Poker Players With Sunglasses Could Be Cheating, According To Negreanu

Daniel Negreanu has recently spoken out about what he considers a scourge on the game of poker; in other words wearing sunglasses at the table.
Negreanu vented some of his views on the subject recently during an episode of High Stakes Poker, with most of the pros on the show agreeing with the Canadian pro’s opinion. Now Daniel is over the moon that the new PokerStars show ‘The Big Game,’ has banned sunglasses from their game and believes all other TV shows should follow suit. As Negreanu explains:
“They are so bad for poker on so many levels. Poker wouldn’t be on TV if everyone wore hoodies and sunglasses to hide their eyes. If anyone wants to start a petition to ban them in any form of poker whether it’s tournaments, cash games, or televised events I’d do whatever I could to help.”
Writing about the subject in his blog, Negreanu was keen to emphasise that some of the top players in the world, such as Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey never wear sunglasses at the tables.
Despite launching into a tirade about the link between sunglasses and cheating, Negreanu stopped short of giving a full explanation of how the cheating took place, but simply stated:
“Let’s just say that guys like Russ Hamilton would appose such a ban. You should always be uncomfortable playing high stakes poker against someone wearing sunglasses. I’m not making this up, it’s just a fact. Banning sunglasses helps to protect the integrity of the game against cheating.”
Although Negreanu didn’t elaborate further, the indication is that aside from sunglasses protecting players from giving off  “tells,” card cheats could be benefiting from the increased popularity in their use by being able to get away with a whole range of tricks.
For instance, a player cheating at a poker table could hide his understandable nervousness from other players, and also if collusion is taking place using, for instance, body signals, it would be harder to locate the recipient of his furtive communication if you can’t see where he was glancing.
There are obviously many other possibilities, and hopefully Negreanu may enlighten us in time, but meanwhile it would probably be a little paranoid to suspect everyone sitting down for a game wearing a pair of Oakleys as a potential cheat. After all, many top pros whose integrity isn’t in question enjoy their use, from Greg Raymer and Phil Laak to the great Phil Hellmuth himself.