Poker Cheaters Caught in Austin TX

Word is spreading as these scumbags tried to make their way to Houston and are finding the rooms are ready for them

Also got a better picture of the Seat 1 guy

That guy looks like a fierce competitor not to be messed with.

They run VERY good when they have the deck marked

He was tanking for 5 minutes there on the river trying to get a soul-read from his opponent.

Info keeps pouring in. These guys also play NLH, there's some who've mentioned they've also used ink to mark cards, there's been mention one had a "device" in their pocket, etc. But it seems gouging the edges of the cards seems to be the most common method.

I now have full names but there's also talk that one of them was going by the name "Mike" and I've had rooms tell me they've banned these guys years ago but then others saying they ran into them in those rooms recently. So they may have fake ID's/Names they're using beyond the information I've found so far

The guy who usually sits in seat 6 has a UFC Tattoo on the back of his head

Knish,
Thank you on behalf of myself and the plo community for outing/catching these scumbags. Cheaters/Scammers are the absolute worst and way too often poker room management turns a blind eye not realizing the disastrous long term effect they have on a game and the entire room. I play in Dallas and South Florida and will definitely try and be more aware/alert going forward.
Racetrack

They were at Legends yesterday, identified and kicked out. They were actually playing NL Holdem instead of PLO and were sitting in their normal 1 and 6 seats.

I'm hearing there are also others they've trained over the years out there operating, including Euros. So room operators need to be aware to look for those gouges on the edges of the deck

Are you the OG TripleThreat?

Kilgore

What's up? Worcester County in the house!

My reddit thread was the top one in r/poker yesterday with over 100,000 views. Word is spreading fast on these scumbags and they're finding it harder to locate a spot to cheat people.

Unfortunately the seat 6 guy found my socials and started sending me threats about "everything has consequences" and he'd be seeing me "face-to-face"

I have mugshots on them but it's all drug-related crimes rather than violence. But they've also been cheating like this for 7+ years and probably made hundreds of thousands easily, so I'm threatening that livlihood.

Gonna talk to the local PD and the Sheriff's Office for my County, maybe even I.C.E. and make sure we've got hole punchers ready just in case.

Still playing recreationally. Two kids and a dog, decent job, life is good.

You're a Texan!

PokerNews has taken up the story putting the two cheaters on blast and discovering a ban from casinos in FL as well

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2026/01/poker-cheaters-banned-from-texas-poker-room-50409.htm

pokernews

Longtime Cheaters Caught Marking Cards in Texas Poker Room, Promptly Get Banned

Word is they tried to get into Just Jacks in Killeen as well as being seen in the Houston area, but because word spread they were caught and sent packing. Last heard they were sighted in Mississippi

Here's a pic of the UFC tat on seat 6's head

Does this mean NLHE is much harder to cheat at than PLO?

Getting 4 cards gets the deck marked twice as fast, and I'm sure the interaction between hole cards and the board is stronger just based on hi/med/low ranks, but it seems to me they're getting greedy chasing every edge they can get.

You don't need a co-conspirator and your favorite vantage of the deck to gain an edge with marked cards, and chasing those edges have brought quite a bit of suspicion upon themselves.

So I guess I'm saying, I wouldn't rest easy as a hold 'em player. These are just the guys who are doing it blatantly enough to get caught.

Lol these guys are on the run all over the country. Sounds like a movie. Soft White Underbelly should get them for an interview.

Is there a reason for the specific Seat 1 and 6 thing?

Possibly better view if they are signalling each other. I know it is a serious issue but at the same time it's amusing watching them move around like this.

Edit: Also the guy with the distinctive tat is as stupid as they come given he could be identified from Mars.

1 seat makes sense, right-handed dealers likely have the deck lying right in front of their eyes most the hand. I guess 6 seat is just the best opposite angle to catch any marks out of sight from the 1 seat.

Also helpful to have eyes on opposite sides of the table 'cause their opponents' hole cards are marked too.

As stated, with PLO they get to have 8 cards in play and it's a game that is going to see more straights, flushes, full houses, etc. So they can play hands more likely to hit. I've heard that they've also used ink on cards in the past so maybe that applies in the hold em games more since they have less cards to work with, not really certain.

But in PLO you can just look like some degenerate action-junkie playing all sorts of crazy hands and getting lucky, and it'll stand out less than someone consistently hitting in NLH

Because they both come across as very loose, one can open and they're more likely to get callers or raisers in between. Then the 2nd guy can repop or just call and let the 1st guy repop it, essentially trapping players between them for raises.

Since they share a bankroll, all that matters is that one of them wins the hand, so the 2nd guy can "lose" but not really "lose" by getting involved.

I had a dealer mention one of them told him he was "unlucky" or something along those lines, and it turns out he was a left-handed dealer. So seems there is some merit in my belief that when they both got up when certain dealers sat down, it was because of a right vs left-handed issue making it tough to read the deck.

I stand by my assessment that they have Postle syndrome and are chasing edges way too aggressively. It's not enough to "just" collude and have some advantaged info on hole cards for half an hour, they have to temporarily quit the game anytime they don't know what the flop, turn and river are gonna be.

Seems like a common pattern ... at least among the ones that get caught!

I think with most cheaters they develop a feeling of invincibility. I mean, these guys have done this for 7+ years now and there's a LOT of places to play poker just here in the U.S. And if they get caught, they just bounce with their ill-gotten gains and move on to the next room, rinse and repeat.

The lack of real consequences makes it easy to justify when they've stolen hundreds of thousands

All I'm saying is that it's survival bias because we can only describe the cheaters that got caught.

If it took this much and this long for these guys to get banned from a small percentage of the country's rooms, I imagine there's a whole other subsample of cheaters that might have different behavior patterns.

I didn't even know we had to worry about marked cards. How can there be so many cameras and so much floor staff and no one's so much glancing at the relatively small number of games with $10k+ on the table or at least occasionally running random audits of the cards?!

I mean, I know the answer is because it doesn't affect the house's money, but still... For as much cheating as there is online, at least the sites keep up an appearance that they investigate and drop the hammer where possible.

It's really amazing and shows how much more dangerous smart cheaters can be. Don't get me wrong even a dip **** with a giant UFC tattoo on his head and his buddy who has to take a break with left handed dealers can cheat people out of a lot of money. So imagine what smart cheaters are doing.