In poker, there are players you want to be like and players you don’t want to be like. Angle shooters fall in the latter category. They inhabit the gray area between what the rules expressly forbid and what is considered unacceptable but not explicitly forbidden. These are opponents with no shame who stoop to unethical practices purely to gain a short-term advantage over other players. Angle shooters carefully ensure their misdemeanors don’t get them banned from the table. Still, their actions can result in a negative experience for everyone else and even cause opponents to tilt.

This manipulative behavior goes against the spirit of poker, which is why a player with the reputation of being an angle shooter isn’t likely to get invited to friendly games. Angle shooting is more common in live poker, but you’ll find it in online poker too. In this article we look at what constitutes angle shooting, provide examples and share tips on dealing with it. 

Live Poker Angle Shooting Examples

What is the purpose of angle shooting in poker? It’s to get an informational advantage you wouldn’t obtain by merely playing the game. This information could help you assess your opponent’s strength, let you win more or lose less money or get a favorable result by fooling your opponent. The difference between angle shooting and common bluffs is that the former relies on unacceptable manipulative behavior. Here are some of the most common angles you’ll come across at a live table.

Pump Fake

When you play live poker, you may notice that players sometimes make a move that looks like they’re about to call or fold when in fact, they’re just trying to pump information out of you. Say, two players are on the river and one goes all in; an angle shooter might respond by grabbing chips and pretending to throw them in, only to stop again and stare at their opponent to see how they respond to that call. This is a blatant pump fake.

String Betting

This is when a player fakes their bet to gauge their opponents’ willingness to call. Imagine a player who throws $25 onto the table, sees an opponent reach for their chips, then adds another $50. Now their opponent has to call with a much bigger amount.

Checking Ambiguously

Look out for players with restless hands. When the action approaches, they might make a gesture that looks like a check – but when the action moves to the next player, they indicate it wasn’t a check. This kind of angle shooting gives them time to see what other players will do.

Dummy Raising

Some casinos have a house rule where you must say out loud what you’re going to bet. Otherwise, you can only double the original bet. An angle shooter can take advantage of this by putting out a bunch of chips – just not enough chips to count as an actual raise when the dealer counts the chips. The idea is to fool you into folding prematurely.

False Declaration

Watch out for the angle shooter who declares a strong hand before or while turning their cards over. If you believe them and think you’re beat, you might fold without cause. As a result, your hand will be dead, allowing the angle shooter to steal the pot even though the hand they show isn’t what they declared.

Hiding Chips

Hiding big denomination chips behind a stack of lower denomination chips is a classic angle designed to dupe you into thinking your opponent’s stack is smaller than it really is. This angle can be particularly deadly in poker tournaments, so be on your guard.

The Fake Misclick

The term “misclick” comes from the early days of online poker when “fat fingers” could result in bets that were much too large or small. In live poker, it’s when a player uses the wrong denomination or number of chips. A fake misclick dupes opponents into calling or raising absurdly big bets. For example, a player might say “five” when they raise preflop and throw in a 5,000 chip instead of 500. If opponents get involved in this oversized pot, they might find themselves facing a strong hand.

Online Poker Angle Shooting Examples

Angle shooting relies — to a large extent — on psychological manipulation, which is much more difficult to achieve when you’re playing poker online. However, even here, there are a couple of angles that unscrupulous players can exploit.

Disconnect Protection Abuse

In some poker rooms, players enjoy protection from losing hands due to connectivity issues. If your connection goes down in the middle of a hand, you’ll still get to go to showdown and play for the pot. Angle shooters take advantage of this by intentionally disconnecting to go to showdown without putting in more money.

Lying in Chat

The live chat stream in a poker room can be a free-for-all, with players typing all kinds of nonsense to get a rise out of opponents and angle for advantage. Unless there’s a moderator to stop this behavior, angle shooters are free to lie about their hands and intentions. Since there’s no way of telling whether the information in the chat is true or false, it’s best to ignore it.

How To Deal With Angle Shooting in Poker

If you encounter what looks like manipulative behavior in a poker game, first be a good sport and give your opponent the benefit of the doubt. Not every player has the experience to know when they’re in the gray zone, so do them a favor and point it out. If they don’t understand what they’ve done wrong, explain. If you’re dealing with a true angle shooter, you should warn other players and draw the dealer’s attention to the problem. At the same time, make sure you aren’t overreacting to potentially annoying yet acceptable behaviors like berating, cutting out, calling chips, playing slow and general Hollywooding (eye rolling, giving away fake tells, cursing the community cards and so on.) But if you have the bad luck to find yourself at a table dominated by an arsenal of angle shooters, the best move may be to leave the room.

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