved and was run by people I didn't really know, the fun stopped. Was I the big fish or was I getting cheated? To this day, I do not know. My gut tells me that I was a mark and was losing to collusion. I guess I'll never know.

When I heard that one of my poker friends got invited to a home game by people he didn't really know, I urged him to say no. There are always straight games at casinos. And outside of some private games with friends, casinos are now the only places that I will play. I am fine with that as I have three good poker rooms that I can drive to in 30-55 minutes. At least if I lose, I know that it is legit.

Comments are welcomed. Thanks for reading!