Blackjack Cheat: Spooking

There are so many ways to cheat at blackjack though, and we don't recommend any of them. Actually cheating at a casino games can get you in big trouble with the law, and you probably don't want to tangle with the security at a casino either. This is more of an intellectual discussion of cheating as it pertains to blackjack, rather than a "how-to" manual.

Spooking is one of the blackjack cheat and illegal ways to find out about the cards of your rival. This kind of cheating has changed a little bit lately though the old way of it is also possible to observe today. This cheating method takes 2 people – one person to play the hand and a second to stand near or behind the dealer to peek at the dealer's hole card. Once the hole card is determined, the spotter conveys the information to the player by a secret signal.

Spooking was actually a dealer’s way to cheat blackjack first. After giving a player the first card and seeing that this card was of 10 points or an Ace, a dealer tried to peek under the second card in order to find out whether the player would have blackjack. If so, this dealer turned up the card and stopped the game immediately without playing any hands.

Later, blackjack cheaters tried to outwit a dealer and began to work in groups. One of them stayed behind a dealer and was able to see what card would be the next. After that he gave a sign to his “colleagues”.

The person who stood behind a dealer or sat at other table to be able to see a dealer’s cards was called a spook. Dealers do not use this way of cheating anymore because of the above reason. They stopped doing that after players began to play in teams.

But spooking is still a very popular way of blackjack cheating and the vocabulary of blackjack terminology describes it in such a way:

Spooking – the act of standing behind a dealer, peeking under his hole card and giving the information to a partner who sits at the table and actually plays with a dealer.

As for a spook, he is described as the following:

A spook – a team member who stands behind a dealer’s back and peeks under his cards with further giving of information to his partner at the blackjack table.

Trouble is, the casino and the player don't always agree on what constitutes cheating. And although they'd deny it, sometimes it's the house and not the player who's doing the cheating. If anything, these descriptions are intended to educate honest blackjack players at cheating methods so they can spot them and defend themselves against them.

After all, if you see someone using one of these methods at a blackjack table, it's best to alert security, because players as well as the house are being cheated. Getting caught cheating at both live casino and online casino is trouble that no sane person wants, because casinos routinely prosecute cheaters!