Thursday, December 29, 2016

Please! Let's Cut out the Sympathy Crap for Master Casino Cheat Phil Ivey!

Yes, he IS a cheat!
Last week a US District Court ruled that Phil Ivey must return the $10 million he won at the Atlantic City Borgata casino through his edge-sorting technique...or I should say "he cheated" instead of he won.

Ever since, all the gaming-guru writers who are ex-advantage players are crying over what they write is an unjust decision against Phil Ivey. They claim that Ivey simply took advantage of the casino's ignorance to the fact they had received defective playing cards from the manufacturer and let them into play, and therefore Ivey and his partner, Cheng Yin Sun (who masterminded the scheme with financial backing from Ivey), did not cheat the Borgata casino. They further support this claim with statements alluding to how the casino makes so much money because of its built-in advantage with all the table games, that they shouldn't complain when someone comes along and beats them. They should just "lick their wounds and move on."

Gimme a break!

This is total bullshit!

What these advantage-player writers are not mentioning is that Phil Ivey and Cheng Yin Sun MANIPULATED the deal of the game by having the dealers abandon their proper procedure to deal the cards the way Ivey wanted so that he could see the defects in the cards and use them to his advantage.

That alone is an indisputable definiton of casino cheating, not to mention the forethought and planning of Ivey's casino-cheat crimes.

Look, I for one am not very sympathetic to casinos and enjoyed ripping them off as much as Ivey did, but let's call a spade a spade and stop spouting this crap that Ivey got ripped off by the court system.

Had Ivey been able to edge-sort WITHOUT having the dealers change the way they deal, then and ONLY THEN would his edge-sorting attack on the casino not be cheating.

So--I call on the advantage-player community as a whole to stop supporting a cheat who is not one of them.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Nevada on Campaign to Increase It's Infamous Casino Black Book Population

Nevada's Black book
If you didn't know it, the State of Nevada maintains a "Black Book" whose pages are filled with names of people who are permanently excluded from entering the state's casinos. If they enter and are caught, they are immediately arrested and charged with felony trespassing.

There are currently 32 people on what Nevada officially calls its "List of Excluded Persons." There were 33, but the recent death of notorious slot machine cheat John Vacaro (which, by the way, is the only way to get your name erased), the population is back to 32.

Now, however, the Nevada Gaming Commission wants to up that population. Feeling threatened by the increase in high-tech and casino-employee-insider cheating scams, they want to get the message out that if you screw around in casinos, you're gonna find yourself in their Black Book. Years ago you needed at least two felony gaming-related convictions to make the grade, but now you don't even need one. The Gaming Commission can place anyone on the list whom they feel is a threat to the integrity and safety of the Nevada Gaming Industry.

Just last year, famous gambler Archie Karas, a legend who once turned fifty bucks into $40 million in what is considered Las Vegas's hottest hot streak of all-time, was placed in the Black Book after being caught marking cards in California casino poker games. He'd had a few run-ins over blackjack cheating incidents before that.

My take: I think that putting Archie Karas in the Black Book is a little harsh as he doesn't seem like much of a threat to Nevada's gaming industry, but I agree that people who use high-tech equipment or corrupt dealers in furtherance of cheating scams should indeed be put on the excluded persons list.

I think that Phil Ivey is a good candidate for that list as he did corrupt dealers in the furtherance of his baccarat edge-sorting scams.

Friday, December 09, 2016

New Maryland MGM Casino Worried about Onslaught of Casino Cheats

New Casino Cheat Zone?
A big new MGM casino has just opened in National Harbor Maryland, and it's the closest casino to the nation's capital,Washington D.C. As with all new casino openings where the bulk of the employees, especially dealers, are novices, there is usually concern about professional casino-cheating teams coming in to take advantage of the rookie dealers and floorpeople.

I have seen and read several news accounts how Maryland's authorities are taking special care to avoid or at least minimize the problem. In fact, they have done virtually everything outside of calling me to come help them! They have set up special classes for dealers, studied loads of data on casino cheating, which they must get from other jurisdictions since Maryland does not release this type of data when it pertains to its own casinos.

They seem to be particularly worried about employee-involved cheating in cahoots with professional cheat-gangs such as the infamous Tran Organization, a Vietnamese clan of baccarat cheats who bribed and corrupted dealers throughout the US and Canada in the early and mid 2000s. They bilked casinos in both countries for some $20 million. Their operation was eventually busted in 2007 and lots of ex-casino dealers went to jail and tarnished their reputations forever.

My take: I think the approach that Maryland's gaming authorities are taking is the right one. New casinos are always extremely vulnereable to both pro casino cheats and those not so pro, and if the problem is not tackled early in a casino's existence, the result could be a disastrous casino-cheating paradise like the pair of casinos in Singapore.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Interesting New Home Poker Games Cheating Device

Poker Home Games Cheat Kit
A Google researher claims he has found a sophisticated cheating method by which poker cheats can see your hole cards by using a specially adapted mobile phone and deck of cards. The Google employee reportedly paid $1,300 for the equipment he bought on a Chinese website. It's a mobile phone equipped with a high-density digital camera and LED lights which allow the device to read line-codes inked to the back of specially doctored cards that look like any normal pack of cards to the naked eye.

If the phone is set within scanning range of the deck, the device will tell you what cards your opponents are holding via earphones. The researcher claims it has a better than 95% accuracy rate, and if you are playing where cell phones are not allowed on the table, you can purchase the same equipment in the form of  a set of car keys with the deciphering discs inside them.

However, using this type of equipment would be dangerous in modern casino cardrooms, where the device could be detected, but in simple home games they can be used to really clean house.

My take. This is yet another form of high-tech card-marking that comes with both rewards and risks. The most important thing to remember is that if you are caught with such a device in most casino jurisdictions, you will end up with serious felony charges against you and probably prison time.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

So Who is Casino Cheat-Catcher B.C. and What does he Have to Say about Richard Marcus?

Was this guy the best?
Veteran casino journalist and ace writer for Cigar Aficionado Magazine Michael Kaplan has recently written a feature entitled "Cheater Catcher," in which he profiles some bad-ass casino security/surveillance detective who is putting some serious casino cheats and casino cheating teams out of business and behind bars.

In the article, B.C., which is an acronym for "Beating Cheaters," describes how he gets his thrills catching and helping to prosecute big-time cheats as well as how he picks up on them and their moves. He talks about several notorious cheats, but gives biggest mention to you-know-who...yours truly.

 I have linked to the article above and you can read it and form your own opinion. What he says about me is very complimentary, and he has high praise for my famous Savannah move. The only problem is that either B.C. or the writer Michael Kaplan screwed up because the move described in the article is not my Savannah move but rather my "ten-oh-five" blackjack move, and even it is far from accurately depicted.

 But in spite of the mistakes, I will take prideful pleasure in being considered by B.C. as perhaps the greatest casino cheat in history! But I take offense in his saying he caught me (or maybe that is Kaplan's mistake). No one ever caught me...SO LET THAT RECORD BE CLEAR!

 Now, who is B.C. really? I don't know but if I had to guess, it's a guy named James Hartley, whom I met at the 2007 World Game Protection Conference where I was the keynote speaker. Hartley showed me his files on me and my moves, and he certainly had the "lock 'em up" appearance and attitude.

Friday, November 18, 2016

Australian Woman Sues Crown Casino for Casino Cheating! Well, not Really.

Dolphin Treasure Slot Machine
However, it is a suit that can be interpreted as casino cheating by a casnio.

The woman, Shonica Guy, is suing both Crown Casino and the slot-machine maker Aristocrat Leisure LTD, claiming both the casino and the slot machine in question are misinforming players about their chances of winning. The machine, called Dolphin Treasure, is located at Crown's flagship casino in Melbourne, Australia,

Ms. Guy claims that the advertising around the machine says it has five reels with the same number of characters, but one column had more, which according to the plainfiff lowers the chances of winning, thus giving the player a false expected value of what the rate of return would be on monies bet.

Lawyers for both Crown Casino and Aristocrat Leisure have declined comment.

Whatever the outcome, this is the first known case of a player suing a casino over the design and advertising of any casnio device.

My take: Well,this is another problem among mounting problems concerning the image and integrity of Crown Casino, which is already known for the largest insider cheat scam in history where dishonest employees ripped off baccarat tables for more than $40 million. Recently 18 Crown Casino employees were arrested in China for illegally promoting gambling junkets to their casino.

As far as the suit itself goes, Ms. Guy will not receive any damages, and she is not asking for any. So I imagine that the casino and slot company will correct the advertising and promotion surrounding the Dolphin Treasure slot machine very quickly.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Who Are the New Wave Casino and Poker Cheats?

The Turks.

Yes, it's no longer the Russians and the Chinese. The Turks are scamming casinos worldwide at a startling pace, and these Turkish cheats are good!

Uglier and even better!
Their main casino-cheating ground is Europe, mainly the UK, France and Monaco, where they duped several Monte Carlo casinos out of millions by simple roulette chip-color-up scams. They have also hit UK casinos with many bold roulette scams, including one where they actually grabbed the spinning roulette ball and placed it on their own winning number...with lots of distractions, of course.

Most of these Turkish casino cheats have adopted the UK as their second home and become naturalized citizens. Doing so makes it much easier for them to gain entry to European casinos that require membership in order to enter.

They have also preyed on Singapore's casinos, which is more or less a requirement for any international casino-cheat team.

As far as Turkish casino-cheat and poker-cheat activity in US casinos goes, it is on the rise but not yet as significant as the damage they're doing in European casinos.

The Turk casino cheats are also major players in online poker cheating as well.

Canada's Casino Rama Newest Canadian Casino Hack Victim

Nice place to get your data hacked
It's now happened twice in one year to a Canadian casino. First it was the River Cree Casino earlier in the year. Now Casino Rama.

In both casino-cheat hacking cases, malware was used to gain access through casino advertisements.  The results were that hundreds of casino customer's personal records were exposed, mainly credit cards, pin numbers and passwords, all of which can cost these victims at lot more money and aggravation than what they might experience at the casinos' gaming tables.

The first big fallout from all this is a $50 million class-action lawsuit against Casino Rama. Lawyers for the casino will try to claim immunity since the casino is owned by the Chippewa Frist Nation and not a regular Canadian corporation.

To read the full details of this case, go here.

Talk About Audacious Roulette Cheat Scams!

Place the ball yourself and win!
I have heard about quite a few of these, everything from throwing water at the dealer's face in order to distract for a pastposted bet to trying to tilt the roulette table like an old pinball machine to get the ball to drop in a preferred winning number, but this latest one takes the cake!

How 'bout a roulette cheat going right to the spinning ball and placing it himself on the number he'd bet on. Sounds impossible, right?

Wrong!

Two British casino cheats figured out just how to do it and quickly beat a UK casino for more than fifteen grand in just four spins.

And they almost got away with it. The only problem was that they didn't sufficiently block out the overhead casino cameras that filmed it all.

Read all the details of this entertaining roulette cheat scam here.

Friday, November 11, 2016

And now the Borgata Wants its Monoey Back!

Borgata to sue Ivey
With the decision in the Phil Ivey baccarat edge-sorting trial in from London, Ivey's main US victim, the Atlantic City Borgata, wants its money back!

That would mean about fifteen million bucks plus damages!

The damages, they say, are a quarter million in casino comps, to which one Borgata official said Ivey and his female cheat partner, Cheung Yin Sun, drank bathtub-loads of their most expensive champagne.

They also claim that had Ivey played without the cheat tactic, he would have lost $5.5 million according to probability analysis.

So, we go from one Ivey edge-sorting trial to perhaps another. Read an article about it here.

Poker Champ Phil Ivey loses baccarat-cheating case appeal against Crockfords

Cheat loses appeal
We've all been hearing several accounts about this story since 2014, but now it is finally over. Phil Ivey and his female partner Cheung Yin Sun, who has had prior problems with casinos, used a cheating tactic known as edge-sorting to beat Crockfords for more than $10 million back in 2014. This tactic was taking advantage of defects in the cards which allowed them to partially know the value of the cards before they were turned face-up. Ivey and Sun also manipulated the dealers to change their dealing procedures so they could better determine the cards' values before placing their bets.

The UK casino Crockfords refused to pay Ivey his winnings once they discovered his tactic. Ivey sued and lost back in 2015, and now his appeal has also come up loser, so the case is finally over.

Ivey had this comment about the judge's decision: "The trial judge said that I was not dishonest and the three appeal judges agreed, but somehow the decision has gone against me. Can someone tell me how you can have honest cheating?

The pair also made tens of millions using the same cheat scam in various casinos across the world, most notably the Borgata in Atlantic City.

My take: Come on, Phil, give us a break! What has never come out is exactly how Ivey came to know about these card defects. It is my theory that his foxy little Korean cheat partner, Sun, got the information and passed it along to Ivey, who then used his celebrity to dupe Crockfords and the Borgata into dealing their baccarat game outside of correct and normal procedure, which is a form of altering casino dealing, and that constitues cheating at gambling.

And let's not forget that Ivey had premeditated plans to do exactly what he did.

Bottom line: Phil Ivey is a casino cheat and is even in the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame!

Saturday, November 05, 2016

Casino Cheat to World's Best Pickpocket?

Casino Cheat to Pickpocket?
I recently received an email from a reader of this blog who linked me to this very interesting article in the New Yorker magazine. It relates the story of a man, Apollo Robbins, who is considered the world's best pickpocket and his early beginnings as a casino cheat. The blog reader told me that the article reminded him of me, that he noted certain similarities between my life as a casino cheat and Mr. Robbins' as a pickpocket, both of us using advanced psychology.

I found the article quite interesting, though I must concede that the talents of Mr. Robbins' far exceed those of my own. Much more sleight of hand and deceptive tactics are needed to successfully get into people's pockets than into casinos' cages...Well, I'm not so sure about that!

Let me know what you think.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Hotel Room Poker Scandal Takes Place in China

The Marker
A favovite of conspiring poker cheats who do not like risking their asses by cheating inside casinos and public cardrooms is to set up their poker cheat scams and victims inside hotel rooms. This tactic, made infamous by the 2007 Atlantic City Borgota Hotel Room Scam, which implicated ex-anti casino-cheat game protection consultant Steve Forte, has surfaced once again in the Chinese city of Dali.

I do not know if this Dali poker-cheat scam was as artistically drawn up as a tableau by the famous painter of the same name, but it did hook a sucker for around ten grand!

Read the full article here.

My take: Well, setting up a poker scam in a hotel room that is not on a casino property should be a lot less riskier for the poker cheats involved, but these cheats were pretty damn stupid in as much as they hung out in the hotel room after the scam was done, and when the victim reported his suspicions and brought the police to the scene of the scam, they found boxes of marked cards as well as the special contact lenses used to see the markings on the cards.

Friday, September 30, 2016

Nevada Gaming Control Board Enforcement Division Chief Gives the Lowdown on Casino Cheating

NGCB Chief on Cheating
James Taylor, the deputy chief Of the NGCB's Enforcement Division, told a packed seminar room at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas that casino cheating and scams are on the rise and that 25% of Nevada's casino cheats are the casinos' own employees.

He spoke about a wide range of casino-cheat activities, everything from high-tech scams to desperados grabbing players' chips off the tables and running out the doors.

Ironically, he said that these chip grab-and-run scams are the state's biggest casino-cheat headache and are also the hardest to stop and catch the cheats involved.

He said that casino cheats are becoming more sophisticated with high-tech scams like marking cards with invisible ink and reading them with special glasses or contact lenses

He also expressed his sadness that so much casino management was involved in crimes against the casinos they work at.

You can read the complete news article here.

My take: I agree with Mr. Taylor when he says that the basic scams are often the most difficult to stop. After all, my notorious Savannah scam was so easy and basic but the casinos could never figure it out--not even with an FBI investigation!

Thursday, September 29, 2016

BrainChip Technology to Further Thwart Casino Cheats?

Brain Chip or Brain Dud?
A high-tech company out of Australia called BrainChip says it has developed a new technology called Game Outcome that will greatly help casinos catch the highest level cheats at the baccarat tables as well as throughout the whole casino. BrainChip says its new technology will also catch dealer errors and make sure that players at the tables receive their fair share of comps based on their betting action.

The technology works by using video streams from standard surveillance cameras that recognizes sequences of played cards, proper dealing techniques in conjunction with winning hands and proper payouts. A spokesman for the company claimed the technology was like having a full time surveillance operator assigned to every gaming table in the casino.

BrainChip says their technology could save casinos up to $50 million per year.

For more on this read the newspaper article.

My take: This sounds to me like another over-hyped method of detecting and stopping cheating at poker and casinos, much the way all that biometrica surveillance stuff supposedly spots casino cheats entering target casinos before they even get their clothes on at home.

Besides, is saving $50 per year in casinos worldwide such a big deal?

Friday, September 23, 2016

Yet Another Casino-Chip-Color-Up Roulette Scam

Same Colors Different Values
It just keeps happening.

The seemingly ridiculous roulette scam where one player buys in for a color of minimum-denomination roulette chips, then holds on to a few while cashing out the rest, then passes those kept to a roulette-cheat partner who buys in for the same color chips at a different table for a higher denominaion, and then upon cashing those out, mixes in the chips received from the original cheat.

And it just keeps working.

The cheat scheme usually sees the first roulette cheat buying fifty-cent or one-dollar roulette chips while the second roulette cheat cashes out a handful of them at another table as twenty-five-dollar roulette chips.

So the profit is $24 per chip.

A skilled roulette cheat team working a busy night in a big casino with lots of roulette tables can make off with several thousand dollars during a single shift.

The latest instance of this roulette color-up scam resulting in a bust occurred at the L'auberge Casino in Baton Rouge Louisiana. The reported take was  nearly $5,000 and the person responsible was twenty-eight-year-old Emiliano Rodriguez of the Bronx, NY, where a large number of these roulette color-up cheats come from.

The roulette cheat scam is generally done at Native American Casinos or in Riverboat Casino districts where roulette scammers believe casino security and surveillance is less efficient than in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

Ohio casinos have been especially hard hit by this roulette scam the  past few years.

And, unbelievably, the majority of these scams go unnoticed by casino authorities in all types of casinos.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Bitcoin Online Casinos Cheaing Risk?

Should you?
The newest fashion for online poker and casino operators to skirt US justice and entice US online poker and casino players has evolved into Bitcoin casinos.

Many are popping up now all over the Internet. The idea exploited by these online casino operators is that since the Bitcoin is almost a perfectly undectable currency, online poker and casino players can trade with it to avoid problems with US banks and Credit Card companies when conducting financial transactions with these online gaming companies.

Yes, this is quite an effective method to lure US online gamblers, but how safe is the actual gaming and poker-playing on Bitcoin gaming sites?

And how safe is your account?

Well, the first two issues to examine are whether or not the Bitcoin casino is licensed and regulated, and whether or not it has a strong support system to aid players on the site. If the answer to either of these questions is no, the riskier it may be to play on the site.

However, off-setting these concerns is the simple fact that if a Bitcoin casino operates on the same premise of all other online casinos, which is the built-in house advantage that they all enjoy, it really has no motivation to cheat, especially if it has plans to remain in the competitive market for any length of time.

Many of you may remember, however, that in the early days of online poker and casinos, there were many fly-by-night online casino bust-out operations where the casinos cheated their customers and emptied out their accounts, before disappearing from the Web entirely without a trace.

I would think this would be the biggest risk encountered by a player on a new Bitcoin site, even though that risk would be quite small.

My overall view: If Bitcoin casinos are your best option for gambling online, don't worry too much about being a cheating victim.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Casino Player Card Cheat Scams on the Rise at US Casinos

Mother/Daughter Player Card Cheats
As department stores and banks have always been victims of credit card fraud, casinos are more and more becoming victims of their own player card frauds.

And most of these scams are originating from casinos' own employees.

By changing personal data and accumulating bonus points using the cards, the phony cardholders win prizes and sometimes get lucky and win jackpots. Recently at the Golden Nugget Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, a mother-daughter casino cheat team, both of whom were casino employees, got arrested for committing a player card casino scam.

The mother, Alicia Harrison, who worked at the Golden Nugget, was altering the player cards and giving them to her daughter Crystal, an employee at the nearby Island View Casino in Gulfport, who won a series of jackpots totalling more than $10,000 using an assortment of falsified player cards.

This player card casino cheat scam has been prevalent in many of the country's gambling jurisdictions, even in Las Vegas, where the sums pilfered from casinos can be much higher than what happens in Mississippi casinos.

My take: This seems to be a casino scam that almost always blows up in the perpetrators' faces.

Tuesday, September 06, 2016

Media-Peeker Poker Cheat is Convicted and Nets Three and half Years in Prison

This poker cheat will have lots of time to reflect
His name is Ali Tekintamgac. He was born in Turkey but now has German citizenship.

And he's just set a record for the longest prison term ever given to a poker cheat--3.5 years.

Tekintamgac is a champion. In 2010 he won more than $300,000 at the Spanish World Poker Tour Championship. But later that year he was refused entry at the Partouche Poker Tour main event after allegations of cheating began to surface.

The alleged cheating-tactic employed by Tekintamgac was using phony media members (or sometimes real ones) of supplying him with information about opponents hands during big poker tournaments. These media guys used their cameras to zoom-in on poker hands of players across the table from Tekintamgac, then signalled the poker cheat the value of their hole cards.

This was pretty well caught on video.

Apparently, there were a handful of accomplices involved in the poker-cheat plot and one of them flipped on Tekintamgac to testify against him.

My take: I have for more than a decade been talking, writing and blogging about the wide scale cheating in major poker tournaments across the world. As entry fields in these events keep on growing, the old favorable poker-tournament method of cheating, collusion and chip-dumping, is not as profitable as it once was, therefore, poker tournament cheats need to invent new creative methods like Tekintamgac has.

All in all, I am quite surprised by the severity of the sentence, even more so that it came out of Germany.

Monday, September 05, 2016

Please Marina Bay Sands Singapore..Say it ain't so!--AGAIN!

Marina Bay Sands Cheating Labyrinth
It has happened again! Just unbelievable but yet ANOTHER insider dealer casino-cheat scam has rocked the Singapore Marina Bay Sands.

I really cannot believe this. Just after I posted an article about a team stealing a loaded baccarat shoe right out of a card rack on the casino floor right in the baccarat room, another Marina Bay Sands dealer has pleaded guilty to stealing chips right off his table by stuffing them into his Bermuda shorts and then giving them to his accomplice to cash out.

And if that wasn't enough, he was also dumping more chips off to this same accomplice in the form of paying ties and losing bets on the baccarat table.

So, I have finally come up with a formula that could be copyrighted for the annals of baccarat cheating in Singapore.

It is: BACCARAT + SINGAPORE+ MARINA BAY SANDS + CROOKED DEALERS = CHEATING.

This time the cheating dealer, Jiang Kaiwen, told the judge he had felt slighted and unappreciated by his fellow casino workers and bosses, and that none of them backed him up when the casino's customers made fun of him. In fact, he claimed his peers took the side of the patrons abusing him.

Mr. Kaiwen and his casino-cheat cohort, Li Zhifan, decided to make the Marina Bay Sands casino pay--and pay they did! As much as $140,000 in a single month.

I have read that Marina Bay Sands surveillance department ran back the baccarat tapes when they were told by accountants doing an audit that the numbers were off.

Well. I'm not sure I believe that--but what I am sure of is that the Marina Bay Sands Casino is the biggest casino-cheats candy store in the entire world!

Thursday, September 01, 2016

Are there ANY opportunities to successfully employ Blackjack Card Counting against Continuous Shuffle Machines?

Card-counting Killer
Well, for years now, Continuous Shuffle Machines (CSMs) have nearly obliterated blackjack card-counting on the tables on which they are used. But, of course, there are those blackjack card-counting die-hards that still try to beat them.

So, can they?

In theory, yes. But the advantage they may obtain would be both short and shortlived.

Several blackjack card-counting gurus, such as Elliot Jacobson, have spoken about intrinsic "latency" with CSMs. This means there is a drag or delay of the cards used in the last round before they are back into the shuffle-mix. Since the cards for the next round are already prepared, the cards used in the previous round are not inclusive in the total cards remaining in the deck, therefore the counter can tally them up and come-up with a count estimation of a small advantage.

"Small" because there is never more than one round played in any given situation. Unless each player and the dealer at a filled 7-spot table hit several times and use almost a full deck of cards, there would not be a true positive count of any significance.

So in spite of the theory that CSMs are vulnerable to card counters, in practice it is a waste of time.

An important thing to note, however, is that CSMs are not completely taking over land-based casinos' blackjack tables. They are expensive for casinos to buy, lease and maintain, and many valued non-counting customers simply don't like them and refuse to play at tables that use them.

So there are still plenty of tables worldwide for card-counters looking to avoid continuous shuffling machines.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Online Poker Cheat Sorel Mizzi Banned from PokerStars Again!

This Cheat Has Nine Lives!
Online Poker Cheat/Player Sorel Mizzi has been banned from PokerStars again.

This time it was for using a virtual private network to hide the fact he was playing online poker in the United States, which is illegal according to US federal law.

Mizzi did not deny the facts. He said simply, “I decided to take a risk and play online poker from the United States.”

He also openly admitted that he used some other player’s account, which is also a violation of PokerStars rules. He added to that that he used a virtual private network from his residence in Las Vegas to play in last year’s World Championship of Online Poker.

Then he finished off his comments with, “I can’t play on the site for a couple of years.”

Sounds like he’s just shrugging off his entire online poker cheat history.

Mizzi has been banned by many sites over the past few years, and he appears to take it all in stride, as if being banned is just a by-product of doing business.


My take: Well, until some harsh measures, like forfeiture of funds in misrepresented accounts, are taken, Sorel Mizzi is going to continue his online cheating ways—and continue making serious cash.

Friday, August 19, 2016

When the Casino Cries Foul over a Huge Slot Machine Jackpot

Poor Veronica
From time to time, or maybe even a bit more frequent than that, a casino patron wins a huge jackpot only to be told by the casino that there was a malfunction with the particular slot machine and therefore the jackpot is voided.

When this happens, is the casino deliberately trying to avoid paying out a legitimate jackpot,or is the casino telling the truth about a malfuction?

Well, I will answer the quesiton like this: About forty years ago I walked into a bank to withdraw the last five thousand bucks I had in my savings account to finance a gambling binge (a legitimate one before I got into casino cheating). After the transaction, I asked the teller what my balance was.

She answered five hundred fifty-five thousand dollars and change!

I thought my ears were deceiving me, so I asked her to repeat it...and she did!

I knew immediately that this was some kind of computer error but of course I thought about withdrawing all that money on the spot and closing the account.

But my ball were not big enough at the time, so I just ignored it and waited for the next bank statement which reflected the correction and posted my true balance of fifty-five cents.

My point is that these types of errors do happen, and they happen with slot machines as well. So I conclude that the faulty non-cheating jackpots that occur in casinos are real. I mean, after all, casino jackpots pay for themselves by the money that patrons put into the machines, so there is absolutely no reason for casinos to play hanky-panky with slot jackpot payouts.

The latest victim of this was Veronica Castillo, who for a few minutes thought she hit an $8 million jackpot at the Lucky Eagle casino in Washington State. The casino staff advised her of the machine's malfunction and deleted five zeroes off her jackpot total--paying her eighty bucks and apologizing for the error.

That's the way it goes, Veronica

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Is Poker Night in America Real or just another Cheat the Public Poker Show?

Poker Acting at its Best
If you remember, I heavily criticized the old "High Stakes Poker" TV show, claiming it was nothing more than an agreement between the Gaming Show Network, who wanted to increase their ratings, and the participating poker players, who wanted the publicity to further their careers, to stage the show so that both entities would profit. I never said the hands or their outcomes were fixed. I only said that whatever monies were won and lost in the huge cash game were redistributed back to the participants while off the air.

I believe that "Poker Night in America" and whatever other big televised cash-game is nothing more than the same thing.

It's all bullshit.

And if you look at some of the hands where huge money is won and lost, you will see my point.

One that comes to my mind is the hand played between Phil Laak and Shaun Deeb back in September, 2015.

Deeb raises $9,000 all-in with second pair after the flop and Laak calls with Ace-King. Deeb ends up winning $41,000 in the hand.

Come on, gimme a break!

If you believe that, then you believe I never cheat a casino outta one single chip!

And note that Laak's wife/girlfriend (I´m not sure which) Jennifer Tilly was also in that game. Just the presence of Laak and Tilly in ANY game would leave me believing absolutely NOTHING of that game's validity. I mean, do you remember Tilly's famous check-fold of a full house on the "Poker After Dark" show a while back?

I'm still trying to figure out that one!

And as I wrote in my book Dirty Poker back in 2006, I still to this day do not believe that Jennifer Tilly's 2005 WSOP Ladies Only Championship was anything more than a deal arranged by people in the poker world at that time.

I can't mention any specific names.

Sunday, August 07, 2016

A Little history Lesson on Roulette Cheating--The Dolly

Never stopped pastposting
You all know that every time the dealer spins the roulette ball, he marks the winning number on the layout by placing the dolly (or number marker) atop the chips straight-up on the winning number or on the naked surface if there are no chips there.

But do you know the history of the this roulette dolly?

Prior to 1955, there were no such dollies in existence. Roulette dealers would simply point to the winning number on the layout, announce it, and then begin sweeping the losing chips off the layout and the process of paying the winners, first the outside winners then the inside winners.

The early and mid-fifties were the heyday of roulette pastposting (placing late bets), especially straight-up on the numbers. In fact, it was like a roulette cheating epidemic. The biggest roulette pastposting cheats at the time were Henry Classon, a cheating ancestor of mine, and a mute gentlemen named Mumbles, both inducted in the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame.

This pair terrorized casinos in Las Vegas, Reno and Puerto Rico to the point that a fed-up pit boss at the Americana casino in Puerto Rico decided to do something about it: he invented the roulette dolly.

His idea was that if the dealer placed the dolly atop the chips on the winning number or on the naked winning number, roulette pastposting cheats would no longer be able to manipulate those chips or place ones on the number that weren't there before the ball dropped.

BOY WAS HE WRONG!

But in spite of that, casinos across the world have been using the roulette dolly ever since.

Huge Baccarat Cheat Scam Trial in Singapore Results in 13 Jail Sentences

Bac Cheat Group Reconnaissance
It lasted almost four months and the defendants were charged with cheating the Singapore Marina Bay Sands casino out of $1.4 million in what the judge called the biggest and most sophisticated casino cheat scam in the history of Singapore gambling.

Of course there is no surprise that it was a baccarat scam and that it occurred at the Singapore Marina Bay Sands, which is by far the most cheated casino in the world.

The details are a bit unclear, at least to me, but the description of the massive cheat scam is that 14 Thai nationals, 10 men and four woman, somehow obtained a key to a cabinet containing a "playing card carrier," removed the cards, photographed them, replaced them into the carrier without disturbing the sequence, put the carrier back into the cabinet, and finally hit the baccarat table knowing how the cards would fall and won the $1.4 million over a single three-hour baccarat session.

According to reports, they purposely lost a few hands to conceal their scam.

They were supposedly caught when their "suspicious" behavior was caught on surveillance tape.

And they had made at least one reconnaissance trip to the casino to test the key and even conducted dry runs at a casino in Manila.

And if that's not enough intrigue to this casino-cheat case, the alleged mastermind, 53-year-old Soum Sengmanivong, is supposedly dead in Laos...care to take a bet on that!!

Well, first of all, is a "playing card carrier" the same thing as a card shoe? Or is it a contraption that holds cards when they're delivered to the casino from the manufacturer?

It also appears from numerous articles on the scam that the group stole the card carrier from the baccarat room where actual games where in progress. They crowded the area so no one would notice.

If I am reading this correctly, I am having lots of trouble believing it...and as far as their suspicious activity caught on surveillance tape goes, when did that come into play and where is the evidence of their abducting the card carrier and then putting it back in the cabinet?

Well, whatever happened there, the results of the trial were generally minor prison terms ranging from one year to a year and and a half.

And one more thing: where did they get the key to the cabinet? There was no mention of an inside employee in on the scam, so did they have the key made? If so, was a locksmith involved in the scam to do the fitting work that would have been needed to make the key??

There's only one thing I can say for sure about all this: The Marina Bay Sands, if they actually store live cards right in the baccarat room and not somewhere else inside the building, is even more of a casino game protection nightmare than I previously thought!

If anyone can give me some clarifying details about this case, I would surely appreciate it!

Thursday, August 04, 2016

Decision on Stange Class Action Poker Cheat Lawsuit Against Atlantic City Borgata

Counterfeit Chip-Flusher
During the 2014 Borgata Winter Open poker tournament, a poker cheat by the name of Christian Lusardi snuck a substantial amount of counterfeit chips into play, which gave him a huge advantage against other players in that particular event. His counterfeit poker-cheat move was discovered, upon which the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement promptly redistributed the remaining prize money to all players who had entered into the event, all but 27 of whom were already knocked out of it at the time the cheat scam was uncovered.

Three players in the tournament, Jacob Musterel, Farid Vaghefi and Steven Celeste, were not happy with the New Jersey DGE's decision and as such launched a class-action lawsuit against the DGE for its decision and against the Borgata for its failure to recognize the counterfeit chips until very late in the tournament.

They claimed that the redistribution of chips greatly disfavored them because they had chips left while the majority of players who received parts of the redistribution did not, and that the majority of the players who received the paybacks had never even gone up in a hand against Lusarti, therefore they did not really suffer any losses because of Lusardi's fake chips.

This case was the last of several other similar suits against the NJ DGE, and the plaintiffs lost in all of them, including their appeals.

My take: This was a very interesting case, and I agree with the plaintiffs that they were shortchanged in not receiving bigger parts of the redistribution, but at the same time I understand the difficulty that would have ensued trying to administer the redistribution according to what each player's actual probabilities of winning the tournament were at the time the decision to refund the remaining prize money was made.

And the best part of this all? That was certainly when Lusardi was caught trying to flush hundreds more of these counterfeit poker chips down the toilet at Harrah's casino...fucking up the bathroom's plumbing!!! LOL

Friday, July 29, 2016

Top 10 Casino and Poker Cheating Victims Worldwide

Top of the Cheat List
This is a worldwide list of casinos that have reportedly suffered the most cheating incidents during the last twelve months based on the volume of its table games and the estimated number of players who frequent these casinos.

It is important to note that this does not mean that these 10 casinos are the easiest to cheat because there is no correlation here between reported casino cheating incidents and those that go unreported, but if we assume that the overall cheat-apprehension rate is more or less equal globally, then these 10 casinos certainly look like ripe targets to the world's casino cheats.

1) Sands Casino Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
2) Marina Bay Casino Singapore
3) Foxwoods Casino Connecticut
4) Caesars Palace Las Vegas, Nevada
5) Horseshoe Casino Council bluffs, Iowa
6) MotorCity Casino Detroit, Michigan
7) River Rock Casino Vancouver, Canada
8) Saint-Vincent Casino Aosta Vallley, Italy
9) San Remo Casino, San Remo, Italy
10) Borgata Casino, Atlantic City, NJ

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Handheld Blackjack Switch Game! A Casino Cheat's Delight!!

Blackjack Switch Cheat Bait?
Have you all heard about the new casino game Blackjack Switch?

It's the game where you're dealt two hands and you can switch one card from each hand into the other. It is dealt both in brick and mortar casinos and online.

So, bearing in mind how successful brick and mortar poker switch cheats have been over the years, imagine how successful blackjack switch-switch cheats can be? (Note that the double switch-switch is not a writing mistake but rather an emphasis to switching cards in an already switch game LOL)

Imagine switching cards with your blackjack cheat partner while all that switching is already legitimately going on!

Talk about taking candy from a baby!

Ooops! I forgot to mention one thing: You see, this is all a pipe dream--the game is obviously not dealt from the hand anywhere. It is dealt from a card shoe just like the majority of brick and mortar blackjack games, where the players cannot touch the cards. When you want to switch cards in your hands, you tell the dealer, who does the switching for you.

Well, it was nice fantasizing for awhile, right? LOL

The "Madbotter" online poker cheat comes clean on poker forum--Do you and I believe it?

themadbotter
An online poker player calling himself “themadbotter” recently admitted on the Two plus Two poker forum that he’s been successfully bot-cheating online poker for the past six months and has racked up more than &30,000 in profits in that time.

He has also stated that he is retiring from what he calls his lucrative online poker cheating endeavor because he has found some other lucrative career and he no longer wants to put his time into the online poker cheating (which he doesn’t really consider cheating).

So—do you believe him?

I understand that lots of you are skeptics. After all, why would a guy who’s been successfully cheating for that much time without taking heat in the poker forums admit to this? Especially in light of the fact that his new endeavor might fail, which could propel his re-entry into poker bot cheating?

Well, I was asked the same question when I went public with my huge brick and mortar casino cheating career. I openly admitted and described my ultra-casino cheating move (the Savannah) even though I knew I could have gone on doing it for years if not forever.

Not many people believed me at first either. In fact, until casino security and surveillance insiders backed up my claims, I was generally considered a fiction writer when it came to casino cheating.

So yes, I do believe the guy (or girl—you never know).

He also stated that lots of work and tune-ups were necessary to keep his bot functioning properly and to make sure he stayed under the radar. I understand that statement very well, as I had to do tons of work preparing my brick and mortar cheat moves and at the same time doing my own security work to make sure I didn’t end up in jail.

Casino cheating in any form, online or off, is very difficult and takes tons of work.

So far the reactions across the online poker world vary. Some people believe it and want to hear more. Others believe it and condemn the guy for his online poker cheating and then bragging about it.

Still others are doubtful about the veracity of the claims.

One guy on the forum says he thinks he knows who themadbotter might be and is even launching his own investigation to come up with more.

Well, good luck to him and I hope you all continue to stay abreast of this very interesting online poker cheating situation.

And one more thing: If you, Mr. or Ms. themadbotter, read this article, you are welcome to write on my blog any time! 

Friday, July 22, 2016

The Ol' Purple Bra Casino Cheat Scam at Sands Casino in Bethlehem, PA!

Not too pretty but she's got a purple bra!
Well, I've heard it before and I'll hear it again!

This time the ol' purple bra cheat scam occurred at the cheat-plagued Sands Casino in Bethlehem, PA.

For those of you who don't know what the purple-bra scam is, it's simply when a female employee of the casino stuffs purple $500 chips into her bra and whisks them off the casino floor and into her pocket when she gets the chance.

Brandy Micheli Cheatham (GET A GANDER AT HER LAST NAME: "CHEAT 'EM"!...LOL), a forty-four year-old Sands casino supervisor, stuffed six of the $500 purple chips into her bra but clumsily dropped them as she was getting into an elevator--and was caught by the surveillance camera.

I imagine the surveillance operators upstairs watching had a good chuckle or two over this one!

In any case, the $3,000 attempted theft is surely gonna knock Ms.Cheatham ("Cheatham") out of the casino business for life and maybe six months of it in the county jail.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Card-Counting Cheating Wars Erupting in Maryland Casinos

Don't tell Maryland!
Ever since the US state of Maryland got its first legal gambling casino in 2010, blackjack card-counting has been a major combative issue, and it seems that the state's casino authorities at least secretly consider card-counting as cheating at blackjack.

Statistically, this makes sense.

I am getting more reports of blackjack players suspected of card-counting in Maryland being shown the door than from anywhere else in the world. And in some cases these "86ings" of suspected card-counters have been getting a bit rough--with at least three current law suits against Maryland casinos for illegal detention and battery on patrons currently running through Maryland's courts.

Also on the rise, faster than in any other US state, are casinos' conversion to continuous automatic card shufflers on their blackjack tables. Casino authorities state that they are using these shuffling machines, which shuffle played cards into the existing deck every few hands and render card-counting and other forms of advantge play nearly impossible, more to speed up the deal of blackjack games than to deter the card counters and shuffle trackers.

But whatever the truth really is, casinos neither in Maryland nor in the rest of the world will ever be able to convert to using the continuous shufflers on all their tables. That's because lots of high rollers and preferred customers simply don't like them,

Not because they're counting cards but rather for a general distaste of constantly seeing played cards invade the unplayed decks.

My take: Let the wars go on! The casinos will win most of 'em--but not all of 'em.

Monday, July 18, 2016

How the Pro Roulette Cheats Feast on Casino Roulette Wheels

Lots of ways to cheat the wheel
First, there are no betting systems or strategies to beat roulette.

But there are five proven ways to do it and they’re all called cheating. 
·        
      Pastposting
·         Bet-switching
·         Wheel-clocking
·         Chip-color manipulation
·         Dealer ball-control

Pastposting is the art of making a bet after the roulette ball has already landed on the winning number.

In roulette it’s usually done with a team of at least two cheats, one of whom distracts the dealer while the other makes a lightning-quick bet a split-second after the spinning ball drops into a number on the rotating wheel.

The key for success is that the distraction be subtle, not something stupid like spilling a drink on the layout.

One that works extremely well is an angry man making a fuss in front of the table at the crucial moment. All it takes is getting the dealer’s eyes off the layout for the fraction of a second needed to make the late bet.

Bet-switching is a stronger form of pastposting that increases the amount of a legitimate bet made before the ball was spun.

After the winning number is determined, the bet-switcher picks up the original bet off the layout and replaces it with a new, usually much bigger bet. The move is far more complicated than a simple pastpost and is carried out by very professional teams using a series of ingredients.
·         The Set-up
·         The Psychology
·         The Switch
·         The Claim
·         The Bet-back
·         The Disappearing Act

Say an original $10 bet straight-up on a number is to be switched to a $100 after that number wins. 

The person who eventually “claims” the switched-in bet makes a legitimate set-up bet of $100 straight-up on a number. Win or lose, he leaves the table but remains close by.

The psychology comes into play when the claimer returns to the same table a bit later to claim the bogus $100 bet and $3500 payoff. The dealer and supervisor will remember that they’d already seen him make an identical bet.

The switch goes down with the aid of logistical distractions caused by bet-patterns other team members make that control the dealer’s movements, enabling the window necessary for the “mechanic” to switch out the two $5 chips he´d bet and replace them with a $100 chip covered by a $5 chip. 

The “claimer” returns to the table as soon as the mechanic has made the switch, claiming the $100 chip now lying beneath the $5 chip on the winning number. He is paid $3500.

He now “bets-back” $100 on the same winning number, further enhancing the psychological element of the move. Had the claimer left immediately after being paid $3500 for a $100 bet nobody had seen placed, the casino is more likely to get suspicious.

Win or lose the bet-back, the claimer does his “disappearing act,” immediately leaving the casino. The mechanic and the rest of the team soon follow suit.

Wheel-clocking is the art of identifying biased wheels, those that by defect or wear-and-tear produce an uneven distribution of winning numbers in the long-run.

The “clockers” back in the day actually entered casinos with pad and pencil and charted thousands of spins hoping to find biased numbers that came out more than once every thirty-seven or thirty-eight spins, depending on zero and double-zero wheels.

Today’s wheels are constructed with better materials and tested and re-tested to eliminate any bias, and maintained like sensitive military equipment to make sure they stay that way.

The High-Tech Clockers

They are armed to the teeth with everything from Google Glasses to roulette computers to digital cameras to smart phones to laser scanners. All this high-tech equipment is programmed to clock revolutions of the ball and the speed of the spinning wheel to calculate quadrants into which the ball will land.

We first heard of this in 2004 when an Eastern European team beat a pair of casinos in Budapest for a cool million. Then came similar high-tech roulette attacks in popular London casinos. Again the digital and laser booty was in the millions.

How they do it
·         Expensive laser scanners often bought from the dark side of the Internet.
·         Clocking teams practice in workshops with real roulette wheels.
·         Wardrobes that house and hide their equipment are tailor-made.
·         Team enters casino and legitimately plays other games besides roulette to hide true motive.
·         It hits the wheel, one member clocking and signaling the high-roller, who places big wagers in the proper quadrants.
·         Often a third member stands outside the table with jamming equipment so surveillance doesn’t pick up electronic signals. 
·         They cash out and leave after short periods of play to avoid detection.

In today’s casino wars, the high-tech roulette cheats battle constantly with casino surveillance departments, each upgrading its electronic equipment in response to what the other has implemented.
The huge risk to wheel-clocking cheats is that in nearly all casino jurisdictions, anyone cheating in casinos with the help of equipment is charged with a major felony.

In fact, in some jurisdictions like Nevada, it’s a felony to even possess roulette devices inside casinos—even if they’re turned off!

Chip-color manipulation

This is one of the easiest scams in roulette, and it’s a favorite of women casino hustlers who love playing.

The scam follows these simple steps.
·         Woman #1 plays at a roulette table and buys $100’ worth of pink $1 roulette chips.  
·         She plays for several spins and then cashes out all but five of her $1 chips.
·         She leaves the table and passes off the five $1 chips to Woman #2.
·         Woman #2 goes to another roulette table and buys $100’ worth of pink $10 roulette chips.
·         She covertly adds to her pink stack the five $1 pink roulette chips Woman #1 had given her.
·         She plays for a several spins and then cashes out all her pink chips, including the five $1 pink chips from Woman #1.
·         The dealer is duped into thinking that those five $1 chips were part of the stack of $10 chips she bought at the table, since all the chips are identically pink.
·         Woman #2 is paid $50 for five roulette chips that Woman #1 had bought for $5 at the first roulette table, making a $45 profit.

It may seem surprising that this rinky-dink scam works so often, but it does. Even though all roulette chips are marked with a letter designating to which table they belong, there’s always confusion with these chips as many disappear off the table, mostly as tips given to cocktail waitresses who later redeem them for their original value at the table.

Dealer ball-control

Can roulette dealers actually affect where the ball will land on the spinning wheel?
Most people are quite skeptical, but like in craps where some dice-throwers can control the outcome of their rolls to a certain degree, some roulette dealers have similar talents dealing their roulette wheels.

How it’s done
·         Dealer gets to know the inner grooves of his wheel and begins timing his spins.
·         He gets familiar with certain dead spots on the wooden plates that affect the initial and subsequent bounces.
·         He hooks up with a partner who comes to his wheel to play.
·         If the partner was not told beforehand how and where to bet, the dealer inconspicuously signals him at the table.
·         Just a minimum of accuracy by the dealer will result in handsome profits over the long haul.
          

The Best of ’em all

Ball control by roulette dealers has been very popular for decades, especially in Europe.
In 1973, one innovative French roulette dealer took roulette ball-control to the hilt. He sculpted his own roulette ball and embedded an electronic receiver inside it. He snuck the ball into play, and his beautiful female cohort placed large bets as she held a pack of Marlboro cigarettes.

Unbeknownst to the casino, the Marlboro pack contained a transmitter. When the foxy lady gambler subtly pressed it, the spinning roulette ball went into a controlled dive and landed in the specified six-number quadrant more times than not.  


They earned $5 million but finally got caught when the casino owner began wondering why foxy lady never lit up a cigarette.