This one really caught my eye! In a span of less than an hour, three people cheated the Turlock Poker Room and Casino out of more than twenty-five grand by marking the cards, apparently in quite an unprofessional way. Finally, when they got too greedy, surveillance caught on to their cheating scam. Arrested were a floor supervisor and two players at the table, all charged with 11 felonies including conspiracy, burglary, grand theft, winning by fraudulent means and cheating at gambling. The supervisor was identified as forty-six year-old Robert Younan. The players were Gabriel Rodriguez, seventy-one, and In Cha Say, fifty-eight.
Casino surveillance got wise to Rodriguez and Say making blatant deviations from basic strategy blackjack, which seems like foolish play unless you keep winning, which is what they were doing--in huge amounts. It was then determined that the players had marked the cards with a grease-like substance, marking ten-value cards on the corners and sevens, eights and nines on the middle. The cards were not marked on the game, however. They were marked elsewhere beforehand, and Younan, the supervisor, was able to switch the marked cards into the game when his cohorts hit the table.
My take: Amazing that they got ahead $25,000 grand in such a small casino. This shows two things: One, that the blackjack cheats and supervisor were incredibly greedy and/or stupid; two, the casino floor personnel were incredibly inept not to catch on to them after the first few hands. Even though they could not have seen the marking taking place, the cards should have been removed from the game after a few winning hands for large bets that showed successive deviation from basic strategy.
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