Cheating

[Maaz Hasan]

I've never gambled, and don't plan to ever do so. However, me and my friends at school play A LOT of card games -BS, Slaps, Slapjack, Caps, you name it. I sometimes get an urge to cheat at these games for fun (obviously telling my friends that I cheated afterwards). For example, the other day we were playing black jack, without betting anything (I think we decided the winner would get to slap the loser as a forfeit, but we never ended up doing it). I copped an ace one round as I put the rest of my cards back. I then proceeded to get a face up jack, and a face down 6. I swapped out the 6 and called black jack, but then told my friends I had cheated (oddly enough, 3 out of the 4 of us got black jack that round ). I've also cheated in games like BS and Crazy 8s by putting down extra cards (I once said "One 5, and put down 5 random cards ), stacking the deck, or copping cards. I've even done advanced cheating, like stacking a deck, then false dealing to give my friend a really good hand.

2 Questions - What are your favorite ways to cheat, and are there any ethics I should know for cheating in "fun" games?

 

[DavidL11229]

and are there any ethics I should know for cheating in "fun" games?

The only 'ethical cheating' situations I've heard of are the old poker stories where everyone(!) agreed ahead of time(!) that cheating was allowed, unless you got caught. As I recall the winner of this story was the guy who won more the more he drank. The lids of the little liquor bottles were shiny on the inside and he would leave them strewn about and use them as shiners to see what cards he was dealing to his opponents. I'm sure you could adapt this to a method that does not include liquor. Other than that it's hard to imagine a situation where cheating is ethical. You may not be stealing their money, but you are stealing their time. Just wait until the game is over then show them a trick or a 'demonstration'. Unless they all agree that you are allowed to cheat as long as you tell them afterwards (perhaps this has already happened), but that doesn't sound to me like it would make the game more fun for anyone else.

Perhaps others have a different take on this.

 

[Maaz Hasan]

The only 'ethical cheating' situations I've heard of are the old poker stories where everyone(!) agreed ahead of time(!) that cheating was allowed, unless you got caught. As I recall the winner of this story was the guy who won more the more he drank. The lids of the little liquor bottles were shiny on the inside and he would leave them strewn about and use them as shiners to see what cards he was dealing to his opponents. I'm sure you could adapt this to a method that does not include liquor. Other than that it's hard to imagine a situation where cheating is ethical. You may not be stealing their money, but you are stealing their time. Just wait until the game is over then show them a trick or a 'demonstration'. Unless they all agree that you are allowed to cheat as long as you tell them afterwards (perhaps this has already happened), but that doesn't sound to me like it would make the game more fun for anyone else.

Perhaps others have a different take on this.

Well a couple of my friends are generally in on it when I cheat, and I always make sure to do it in a scenario where there is a clear second winner, or way to take back the cheating without disrupting the game. Sometimes though, I'll do it when the game is super boring for everyone and we just want it to end, just to speed up the game.

 

[Josh Burch]

Your story reminds me of this story. I guess Lennart Green, Michael Webber and Rene Levand have a similar story.

As far as I understand the rules of BS you can do what you did without a problem. I have cheated a couple times in games, only once for vengeance. A loud mouth kid said that he was really great at poker, I told him that I wasn't all that great. After the third straight flush he gave up. No money was exchanged.

Other times I have practiced cheating moves without cheating. Sometimes, I will deal from the bottom with a regular shuffled deck just to see if I can do it.

Of course the danger with all of it is that you can lose the other player's trust real quick if you do it too much.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

When I was a kid I used to riffle stack the Uno deck when I played with my neighbor, I could also second deal pretty decently. I also learned how to classic force cards when playing Munchkin. This was all well before I did any magic.

The only time I've consciously cheated with magic skills is once when playing Black Jack with my roommate at the time. We were just killing time, and not betting anything, and he never even noticed that I dealt myself the same hand three times in a row.

 

[Lyle Borders]

In college my roommates and I would play the occasional poker game just for chips (no cash, not that any of us had any of that to gamble). On one occasion I went out SUPER early on a couple bad plays, and volunteered to be the permanent dealer for the rest of the game. I spent a while peaking and stealing cards to the bottom, copping them away when someone cut the deck, and then building a royal flush. I bottom-dealt it to one of my roommates three hands in a row (everyone was quite distracted after the first one so it was easy to steal back the same cards to the bottom). Everyone else gave up, my "lucky" roommate spent weeks talking about how amazing he played, and I spent weeks being smug that nobody caught me.

// L