Shooting Angles, a Method of Cheating at Casinos

A kind of cheating or an advantage play?

Angle shooting is a very common way of casino cheating which is especially seen in poker. Actually, angle shooting is advantage play and not really cheating. The rules are not broken by the players but they take advantage of them as much as they can.

Players use a wide variety of tactics and actions which fall under the category of angle shooting. For example, when a player purposely acts out of turn it is known as angle shooting. By doing this, the player can get a reaction out of his opponents and then make up his mind about what his actual move should be.

Many players often pretend to raise or bet during their turn. He/she can even pick up the chips and pretend to bet to just check the reactions of the opponents and then he might just check rather than raise.

String raise

One type of angle shooting method which has now been made illegal is string raise. This had been very commonly used by players till the time it had been legal. The move allows a player to check the reactions of his opponents and it lets him intimidate his opponents and make them play poorly. Sometimes a player would intentionally miscall his hand during showdown in hopes that the other player who has a better hand would just fold. For example, if an angle shooter has low value cards, he might just declare it to be a strong hand which would make other players fold their cards before he actually has to reveal his real cards.

Other methods of angle shooting

There are even several other trivial methods of angle shooting which are often used by players. A player may flash his hole cards to someone else to check his reaction. He also may even declare a misdeal when the deal had actually been legitimate only because he/she did not like his cards. Angle shooting is in fact a collection of dozens of tricks and tactics used by players to take undue advantage while still staying under the rules of the game.

Angle shooters get an advantage of the game, they get all the information that they want which legally they should not have. It is a method by which they manipulate their opponents and make them act the way they want. However, nobody can actually prove them to be deliberately doing it since they can just declare that it had been a genuine mistake. For this reason it is very difficult to detect angle shooters and actually do something about them. For this reason, legally angle shooting is not considered to be cheating and is still widely used by players all around the world to get an advantage of poker and other games.