Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve in the Cheating World

As you may well suspect, the vast majority of the world's poker and casino cheaters celebrate Christmas. I'm not going to get into the religious makeup of those who earn their living on the shady side of the green felt tables, but in spite of that, nearly all of them take part in that special celebratory occasion with their families...or teammates. I myself have never even stepped foot in a casino on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. When I was a dealer in Vegas in the 70s, I was fortunate to have both those days off. And, assuming most of you aren't in casinos Christmas Eve, they are rather dead, so I'm told by people who work in them.

New Year's Eve, though--that's another story! December 31, no matter what the time zone, no matter what the weather, be it on the warm beaches of the Caribbean or the chilly mountainous casino resorts in Korea, and of course the throng-filled reveler-partying streets of Las Vegas, it's the grandest, most festive occasion in the casino business when 100% of the world's poker and casino cheaters, unless they're sick or stuck in an airport, are out there doing their thing. I spent 25 consecutive New Year's Eves cheating casinos, 16 of them in Las Vegas. The other 9...5 in Atlantic City, 2 in the Bahamas 1 in Australia and 1 in Monte Carlo. Why not Vegas every time? Well, it was a variety of reasons: Once my partner Pat met up with a girl in the Bahamas while vacationing there during Christmas (he did not go inside any casinos during Christmas Eve and Day, unless walking through them to get to the lobby counts) and he wanted to spend some more time with her, so instead of jetting to Vegas, we all met up in Nassau and worked the casinos both there and Paradise Island that New Year's Eve. Other times we chose Atlantic City because it was close to where we were based at the time, but got an unpleasant shock the first year there when the clock struck midnight and they actually shut down the tables to count down the seconds to "Happy New Year!" We were sitting at a roulette table ready to pop in the move when the floorman came over and fitted a cover right over the wheel. You should have seen the looks on our faces when that happened! But fortunately, they abandoned that practice because the five or so minutes that the tables stayed down cost them lots of money.

Did we always make more money cheating casinos on New Year's Eve than any other day or night of the year? I'd say perhaps 22 of the 25 times. Sometimes the crowds were so huge that we just couldn't get our spots at the tables, but when we did, boy did we hit them hard with our biggest moves! So was our biggest single move/payoff done on a New Year's Eve? No, but our second biggest was: a $1,000 chip pastposted straight-up on a number for $35,000. Care to guess the number that came in?... You bet...31! But it actually went down at 12:05 so it was already January 1st. So then, what was the biggest move we ever tried? Now that you ask, I think I will write about that in tomorrow's blog, so stay tuned!

I spoke this morning with my two main ex-partners, Pat and Balls, and believe it or not, they're going back to work this New Year's Eve! They haven't been working the casinos much anymore and haven't worked a New Year's Eve since 2004, but they both took some bad beats betting football this season and need some serious cash. Of course they asked me if I wanted to join them--and they weren't kidding--but even though my heart surely wanted to, my brain wouldn't allow it...I mean retired is retired, isn't it?...Where are they going to be working and which moves will they do? Well, I can't say where for obvious reasons (casino surveillance people all over the world read this blog), but you can bet they will be laying Savannah moves all over the roulette layouts and even on blackjack tables! Those of you who don't know Savannah, you can go to the video page on my website and see her in action. I gotta tell you frankly that it is unbelievable a cheating move can be so good that I can speak about it openly like this and casinos still can't stop it! In any event, I will let you know how they did when I get their report. I'm thinking they'll make a big score to bring in the New Year!

Have a nice day and see you tomorrow.