Chip Dumping

Also known as: dumping chips, chip dump

Deliberately losing chips to a colluding player to transfer stack or value — a form of cheating, not strategy.

Chip dumping is intentionally giving up chips to another player through soft or deliberately bad play — folding the winner, betting into a known-better hand, or making a wild call to lose — so that value moves from one stack to a confederate's. Unlike angle shooting, which exploits gray areas, chip dumping is collusion: it's flat-out cheating and grounds for disqualification, confiscation of chips, and bans.

The motives are predictable. In tournaments it consolidates two short stacks into one viable one near a pay jump or bubble, or moves chips to a backer. In money-laundering and bonus-abuse schemes online, a loser deliberately dumps a bankroll to a partner. In staking arrangements gone wrong, it's how a horse cheats a backer.

The behavioral fingerprints are unnatural lines: a player open-shoving into a confederate who snap-calls light, repeated soft folds in spots that should be calls, or pots where the action makes no sense except as a transfer. Online security flags it through betting-pattern analysis and shared-table history; live, a floorman and surveillance handle it. If you see a credible pattern, report it — don't try to police it at the table yourself.