Customer Reviews

Dirty Poker: The Poker Underworld Exposed

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Richard Marcus loves to tell a story. There are some pretty good ones near the end of the book in Chapter 8, and some pretty lame ones sprinkled throughout the text. The problem is, it is hard to tell in the reading just where Marcus's story telling leaves off and the reality begins.

Just how prevalent is cheating in the world of poker? Marcus is here to tell us that it is rampant, in the casinos, in the clubs, in your home game, online, and even in the World Series of Poker. Should we believe him?

To be honest, I am not quite sure how much to believe and how much to take with a grain of salt and how much to flat disbelieve. Marcus tells a lot of poker stories and he seems to know a lot of cheats, but how are we to know that he is on the up and up? After all the guy is a self-confessed cheat himself, a guy who not only cheated the casinos, but in this book reveals how he and some confederates cheated other poker players. What's to keep him from cheating the reader--that is, to hype the danger of cheating in order to sell some books?

I'll give you the answer to that in a word: nothing.

However just because he would lie doesn't mean he is lying. And just because he likes to hype the cheating doesn't mean it doesn't take place. In any human activity involving love or money, there will be some cheating going on, you can count on it.

Here are some of my conclusions about the book. First, there are a few mistakes in the text and more than a few misconceptions. One of the mistakes is on page 67 where Marcus says that dealers in the California card clubs (in the 1990s), in particular at the Bicycle Club, take the "two decks of cards, one red-backed and the other blue-backed" with them when they change tables. Not true. The dealers take their trays with the chips, but the cards stay on the table. Only the floor men and the managers are allowed to bring and remove cards from the tables.

One of the misconceptions is his idea that professional poker players are not getting proper money odds for entering tournaments such as the WSOP because of what "the host casinos remove from the entry fees to pay expenses and take commissions" (p. 107) and therefore shouldn't be entering those tournaments except for the fact that they can put the odds in their favor by colluding in various ways. Marcus calls this "the WSOP Consortium" (p. 109)

Now it might be true that regular pros who play against one another time and time again on the poker tour, might find it convenient to make some kind of agreement before hand to equally distribute winnings regardless of who in the "consortium" actually wins or loses. I can recall reading one of Doyle Brunson's books about the early days on the road in Texas and noticing that the same guys playing together would, even without necessarily having the intent, help one another rather than the current tourist they were playing against. So this can and probably does happen to some extent at the WSOP. ("Chip dumping" at the right time is a major possibility.) However, the real reason that the pros enter these tournaments is that they are actually getting a big overlay for their $10,000 entry fee because the vast majority of the players are significantly less skilled than they are.

His idea that there is not much more than a two percent difference in skill among the top professionals is probably about right, but this does not mean that the average pro only has a two percent advantage over the field. There's a lot of luck involved in any tournament, but the average skill level of the players who actually end up in the money is much greater than the average skill of a similar group of players who bomb out near the end of the second day.

Second, Marcus's description of how to actually cheat at the tables is a little off the mark. He seems innocent of the fact that even regular players would notice the "whiplash" betting going on by two or three players working in collusion. Such collusive betting patterns wouldn't last long anywhere I ever played poker. His story of how he and his cheating friends, "Carla" and "the Preacher" worked their colluding magic in Aruba in "Chapter Two: The Underworld of Casino Poker" is almost laughably amateurish. It might work on a drunken night in Aruba, but don't bring that cheap stuff into the Bellagio!

Third, while trying to explain why some honest players continue to play when they know cheating is going on, Marcus recalls something a horse player told him. His buddy "Phil" said he still took the trouble to handicap a race he knew was fixed because he didn't know which horse had been fixed to win the race. Marcus concludes that this makes sense because, say it's a basketball game that is fixed: "it's a 50-50 chance that the fix went with you or against you." (p. 147) So go ahead and handicap the game.

But it makes better sense not to bother with handicapping since it's fifty-fifty anyway (and don't bet the game either, since you lose the vigorish). Save your energy for the game or horse race in which your handicapping skills can overcome the odds.

Despite these objections I still recommend this book because Marcus definitely does give the reader a true feel for the kind of cheating that is possible (and the chapter on internet cheating is eye-opening, if nothing else), and because he does do a great job of telling a tale--true, stretched or otherwise!

Wow! If you read American Roulette, you would know that Richard Marcus has been a notorious casino cheat for 25 years, mainly by past posting roulette chips. In other words, they would slip high value chips (up to A $5000 chip) under the stack of chips under a winning number after the number has been determined.

Here, Marcus focuses on cheating at poker. He makes a number of very strong allegations without offering much in the way of proof. For example, he starts out by stating (without naming her) that actress Jennifer Tilley won her first poker title by having everyone at the table collude in losing, with the prize money distributed equally. Did this really happen? Who knows? He then gets into cheating at home games, then live games at a casino. However, his most amazing "revelations" are reserved for online poker. First, Marcus claims that collusion is rampant. Then, he claims that a program that he calls "Peeker" exists, which enables people to actaully see the other players cards online! Does this really exist? Marcus offers no proof. I have my doubts. He calims that a friend showed it to him. I don't know, but if someone had such a program, the last thing I would want to do is share it with someone who was going to put the details ina book!

The book is an easy read and hard to put down, but I would liked to seen the author offer some conclusive proofs for his strong allegations.

This book comes across as a well-written collection of stories from a poker-cheat. Many are interesting, and many of the techniques for cheating he lists are plausible. As the author states, the only defense to sophisticated cheating is to change tables whenever you suspect "something is afoul". There is no real other guidance on how to detect the advanced forms of cheating.

I was disappointed in the author's lack of understanding in general gambling theory, which was showcased in his analysis of the World Series of Poker collusion. His explanation of why the same players often do well in WSOP bordered on "conspiracy theory"; it was clear he did not understand how and why the best players in the game succeed.

Despite my criticisms, this book was very entertaining. It won't teach you anything about cheating you can't think of yourself, but it is a good read, and written such that you can digest its 200+ pages like a fast-food novel.

These unfounded complaints and about how online poker is "rigged" have been going on forever. Why would any site risk gaining a such a reputation? The online poker community would let it be known within seconds that any certain site was proven to be rigged. The sites are making plenty in rake as it is.

Collusion - sure, it happens - but it is not nearly as effective nor pandemic as the author would have you believe. And collusion is very detectable in online poker, as the site can review the hole cards of every player post-hand.

This drivel reads like the 256 page testimony of a losing poker player.

Loved the book, and would recommend it to anyone who likes a story about a good poker hustle. Poker has been somewhat synonamous with cheating since the days of the Wild West, and cheating has evolved alongside the technology of the day. Marcus tells some fun stories, even though I suspect him of embellishing here and there. It also should be noted, though, that cheating at poker isn't a gauranteed way to come out on top. Let's take collusion, for example, where two players signal each other as to what their hands are. While it provides a small EDGE, it still doesn't guarantee victory, because the intended victim might still have a huge hand himself. Same goes for chip-passing away from the table, or chip-dumping to accomplices during the tournament itself. In major tournaments (which, by the way, Marcus thinks he is "exposing" for the first time to the poker masses, when I think most people who play tournaments are aware exists to some extent) -- first of all, it's hard to get away with because most casinos require all chips to be left on the table, even during breaks, and you risk getting thrown out of a tournament if you're caught. But even if you're able to successfully pass a few chips to an accomplice. It represents only a small edge, whereas Marcus describes it as an automatic path to winning the entire tournament. I guess that sums up my only complaint with the book...Marcus tries to present the poker world as CRAWLING with cheats at every turn, almost suggesting that anyone who DOESN'T cheat simply doesn't stand a chance. But I think the reality is quite different...sure there are cheats sprinkled throughout the poker world, as in any walk of life, but I think they represent a tiny percentage of players. Why? Because cheating -- at least cheating productively -- is HARD. Much harder, in fact, than simply learning a solid, winning strategy.

I like that Marcus devoted a full chapter to ONLINE play, because that really is the present and future of poker. Seems like everyone is playing online these days, and the anonymity of the internet introduced a whole new array of cheating possibilities. But the fact off the matter is that online play is, in my opinion, much SAFER an environment because of the technologies used by sites to identify cheaters. Unlike in live casinos, the poker sites have records of every single hand played on their site, so can easily investigate suspicious play between two players (e.g. chip-dumping or soft-playing), and obviously makes impossible things like card-marking or chip-passing. In fact, I'm just recently getting back into the online scene; after the UIGEA legislation passed last year, a few sites no longer let me play, but there are plenty of sites that continue to serve the American poker market -- I just didn't know how to deposit after Neteller stopped serving the U.S., but there are plenty of alternatives I found after a little internet research -- the PokerSavior site (google for it) lists the US-friendly sites and compatible deposit methods. It will be interesting, of course, to see how the online scene changes in the coming months...with so much money at stake, there's no doubt that would-be crooks will try anything and everything...maybe even enough material for Marcus to write a sequel!

Simply put, can you trust a book written by a man who made his living telling lies and cheating people out of money? I feel like I was cheated out my money by buying this book! Shame on me! ;)

Over the past few years the game of poker (especially the forms known as Texas Hold'em) has become more popular and widespread than ever. Now almost every casino in the country has its Poker Rooms, and every week television viewers can watch poker tournaments -- which further inspires them to play in home games, online games, and aspire to make the 'final table' at gaming casinos. But as with any other game of skill and chance where money is wagered, won, and lost, there are those who cheat their fellow players. The many ways of cheating at poker range from the subtle to the obvious, and include collusion, slight-of-hand, marked cards, and chip dumping. Now poker expert Richard Marcus has provided aspiring poker players with an exhaustive manual focused on the phenomena of cheating at poker, how to insure any game they enter is an honest one, and how to spot cheating when it occurs whether it is a local game among friends, on the part of strangers in a regulated card room, or even in such massive and televised tournaments as the World Series of Poker that takes place annual in Las Vegas. Informed, informative, and thoroughly 'reader friendly, Richard Marcus practical and definitive study "Dirty Poker" should be considered 'must' reading for anyone who enjoys the game, and most especially for those who aspire to become professional poker players themselves.

It is hard to know if this author knows his facts. There is one small part about thoroughbred horseracing and his facts in that area are not right. When an author gets the one thing you really know about wrong, it is hard to believe that he is right in the areas you do not know as much about.

There is no question there is collusion when playing poker online.
No poker site will ever admit it but it's so easy to spot
and unless you are one of them there is very little chance of ever winning in a tourney. Say five raise and reraise around the table everytime when you are playing a tourney. 1st 2nd and 3rd payout really good money to win a tourney. Over time they transfer money to their 'friends'?
So unless you have lots of friends you can't win.

Great revelations! I was always suspicious of the tournament play on TV and
how juicy the ESPN and the Travel Channel make it. I've played in many
tournaments and have seen chip-dumping going on right in front of my eyes. I
don't believe for a second that all these celebrities suddenly winning major
tournaments is for real. The collusion is out there and it stinks! Thumbs up
for Marcus. He may have been a cheater but I think he's the real deal about
this.