In Between Card Game Cheat
This page is partly based on a contribution from Mike Stabosz
Introduction
This game is generally called Cheat in Britain and Bullshit in the USA. In many books it appears as I Doubt It. The aim is to get rid of all your cards by playing them to a discard pile. Since cards are played face down, giving players the option to lie about the cards they are playing, but if the lie is exposed they must pick up the pile.
Upon clicking on a game, you end up in the main cheating screen, showcased in the screenshot above. The top half of the screen displays a view of the deck as seen by the secret camera embedded in the device. The image is rotated by -90 degree with the top of the deck being on the left and the bottom on the right. In the ballet — according to the All Music Guide to Classical Music — 'during a card game, Billy is caught cheating by one of his friends, Pat Garrett. The two have an argument and Garrett.
In this game each player plays the next rank above the previous player. Please note that there is another game, also known as I Doubt It or Bluff, in which all players are required to play the same rank until there is a challenge. That version of I Doubt It is described on a separate page.
Players and Cards
The game can be played by from 2 to 10 players. One standard pack of 52 cards is used.
Play
All the cards are dealt out to the players; some may have more than others, but not by much. The object is to get rid of all your cards. Select at random who should go first and continue clockwise.
On the table is a discard pile, which starts empty. A turn consists of discarding one or more cards face down on the pile, and calling out their rank. The first player must discard Aces, the second player discards Twos, the next player Threes, and so on. After Tens come Jacks, then Queens, then Kings, then back to Aces, etc.
Since the cards are discarded face down, you do not in fact have to play the rank you are calling. For example if it is your turn to discard Sevens, you may actually discard any card or mixture of cards; in particular, if you don't have any Sevens you will be forced to play some other card or cards.
Any player who suspects that the card(s) discarded by a player do not match the rank called can challenge the play by calling 'Cheat!', 'Bullshit!' or 'I doubt it!' (depending on what you call the game). Then the cards played by the challenged player are exposed and one of two things happens:
- if they are all of the rank that was called, the challenge is false, and the challenger must pick up the whole discard pile;
- if any of the played cards is different from the called rank, the challenge is correct, and the person who played the cards must pick up the whole discard pile.
After the challenge is resolved, play continues in normal rotation: the player to the left of the one who was challenged plays and calls the next rank in sequence.
The first player to get rid of all their cards and survive any challenge resulting from their final play wins the game. If you play your last remaining card(s), but someone challenges you and the cards you played are not what you called, you pick up the pile and play continues.
Variations
If there are a lot of players, you may use two or more packs shuffled together.
For some people the sequence of ranks which have to be played goes downward rather than upward, beginning A, K, Q, J, 10, ..
Some people play that you can (claim to) play either the next rank above or the next rank below the rank announced by the previous player. For instance if the player before you played some cards an said 'two tens', and you do not wish to challenge, you have a choice of playing jacks or nines.
Some allow cards of the same rank as the last card to be played, as well as the next higher or lower rank.
In the Chinese game known as 吹牛 (chuī niú = bragging) or 说谎 (shuō huăng = lying) played in Fujian province, there is no restriction on the rank of cards to be played except that the cards in each set played must all be (claimed to be) equal. It would therefore be possible to play the whole game without lying, but then it would take you more turns to get rid of your cards than a player who was able to lie successfully. This version is normally played with several decks shuffled together, so that a player can claim to play a large number of cards of the same rank without it being an obvious lie. This game is described in Mae Channing's blog.
Some play that you can try cheat by playing more cards than you claim to have played - for example say three eights while playing three eights and a jack. This can be challenged in the usual way and you pick up the discard pile if your play did not match your call.
Description another version of this game can be found on Khopesh's Bullshit page.
Two closely related games are described on other pages:
- Another version of I Doubt It!, in which players must all play (or claim to play) the same rank.
- The Russian game Verish' ne Verish' ('trust - don't trust'), which is similar to the above.
Proprietary Versions
DollTV has published BS Button Game, a package containing a deck of cards and a red button. Players challenge by pressing the button which speaks the word 'bullshit' in a variety of celebrity impression voices. The deck contains the standard 52 cards plus two wild jokers and two 'bureaucrat' cards. Plays are limited to not more than four cards at a time, and the holder of a bureaucrat may play it immediately after a challenge to cancel the challenge and specify the rank of cards to be played next. The BS Button Game can be ordered from amazon.com.
Online Games
Gameslush.com offers an online Cheat game against live opponents or computer players.
Cheat can be played online at TrapApps.
Last week I attended a concert by the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, the largest classical music organization in my new hometown. One of the pieces performed was 'Suite from Billy the Kid,' written by the then-unknown Aaron Copland in 1939. I've heard recordings of this piece many times, but it was only at this live performance that I realized it includes a musical depiction of a poker game.
The fourth movement I had previously known only by its main title, 'Prairie Night.' But the program for the concert included the subtitle that had previously escaped my attention: 'Card Game at Night.'
Hacker game cheat engine. In the ballet — according to the All Music Guide to Classical Music — 'during a card game, Billy is caught cheating by one of his friends, Pat Garrett. The two have an argument and Garrett rides off to join the side of law and order, and to eventually become a sheriff in pursuit of Billy.' This leads to a shootout between the two sides, in which Billy is captured and several of his gang are killed.
I found nothing that definitively says that the card game in the ballet is poker, but it sure seems like the most likely possibility. Billy the Kid's real-life criminal exploits occurred in the late 1870s in Arizona and New Mexico, a time and place coincident with the explosion of poker's popularity. And at what other card game would it make dramatic sense for cheating to turn friends into bitter enemies?
We're fortunate to be living at a time in which lethal violence rarely if ever erupts in your better-managed card rooms. When guns are drawn in casinos, it's almost always for a robbery, not from anger. Even in home games, robbery and police raids appear to be more frequent as triggers of violence than disputes between players.
While cheating carries less potential for deadly outcome than it did on the 19th-century frontier, to accuse another player of cheating at poker is still rife with tension. Even in the safest, most civilized circumstances, accusing another player — rightly or wrongly — of cheating or any other breach of personal integrity in a poker game is far more explosive than the sickest bad beat.
What should you do if you are in a poker game and suspect cheating is occurring? There are courses of action to take, although my first and strongest advice is to avoid direct confrontation. It's simply too inflammatory to be advisable, and there are usually better responses available.
But what can you do? It depends on the setting.
Brick-and-mortar casino
There are only two forms of cheating you're likely to encounter in a brick-and-mortar casino. The first is taking chips off the table to protect a win — a.k.a. 'going south' or 'rat-holing.'
I've encountered such incidents on a few occasions, and in my experience this is most often done by players who don't understand that it's against the rules. But even when done knowingly, it's a lesser form of cheating, in that it doesn't directly take money that doesn't belong to them. If you see it happening, point it out to the dealer, or to a floor person away from the table.
A variation on this theme is tournament players who sneak high-value tournament chips off the table, accumulate them at home over time, then sneak them back onto the table another day to pad a stack and increase their chances of winning. (I've also had an encounter with this form of cheating before.) You should obviously immediately alert tournament staff if you see a player either removing or adding chips to the table.
The more serious potential problem is collusion. This can take many forms. The classic is two or more friends playing at the same table, and secretly signaling each other regarding the strength of their hands. They can then trap other players holding a second-best hand into a betting/raising contest. Or in a tournament one can dump chips to the other by deliberately losing large pots, with any cash won to be split between them later.
It's usually difficult to know with certainty that this is happening. Your only defense is to be alert to the possibility, and watch for suspicious and repeated betting patterns. When you have enough reason to be concerned, alert the floor away from the table.
Home game
Home games can be rich incubators for cheating. That is not to say that all home games are suspect. Most are just fine, played by honest folks who would never cheat friends or visitors. But the nature of the setting is such that you can be targeted by all sorts of shenanigans that are difficult to spot, let alone prove. Marked cards, false shuffles, hands set up to be coolers, chip stealing, and collusion are all real possibilities.
Worse, you have virtually no recourse even when your suspicions are well grounded. This is the paradigmatic situation in which my admonition not to level direct accusations is most applicable. You have no way to know who might be in on the scheme, what their potential for violence is, or who could be carrying concealed weapons.
The best advice is to keep your suspicions to yourself, take the loss, leave cordially — and never go back. Take your lumps and put the incident behind you. If you're right that there's cheating going on, it's foolhardy to return thinking that you can catch them, beat the game, get recompense or revenge, or whatever other heroics you might imagine.
Even if you're wrong, and everything was above-board, you'll never be able to play your best in that game in the future, because your attention will be diverted to watching for dirty players and shady moves. Just let it go.
Online
Fortunately, online poker doesn't carry much potential for personal injury if you accuse another player of cheating. Nobody's likely to know who you are, or, even if they do, travel to your home in order to punch you in the face for your defamation.
Unfortunately, detecting cheating is even harder online than in person. The biggest cheating scandals have been exposed only by sophisticated statistical analysis of large numbers of tracked hands.
The major, regulated online poker sites deploy advanced combinations of computer algorithms and human analysts who will discover collusive patterns much more readily than you can on your own. Sites like PokerStars, 888poker, and partypoker take extensive measures to ensure games are secure and fair. Meanwhile unregulated sites can be less careful about monitoring, and should therefore be avoided.
In Between Card Game Cheat Sheet
If you have reason to suspect collusion between players while participating in an online cash game or tournament, your only recourse, obviously, is to alert the site of what you see, and hope they will do a rigorous investigation.
Even here, though, I think it's better not to make your suspicions known to the players involved before reporting them. If they're guilty, it will be easier for the site to catch them if the players are unaware they're being investigated, and thus continue their cheating ways.
Conclusion
Mike Caro has famously said, 'Poker cheaters should be boiled and eaten. If you think I'm not serious, you boil; I'll eat.'
Sadly, you're not likely to have Caro around to help you dole out a fitting punishment to poker cheaters. Confronting them on your own is asking for trouble — far more than it's worth. Take your observations to the proper authorities when you can, and when you can't, just walk away.
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the 'Poker Grump' blog.
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Photo: “Poker Night,” TineyHo. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.
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