There are plenty of winning strategies and techniques in poker, but also many things to avoid. Angle shooting is one of them, and today we will take a closer look at it.
While cheating is easy to recognize and it includes actions like colluding with other players, marking the cards, stealing chips or using bots in online games, angle shooting is a bit more difficult to spot. It is something related to the proper conduct of a poker game, and it basically means to use unethical and deceptive tactics in order to take advantage of others in order to win.
We’ll go into a few practical examples a bit later in this article, but now let’s see what angle shooting generally refers to. The main idea is to influence an opponent into thinking something different and to act accordingly. It’s also angle shooting when you are trying to gain information from a player and to see how they react to certain triggers, and when you are trying to hide the strength of your hand or the size of your pot.
Serious casinos and poker platforms have specific rules in order to prevent angle shooting, yet it still happens a lot, even at pro levels and high stakes games. Now let’s take a look at some practical examples of angle shooting in live poker:
- Since many hand or body movements are accepted as a sign for checking, some players take advantage of this. For example, you can make a small gesture to make the dealer believe that you checked and to see the reaction of the other players, but then say that you haven’t actually checked and call or raise the hand
- Angle shooting is also when you place an initial bet to see some reaction from other players, and then you add more chips saying that the bet was not complete yet
- Another example is when you push your cards forward (but not across the line) and make other players think that you folded. But then you take back your cards saying that it wasn’t actually a fold
- An angle shot is also when you say “raise” but put out the chips needed for calling, and then claim that you made a mistake…even though you know right from the start that you want to raise. This trick can be done when having a really good hand in order to get even more money from the other player. It has been successfully pulled out many times by Ivan Freitez
- Another common technique used by angle shooters is to mis-declare your hand at showdown. They use this trick in order to make their opponent muck their hand earlier, so that they can show their actual hand and state that the opponent should lose because they called and then mucked. Many casinos took precaution measures in order to prevent this, but it still happens sometimes.
- It’s also angle shooting if you arrange your chips in such a way that your opponents think that you will bet
- And also when you hide your larger denomination chips from the view of opponents, so they assume that you have a smaller stack. This happened multiple times to various players, but also to Alec Torelli which was accused of angle shooting in a game against an amateur player
- Another dirty technique is to berate your opponents in order to manipulate them
- Even looking at another player’s cards can be considered as angle shooting
- And also saying that you haven’t even looked at your cards (especially when you have a small stack and you decide to go all-in), when you have actually seen your cards and you know that it’s a good hand. This happens a lot, and it even happened on the TV show “The Big Game” when Tony G did this to Phil Hellmuth
- Yelling out the hand that you want your opponents to believe you have. For example, saying out loud “Flush!”, even if you don’t actually have it
- It’s also unethical to act when it’s not your turn, and to do this intentionally in order to misinform your opponents
- It’s also not ok to talk to your opponents during the game and to try to read their hand
These were just some examples of angle shooting techniques, but there are many more others out there. As you can see, it is much easier to apply such techniques in live poker. While the same don’t apply for online poker, it’s still possible to angle shoot in online games as well. Here are just some of the used techniques:
- To abuse the “Disconnection Protection” feature. Many websites have such a feature that when a player gets disconnected, the rest of the hand will be played as if he was all in. Some people abuse this feature and get disconnected intentionally in order to go all in. Luckily most websites have a limit on how many minutes you can get “Disconnection Protection’ each day, yet it still can be possible on some platforms
- To exit the game earlier in order to protect the winnings. Some players do this when they win big money, and then they re-enter at the same table with just the minimum number of chips required. This can be stopped if the dealer or the other players notice it, but it still can happen, especially if they are signing in with a different account
- Abusing the chat box. As some players speak loudly in live games in order to influence others or to get a reaction from them, this can also be done in the chat box. The simplest example is when you write in the chat box that you will go all in, when in reality you will just check.
So here were some examples of angle shooting in live and online poker. For even more information on this topic and to learn how it can actually be beneficial, we invite you to read this full article.
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