I think specialists do much more manipulation than that.
Quote from Option Trader:
It's clear to me that a specialist/MM are able to identify the order comes from a retail trader. It also seems to me they know which broker is sending them the order. But are they also to identify that the same customer trying to e.g. "sell-to-close" is the one who earlier on "bought-to-open" 5k shares of that stock?
Quote from onelot:
read an article the other day saying some of the top specialists were doing 4 million keystrokes a day mathcing up orders. that's almost 9k keystrokes a minute.
unless, you're one of the biggest traders in that stock, i doubt they have time to notice.