Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Eye with suspicion the player who uses the mechanic's grip and
Eye with suspicion the player who uses the mechanic's grip and looks too often at his face-down (hole) card or cards. However, to prevent peeking, it is better still to insist that after the first betting round has been completed the stock must remain in the center of the table and all further dealing be done with one hand. For further details see Protection Against a Second Deal, above.
Shifting the Cut
Shifting the Cut The greatest challenge to the card cheat who works alone is to overcome the cut. If the rules did not ask for a cut, gambling with cards would have long ago become obsolete and playing cards would now be used only for Solitaire. Stacking, false shuffling and a confederate's false cutting are moves not too difficult for the average sharper to master, but the dealer-cheat's shifting the cut (secretly returning the cut deck to its original order) without detection under the pressure of the game and under the watchful and observant eyes of experienced card players requires the skill of a master cheater. Since most card players are chumps who can't spot crooked card moves even when sloppily executed, some cheaters still manage to get away with it. Professional cheats manage to avoid the cut altogether by working with a confederate who false-cuts the deck.