Editor's pick

Cheating at Poker

Review

With more and more home games being played all over the world every day, being cheated, either by a dealer or by another player, is something that many poker players will experience at one time or another. Cheating at Poker is an instructional video that sets out to help players spot cheats in any game.

George Joseph is an authority on gaming protection and cheating. He has worked as a surveillance expert for many casinos in Las Vegas helping catch cheats. He has also trained law enforcement professionals and served as an expert witness in several casino cheating prosecutions, and appeared on countless television productions.

On Cheating at Poker, George Joseph teaches the viewer about poker cheats, including peeks, false shuffles, false cuts and many more. The video is an old production, re-released in the middle of the current poker boom to educate the legions of new players on different techniques used by cheats in card games.

While Cheating at Poker's content is easy to understand and well explained, the production quality seriously undermines it. It's easy to see that this video has at least 20 years on its shoulders. The sound quality is horrible, the picture is colorless and the dealer's tie, well, let's just leave it at that. (Of course, with better color registration the tie might be even harder to look at.)

While the content is good, it's difficult to justify the filmmakers' decision not to re-shoot the scenes. You come away with the feeling that everything you learned was new in the '70s, making the overall effect anachronistic.

Overall, Cheating at Poker is a good instructional video that should be re-produced. When you spend $20 on a DVD, you don't expect a production that unintentionally reminds you of your childhood Super 8 vacation reels.

The production is just too sub-par to earn this DVD a "purchase" recommendation.

Details:

• $19.95