Angle shooting
Also called angle
Angle shooting is using sneaky, technically-legal moves to mislead or gain an unfair edge over opponents — bending the rules' spirit without openly cheating.
Angle shooting covers the gray-area tricks players use to confuse opponents or squeeze out an edge while staying just inside the written rules. It is not outright cheating like marking cards, but it is widely seen as dishonest and bad manners. The whole point is to exploit someone's uncertainty or a loophole in table procedure rather than to win the hand fairly.
Classic moves include pretending to fold or call to fish for a reaction, hiding your big chips behind smaller stacks so opponents misjudge how much you have, acting out of turn on purpose to influence others, or making an ambiguous motion that could be read as a check or a bet depending on what helps you. Many of these show up live, where physical actions and verbal declarations leave room to be 'accidentally' misleading.
As a beginner, the takeaway is simple: don't do it, and don't get rattled when someone tries it on you. Know the basics that protect you — a verbal declaration made in turn is binding, putting in a single oversized chip when facing a bet counts as a call unless you say 'raise' first, and you can always pause and ask the dealer to clarify the action. Playing it straight keeps the table friendly and keeps your focus on real decisions; it sits right next to a slow roll and other etiquette no-nos.
Example
You bet 300 chips and your opponent quietly slides one 500 chip across the line without saying a word, acting as if it might be a raise to pressure you — but by the rules a lone oversized chip with no 'raise' declared just counts as a call of your 300. Using that quiet ambiguity to fake a raise is the angle.