It's Not All in the Hands, My Boy!

What makes a good roulette mechanic? Well, of course he (or she) has to have good hands that can smoothly handle the chips for a pastposting move, but that's only part of it. In addition to the hands, he (or she) has got to have balls! He, iron ones...she, well...you think of the adjective for them! Then of course, he or she has got to have brains. The roulette mechanic has to be able to read pit situations and see if someone on the casino staff, including the dealer, might be on to him or her at the last second before it's time to switch the chips. You know, like Kenny Rogers used to sing..."gotta know when to move 'em...gotta know when to not..." or something like that.

Now that you know just what it takes to be a good roulette mechanic, you're probably wondering why I went out of my way with the "or shes" in describing roulette mechanics. Are there many female roulette mechanics out there cheating casinos? Well, I never knew one...but since I don't want any backlash from women's groups who might say I am bigoted for insinuating that all roulette mechanics are men, I decided to write the possibility that female roulette mechanics do exist.

And let me mention, if you haven't read it in my book "American Roulette," some of the best overall casino cheats in history were women. Check some of them out on my Casino Cheats Hall of Fame page.

Here's a Bad-Beat Story For Ya!

An unidentifed man walks into the Presque Isle Downs & Casino in Erie, Pennsylvania, and hits a quarter slot jackpot for $2,000. Not a bad day's pay, right? Just what he was probably thinking until the casino notified him that he would be paid but wouldn't be allowed to keep the money...What the heck???

Turns out the man was victimized by his volition. Some states, including Pennsylvania, where this incident took place, allow people to ban themselves from casinos. Yes, you heard me right...I mean, you "read" me right...he banned himself from the casino. This law allows people who have gambling problems to protect themselves from entering casinos and losing their houses, life-savings and possibly familes. The man who won this slot jackpot had chosen to ban himself from Pennsylvania's casinos several months ago...and then either forgot about it or decided it didn't really matter.

But for the state of Pennsylvania it did. The man was forced to forfeit the two grand...and to boot, he was cited for criminal trespassing!

My take: In spite of this man's bad-beat story, the law allowing people to ban themselves from casinos is fundamentally good. It will do a lot more good than harm in the long-run, and even if that man had been allowed to keep the two grand, he would not doubt have ended up losing it back...and probably a lot more.

Does She Look Like a Casino Cheat?...Well, She's the Latest Slots Cheat Convicted in Singapore, as Casino Cheat Wave Continues in New Casinos

Back on February 15 at the Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore, Alice Lau Qian Xiu, a forty-six year old accounting assistant, decided that counting other people's money was not as good as counting her own...so she decided to become a slot-player thief. Her first known victim, and I stress "known" because no one knows how many there were before she got caught, was Soh Wee Chen, a thirty-two year-old salesman who was playing a Russian roulette machine and walked away from it leaving his credits. Evidently, Chen thought that his remaining credits would be automatically transferred to his casino player's card.

Lau Qian Xiu was on the lookout as she played the slot machine next to Chen, and when she spotted the credits on his machine immediately snatched the credits printout and cashed out $630 at the casino cage.
But then two things happened: the first was that Lau Qian Xiu, like many other degenerate low-level casino cheats, did not leave the casino after committing her crime. Instead she returned to the same slot machine she'd been playing on when she spotted her victim and began playing again; the second is that the victim realized his mistake and went back to the machine to claim his credits. When he got there he saw there were none left to claim. He reported the incident to security, then surveillance ran back the video and saw Lau Qian Xiu steal his credits, just as she unbelievably still sat at the same machine while surveillance watched the footage of her crime.

Lau Qian Xiu was prosecuted and faced two years in jail, but her lawyer convinced the judge that the friendly and harmless-looking woman was desperate and acted on impulse and was by no means a pro, and won her a lenient sentence: $1,500 fine.

My Take: She does look a little too nice and innocent to be a casino cheat/thief, but I'll tell you this: Had she gotten away cleanly this time, she would have been back out on the prowl as soon as she blew her first known victim's $630.

Two Roulette Cheats Try and Fail at Monster Pastposting Cheat Move in Singapore!

I haven´t heard of any professional casino or poker cheat-teams coming out of Africa, but apparently at least one of them is in business, and not surprisingly it is in Singapore, where the newly-opened Sands Marina Bay casino has quickly joined its brother Singaporean casino, Sentosa's Resorts World, as a prime target for professional casino cheats from all over the world.

As I might have suspected, a casino cheat team from Tanzania would be a bit less than prime, and they got caught trying one of the biggest roulette-cheating pastposting (bet-placing after winning outcome is known)moves since my professional cheat team broke up after our huge score on New Year's Eve, 1999. They had the balls to try pastposting a $1,000 casino chip straight-up on a number at the bottom of the wheel. Reports are that the move was done by a two-man operation, which is a little short for a cheat-move of that magnitude. They probably didn't have much check-betting (process of laying down bets to create move opportunites and chip-camouflage) going on, as that's usually done by people not involved in the mechanics of the move or in claiming the winning bet.

The one thirty-four year-old Tanzanian man identified, Kipuyo Lemburis, was arrested and taken to court on Friday, charged with trying to fraudulently convince the dealer on the roulette game to pay him $35,000, which is what the legitimate payout on a $1,000 straight-up-on-the-number bet would have paid.

My take: I think the attempt was a little too big for the casino. Maybe they should have tried the same move with a $100 chip straight-up for a $3,500 payoff. If they indeed had tried that and received a payoff or two, they should have continued with moves of the same value. They may have been able to get away with ten $100-chip moves instead of one $1,000-chip move.

Robert Andersson, One of Online Poker's Biggest Cheat Scam Artists, Gets 8 Years in Swedish Prison For Drug-Dealing!

Okay, as we learned from Frank W. Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the scam-artist movie "Catch Me if You Can," Swedish prison cells are more like cozy college dormitory rooms, but nevertheless they are still prisons, and for the next eight years 22 year-old highly-detested online poker cheat scam-artist Robert Andersson will be making his home in one.

Andersson, a well-known poker player/cheater who is Swedish, is more notorious for outright stealing fellow online players' money than actually cheating in online poker games via bots, collusion or any of the other known online cheating methods. His MO is simply "borrowing" money from other players by chatting them up with fancy stories involving funding for online poker tournaments, and he has also been accused of actually breaking into players' online poker accounts and emptying them of funds. He is also known on the European Poker Tour, where he's had very limited success.

But now he's headed upriver (if you want to call a Swedish prison that) for smuggling methedrone, a drug much like ecstasy, into Sweden from England and other European countries. For those who have been scammed online by Andersson, this is at least some poetic justice even though his victims will never recover their money.

Andersson first became cheat/scam noteworthy online when an American online poker-player/cheat-victim posted his tale of getting scammed out of 30 grand by Andersson on 2+2 in 2008. I read the post and I believe it is the longest post in the history of online poker forums; it is several pages long and explains how Andersson wiped out his entire poker bankroll, both online and off, through a series of loans that Andersson never paid back. Of course there was some stupidity on this American poker player's part for repeatedly loaning Andersson money, but Andersson is quite good and suckered his victim into chasing lost money with more money in the hope of getting Andersson to pay back.

Evidently, this Andersson character is a real scumbag and he was actually convicted on the testimony of "friends." As no drugs were found on Andersson when he was arrested, this testimoney added to mountains of circumstantial evidence was very strong, as victim testimony always is.

Well, since Swedish prisons are almost like hotels, Andersson will surely not suffer and he probably will take advantage of prison poker games to cheat some more. And since he will no doubt have a computer with Internet access in his "cell", what's to stop him from continuing his online poker cheat scams?

Believe me...nothing!

Do Legal US Gambling Casinos and Poker Rooms Ever Cheat You? Before I Say "No" Read This!

South Dakota Casino Sites "Poker-Cheating Collusion" Rule to Avoid Paying or "Cheat" Nine Poker Players Out of a Jackpot!

We have heard various times about casinos voiding out slot-machine jackpots or refusing to pay them for one reason or another, usually claiming that the slot machine malfunctioned and the resulting jackpot was due to faulty computer chips...or something like that. But this is the first time I have heard about a poker room inside a legitimate casino refusing to pay a Bad-Beat Jackpot because it accused the entire table of poker cheating collusion to make sure that the bad-beat held intact. In my opinion, and probably in yours after you read the following account of what happened, this casino, the Royal River Casino in Flandreau, South Dakota, is full of shit and IS actually cheating these players out of $96,000.

KSFY Action News Article:

Nine poker players say they have been cheated out of a $96,000 dollar jackpot by the Royal River Casino in Flandreau, after the casino enforced a rule it says is necessary but the players say it should not have applied in this situation.

"Nine good people took the brunt of what one person did." Bill Williams says he's one of the nine people who lost out of a $96,000 poker jackpot. He claims a drunk man he didn't even know spoke two words that cost the rest of the table nearly a hundred grand. "We know he was out in lala land. He didn't know where he was at. He didn't even know he was at a poker table and yet he caused the pain and suffering of nine South Dakota people to lose $96,000."

Bill says the casino refused to pay out the jackpot because the rule 'no speaking of the bad beat' was broken. "The two words were the collusion rule that means you can't speak of the bad beat. Well, bad beat and saying bad beat and speaking of the bad beat are all different."

When the players took the case to tribal court, Bill says their judge was the tribal judge appointed by the Flandreau Tribe and was the prior lawyer for Flandreau. He calls it a fix from the beginning. "If they don't want to settle it, it's never going to end. We've got to put it behind us. All of us."

Royal River is owned and operated by the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. The poker players who stood to win the $96,000 jackpot have argued their case to the tribal gaming commission and the tribal courts. Each time, the casino has come out on top. Royal River's acting general manager says that's because the casino followed the rules, which he says are clearly displayed.

The rule he points to is: Poker players cannot talk during a game, no if's and's or but's.

"My heart and everybody's heart feels bad that it did happen but we did have to follow the rules and regs on it," (Gimme a break!) says Jackie Barse, the acting general manager at Royal River. She says the "no talking" rule is in place to make sure players don't work together and put other players at a disadvantage.

In poker, it all comes down to that one card or that one trend. In this case, the casino says one player mumbled that a player was close to winning, which violates the rules. "We have nothing to lose or nothing to gain except to make the rules were played right."

As far as the casino is concerned, now that this case has gone through the tribal court system it is over and done. But there could be legal action involving player, Bill Williams, who has established a blog and a web site criticizing Royal River. "It's like a hate crime so, I'll never pay him nor would the tribe."

My Take: Sure, the casino is "technically" following the rules, but at times, especially if a casino wants to maintain good public relations with its clientele, it has got to bend a bit when it is clearly obvious that no cheating intensions were involved in a jackpot or any other players-winning incident.

Shame on these South Dakotan hick casino operators!