Pennsylvania Casino Arrests Cheat Over Five Dollars!

Well, you always knew that new gaming areas would be overzealous in showing everyone that they have great surveillance staffs and tolerate no cheating, but arresting someone over a petty $5 blackjack capping-move is a bit much, I think.

56 year-old Abul Fazal Hussain, who sure as hell doesn't have a name that sounds like a casino or poker cheat, was charged by state authorities for cheating at blackjack at the Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs casino yesterday.
He was arraigned on one count of fraud and released after posting $2,500 bond.

The Pennsylvania state police gaming enforcement division stated that Hussain tried to add a $5 chip to his $10 bet after he saw his hand had won. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for September 14.

My take: Well, it's tough to see a guy take a bust for a $5 chip, but I guess the Pennsylvania casinos feel they have to cut off the monster's pinky in order to cut off his head.

Cheating Accusations Hit French Partouche Poker Tour!

Well, with a name like Partouche, I guess there has to be some cheating going on. What does the word Partouche actually mean? Well, I speak fluent French and can't recall a specific meaning, so I guess it's just the name of the French casino group who runs the Partouche Poker Tour.

I have been receiving a lot of poker cheating complaints out of France lately, especially involving Partouche. One is that players already signed-up into Partouche tournaments are being suddenly removed when hot-shot pros like Mike Matusow arrive at the last minute and want to play. Directors seem to be taking bribes to let these pros play while comping the frustrated evictees to dinners in nice French restaurants (I think French food sucks anyway!).

Another cheat complaint is that French players are showing one another their cards as they muck their hands, and the dealers, even upon request, are not showing them to the rest of the table. These same players are speaking in French as they're doing this, all which smacks of collusion play. It is also going on as such in live ring (cash) games. What makes this more despicable is that when non-French players do the same thing, the dealers seem to automatically show their cards to the rest of the players at the table, made up undoubtedly of Frenchmen. There seems to be a collective collusion among French poker rooms to help French players against Americans and others--to the point of endorsing cheating.

More direct cheating incidents are happening as well. A French player went on break on the first day of the Partouche tournament with 43,000 euros in chips in his stacks. But when he came back, there were only 33,000 euros in his stacks. The chip stacks had been counted before the break and surveillance was supposedly notified of the descrepancy in the French player's chip-count, but nothing was done to either rectify it or penalize the player who undoubtedly passed off 10,000 euros in chips to a collusion associate.

All in all, this is very unacceptable behavior for any poker tour, and since French is spoken by only a minority of professional poker players worldwide--and since English is spoken by a majority of the French players, both languages should be permitted at all tables...and French dealers should be warning French players about collusion talk, not only when these players are mucking their hands but as well during the entire time at the tables.