In order of appearance. Most likely first.
1. Shorting the pot either by splashing the pot or making your own inaccurate change. This is hard to detect and harder to punish < if the villain isn’t too greedy>
One red bird every couple of hours turns into $500/yr in a weekly game.
2. Peeking or exploiting dealer faults. Hard to draw the line between cheating and advantage gambling.
3. Collusion. Collusion is such a squishy term, turned even more bastardized by the current US politics. sometimes harmless, sometimes backfires, occasionally effective. Often the “cheaters” don’t really understand collusion is wrong - “so implied collusion is ok but not so for explicit collusion” sounds like the old hands can do it but not us newby players.
4. Wringing in fake chips. Not so much a problem for PCF hosts, but games with dice chips beware.
5. Holding out cards - I.e. the cheat keeps a couple of spare cards from prior hands hidden under the rail or such and switches them out if needed. So holding out
plus your current two card means it is much easier to make a big flush or top set - kind like the cheat gets to play Omaha while the rest of the table plays holdem. It is a weak sauce waste of cheating to make top pair too often.
6. Never known a game with marked decks, stacked decks or a mechanic. Could happen. Would not likely detect it if it were going on so long as the cheat wasn’t greedy.
I worked with an FBI agent years ago who followed the mantra that almost everyone is honest by default but when exposed to temptation even the most honorable man can succumb. I thought that was a sound way to look at life and my home poker game. Don’t splash the pot. Don’t make change in the middle of a hand, use cut cards. Always cut the deck - no one gets to tap and anyone can cut a second time. Use somewhat unique chips. Use separate chips for tournament play vs cash game. Occasionally count down the stub.
Trust but verify -=- DrStrange