Lying at the Table

**Dice Man** · 26th April 2006, 04:58 PM

Consider this hypothetical example. You have the nuts on the river and your opponent (lets say they're bullying the place up with a stack of 10k) asks you how much you have left, is it okay to blatantly lie to them about how much you have? Suppose the pot is only about 1000 here and you claim to have another 1500 back whereas really you have 10k as well. You're hiding your big denomination chips under and behind your lower chips so it's hard for them to see how much you have. They decide to go all in, which as far as they're concerned is about a 1500 raise, you could call this and take a pot of 21k. Is this fair poker? It's definitely dishonest but aren't you allowed to say what you want at the poker table? Is is their fault that they trusted you to count out your own chips? Then again I suppose it would look a bit weird him coming over to count your chips for you, as you're not really supposed to be touching other people's chips. Suppose that there's no dealer as well.

**Rich Ghost** · 26th April 2006, 05:09 PM

Just don't answer him/her lol and childishly hide your chips with your arm.

Seriously though, i have no idea where you stand with that. I'm sure one of the gurus will know.

**Prowler** · 26th April 2006, 05:10 PM

hiding chips or lying about how many you have is cheating and against the rules, your opponent is allowed by the rules to know exactly how many chips you have at any time

**waltypies** · 26th April 2006, 05:10 PM

I think if someone asks for a count you need to tell the truth. Or they can get someone else to count the chips for you

**FirePhil** · 26th April 2006, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by Diceman

Is this fair poker?

Definitely not.

Originally Posted by Diceman

Is is their fault that they trusted you to count out your own chips?

No, they should be able to trust you and you should give an accurate chip count. If there is a dealer I suppose you could do nothing and let them count it, but don't lie.

A situation a bit like this happened to me at a live tournament a while back, I asked an opponent how much they had left and they said "a bit". Rather than asking them to count it as I should have done I just tried to count it myself from across the table and missed a 10k chip they had at the back of a row of chips (the table had built in chip racks), I set them in thinking it was ~2k and it turned out to be ~12k. Not quite the same as they didn't give me any misinformation but the same principle of not giving an opponent the information they are entitled to, though completely unintentionally in this case and I'm sure they would have counted had I asked them for an exact count.

**Dice Man** · 26th April 2006, 06:09 PM

OK thanks, I thought it would be cheating as well.

**PokerWoody** · 26th April 2006, 11:18 PM

Originally Posted by Diceman

Consider this hypothetical example. You have the nuts on the river and your opponent (lets say they're bullying the place up with a stack of 10k) asks you how much you have left, is it okay to blatantly lie to them about how much you have? Suppose the pot is only about 1000 here and you claim to have another 1500 back whereas really you have 10k as well. You're hiding your big denomination chips under and behind your lower chips so it's hard for them to see how much you have. They decide to go all in, which as far as they're concerned is about a 1500 raise, you could call this and take a pot of 21k. Is this fair poker? It's definitely dishonest but aren't you allowed to say what you want at the poker table? Is is their fault that they trusted you to count out your own chips? Then again I suppose it would look a bit weird him coming over to count your chips for you, as you're not really supposed to be touching other people's chips. Suppose that there's no dealer as well.

I only read the first half of this post. Lying about, or hiding how many chips you have, will NEVER get you invited back to any game I play in. I prefer chatting over messenger.

**PokerWoody** · 26th April 2006, 11:23 PM

I'm glad everyone agrees with me on this.

The best way to win at poker is to get yourself invited back to the games that you can easily beat. Doing as you suggest is massivley -EV unless you need to cheat to win, in which case you are playing in the wrong games.