Canadian Casino and Poker Cheats...Beware!

If you are planning a casino-cheating or poker-cheating trip in Canada, be careful! That is because the Canadian government has just passed several new laws amending the definition and punishment of gambling and casino crimes. In short, the Canadians want to punish poker and casino cheats with stiffer sentences for cheating their casinos and poker rooms.

This sudden change in legislation obviously is connected to the recent cheating scams that have hit Canadian casinos the past several years, including, of course, the international Tran Organization mini-baccarat scam that victimized Casino Rama among others in Canada. Basically, any gaming conviction could carry a penalty of five years in prison.

What about punishing online casino and poker cheating in Canada? That is still murky, and it seems that the government's attention there is to punish online sites that cheat the players through UltimateBet and Absolute Poker-type cheating scams, in which insiders manipulate software to cheat legitimate players.

Canada's Biggest Casino Hit With Another Mini-Baccarat Scam...This Time By Korean Card-Switchers!

The Casino Rama in Ontario was one of the biggest victims of the Vietnamese Tran Organization's false-shuffle mini-baccarat scam (search blog for details). Now it has been hit again by a Korean casino-cheat team with six members...and for big money! According to Canadian casino-crime investigators, Jae Gook Kim, 30, Tae Sik Kim, 55, Sam Yeung Kim, 45, John Yoon Lee, 47, and Seung Chui Cho, 22, all of Seoul, Korea, and Un Gi Kim, 37, of Toronto, bilked Casino Rama out of more than $200,000 by switching cards on the midi-baccarat game, which is a modified version of mini-baccarat. The cheating took place the first two days of August.

The casino cops obtained search warrants of the cheat organization's hotel rooms and seized fifteen grand. The rest of their cheat-winnings were not found. Perhaps the cheats sent the money back to Korea or blew it legitimately gambling somewhere else...who knows? In any event, all six were charged with cheating at gambling and possession of property worth more than $5,000 obtained in a criminal enterprise. They are being held pending a bail hearing.

My take: First of all, I don't know why casinos bothered putting in midi-baccarat tables. Unlike MINI-baccarat, players get to touch the first two cards of each hand, making the casinos vulnerable to card-switching.

As far as this Korean casino-cheat team goes, they were probably good but probably as well a bit too greedy. Two hundred grand is a big number over two days, even in high-action baccarat pits. I'm assuming that after the casino lost the ton of money to the Korean cheats, at some point they began zooming in their surveillance cameras and caught the switches. I wonder why it took "$200,000 long" to finally realize what was going on.

Also note that Korean casino-cheat teams and gangs are becoming much more prevalent the past few years, both in brick and mortar and online casinos. Just a few weeks ago, a huge Korean online poker cheating ring was busted for hacking into source codes of several online poker rooms.

Cake Poker Comes Under Online Poker Cheat Scrutiny!

The latest in the online poker cheating vine, which continues to tangle up like a massive spider web of cheating, is that Cake Poker network’s security system is flawed and that there are risks such as those encountered at the CEREUS poker network, which is the system used at UltimateBet.com and Absolute Poker.

According to online poker cheat insiders, Cake’s servers are not nearly as secure as they would have liked you to believe. Flaws in their security have made it susceptible for third parties to steal personal data transmitted between the players and the Cake poker room. Inasmuch any sensitive player account information could have been compromised during transmission. This security breach allowed user names and passwords to be stolen by data thieves...and supposedly opened the door for hole cards to be compromised the way they were at UltimateBet, in the online poker cheat scam of the century.

Cake poker room manager Lee Jones issued this statement on the latest online poker cheats scandal: “Our development team replicated the described scenario and confirmed that a vulnerability exists. We take this very seriously and have mobilized a team of senior engineers to address the problem. In short, we are adding an SSL layer to secure all communication between our servers and the client software. We’ve got everybody who can possibly help on this and will get the development and testing jobs completed as soon as humanly possible.

All this comes just months after Mr. Jones declared that Cake Poker had stronger encryption codes than the CEREUS poker network.

My take: Here we go again!

Low-Level Blackjack Cheats Continue Their Assault on Pennsylvania's New Casinos

Of course this is to be expected in any new casino area, but Pennsylvania, whose casinos opened up table games two weeks ago, is really getting hit by the riffraff of casino cheats. This is a far cry from the huge sums of money that cheats are siphoning off the new casinos in Singapore.

We've already heard about the bet-cappers and about the guy who ran away from the cage as he was about to be nabbed for passing $100 counterfeit chips of very poor quality. Now we're seeing the bet-pinchers, the guys who try to pinch back their losing chips before the dealer can sweep them into the table rack. Over the weekend, a twenty-eight year-old man named Thomas Albright bet $15, three red $5 chips on a hand of blackjack. He lost the hand and then attempted to remove one of the $5 chips from his bet, thus trying to save $5 on the hand. The dealer caught him on his first attempt, and naturally, like all rookie casinos do, the pit supervisor ran right to the videotape. Surveillance confirmed the pinch-action, then security read Albright the riot act...but with a twist. Instead of being barred permanently from the casino, he was ordered not to return for thirty days.

My take: Why didn't Albright try to pinch back two $5 chips instead of one...or why not the whole $15 bet? LOL

Is Slow-Rolling in Poker Tournaments a Form of Cheating?

Slow-rolling is the art...or the disgrace...of taking your sweet time to reveal your hand at showdown after the river, especially when you have the nuts winning hand. Note that I am not talking about slow-rolling during the betting rounds when players take their time deciding what to do, whether or not they have the nuts and whether or not it is on the river. I am strictly speaking of players who have raised or bet and been called at the end and now must show their hands. Slow-rolling players take their sweet time turning over their cards. And of course it is quite annoying when you're waiting with bated breath to see if you won or lost the pot.

So, is there any real advantage to slow-rolling in tournament play? Actually there is. Say that the tournament is near the end and there are 15 or so players on the two remaining tables battling to make it to the final table. The person doing the slow-rolling is buying time or stalling, hoping that during his slow-rolling a player at the other table busts out. This in effect gives him an advantage, however slight it may be, of reaching the final table. If it happens at the key moment when the 10th player is eliminated, slow-rolling can actually push the slow-roller to the final table.

Is this cheating? No it is not. It is unclassy, unethical and perhaps dispicable, but it is also just another form of angle-shooting that cannot be considered poker cheating.

How 'bout slow-rolling in online poker tournaments?...Please, gimme a break!