No, I'm not referring to a new shooting angle with my webcam here; nor am I talking about shooting at the nearest shooting range; nor about pool playing angles; I am talking about that set of actions undertaken by clever cheats which occupy a strange gray area in the game of poker.

Angle shooting is engaging in actions that may technically be within the scope of the rules of the game, but that are considered unethical or unfair to exploit or take advantage of another player. For example, an angle shooter might motion as if he were folding his hand to induce other poker players to fold theirs out of turn.

Like the time when I was playing this online poker tourney where there were these two players who were taking 20-30 seconds every time it was their turn to play. They did it every single time as if they were in cahoots. One of them was continuously chatting in some foreign language and the other was constantly aiming abuse at the pot-winning participant, including me. Is the slow playing taking it away from me, I wondered....I figured the only advantage he was getting was by aggravating and angering everyone on the poker table and put a couple of them on tilt even.

Look at another setting: Arin, my friend, was at a showdown while playing on one of the top poker sites and this guy deliberately miscalls his hand - probably with the intention of influencing Arin who may have had a better hand, to muck! I mean, Arin had top pair, and Mr. Miscaller very likely had a lower pair, but he declares on the chat, "I have the straight"
Arin folds in anger and frustration. The whole table realized that Mr. Miscaller was lying but it was no use - Arin had folded a winner, the angle shooter guy took the nice big pot!

As per Wiki, yet another form of angle shooting which is pretty exclusive to online poker is to abuse the disconnect protection (DP) rules most internet poker sites have in place. Disconnect Protection is a rule exclusive to online poker rooms whereby if a player is disconnected from the site in the middle of the hand his hand is played out as if he were all-in without the player actually having to put any more money in the pot. The online poker rooms that offer DP usually have specific tables set aside for this so that all players at the table are aware that the special DP rules will apply. How this is used by angle shooters is if a player is in a hand that he is unsure if he has the best cards and doesn't want to invest any more money to find out. He can unplug his internet connection and then wait for the hand to play itself out. On a DP table the remaining cards in the hand would be dealt and the pot would be awarded to the player with the best cards. If there were multiple opponents in the hand then he would be eligible for a side pot, of course!

Angle shooting is done to manipulate your opponents and gain an unfair edge in the game. And they are mostly lacking in evidence since the intention can never be proved and the defaulter can get away with it pretending or claiming that it was a legit error. Make sure that you observe and mark the pattern of such angle shooters clearly. You will find that inadvertently they will repeat their tactics and then you have them. File a complaint with the online poker site that you are playing on, or stay away from these compulsive cheaters.

There is no stopping the cheater who wants to have a go at his techniques - he will constantly re-invent himself and try staying a step ahead of normal honest players.

Like the old poker story goes: "Stop cheating!" the dealer told the card player. "I'm not!" claimed the player. "You must be," said the dealer. "That is not the hand that I dealt you."