The Best Poker Scam Never Done!

I have been blogging of late about great poker cheating scams over the course of two centuries. But here's one that would be perhaps the greatest of all if it were ever done!
This scam is one that would net its perpetrators a cool $8.25 million. At least that’s what the take would have been had the scam taken place on July 18, 2007. Does that amount ring a bell? How about the date? Can you figure it out?

Okay, congratulations, you’ve come to the conclusion that this yet undone fantastic scam has something to do with the championship event at the World Series of Poker. So you ask if winning it is a scam? Well, yes and no. I’ve already told you what I know about that in my book "Dirty Poker," but what I have in mind has nothing to do with playing poker.

It’s a heist! Of course it’s a heist. That’s the best way to get the eight and a quarter mil without having to look at a goddamn card, ain’t it? After all, how many movies have we already seen depicting casino heists? Let’s see: there are the two “Ocean’s” movies with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, though the sequel doesn’t have much to do with heisting casinos, even if it did evolve from the original remake. Then there’s Nick Nolte in The Good Thief and of course the French classic Mélodie en sous-sol with Jean Gabin and Alain Delon, my favorite film. I used to rent it after a hard night’s work kicking some French Riviera casino ass, and then go back to the hotel room and chill out while watching it.

But these are just movies. True, there have been some dazzling real-life casino heists, like the 80’s Vegas job engineered by a Stardust security guard who set up his own casino cage to be hit, but then got caught when the FBI found Stardust money wrappers from the booty in his kitchen cookie jar. In the 90s, LA drug gangs bombarded the Las Vegas strip with brazen casino robberies at about the same time Heather Tallchief, an employee for an armored car company, drove off with three million bucks while her partner was left standing outside the casino holding an empty bag. However, none of these ballsy jobs netted anywhere near the eight and a quarter million I’m talking about now.

You’ve finally figured it out! Yes, that’s right. I’m talking about heisting the final table at the World Series of Poker, right at the end when the tournament officials pile up those bricks of $8.25 million in cash on the table! You think I’m crazy? Why not heist the World Series? The haul would certainly be the biggest in Las Vegas history, at least at the time of the crime. Shit, it would be in the same class as the infamous Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport, and they’d probably make a movie about it starring De Niro. All you and your cohorts for this one would need is a few sets—not of aces, but of balls!

Now you ask me how to do it? Hey, wait a minute! You know I’ve always been a classy thief. I’ve always managed to remove casinos from their money with a touch of class. But a heist? Or maybe it’s not a heist after all. Maybe you guys can figure out a way to pull it off through massive deception and artful distraction. I don’t know, but all I can tell you is that if you get away with it, you’ve not only earned my respect but you’ve played one hell of a hand.

Now that, my friends, is dirty poker!