Mobile Poker Cheating Growing!

Source: blackjackchamp.com

While both Apple founder Steve Jobs and Google CEO have declared moratoriums on mobile gambling applications within the Apple App Store and the Android Market (respectively), software developers continue to create mobile poker apps.

Now, two more internet gambling firms have publicized new mobile poker applications which enable players to wager real money in as many days.

On January 19th, Austria-based Bwin, which may be merging with Party Gaming, launched what they are hailing as the first ever native iPhone gambling app that enables poker players to wager real money. While this poker app can currently only be bought from the Apple App Store by iPhone users in the United Kingdom or Austria, Bwin plans to release the poker application throughout the rest of Europe in the foreseeable future.

On January 20th, Microgaming software declared that their own real money Android poker app would be available by the end of this financial quarter. The application will provide access to all online poker rooms available within the Microgaming network. Lydia Melton, Microgaming’s head of poker, stated “For years now, industry experts have speculated on the mobile market’s possibilities for gaming…. The technology is ready, the software is ready, and we believe the players are ready as well. The future is here. We are extremely excited about this release.”

Even though mobile gambling has proven to be a growth industry for the past few years, progress porting real money wagering, especially for poker, to smart phones has been limited by legal and moral objections in some regions and confusion about the same in others. Additionally, mobile poker has more complicated technological requirements since more data is transferred and securing the applications to prevent cheating requires greater sophistication. Compounding the issues, the Apple App Store has long resisted gambling apps and recently Google declared real gambling is not allowed in the Android Market.

Despite all these obstacles, additional internet poker rooms and poker networks can be expected to join the mobile gambling market – the market hold too much potential for profit to be ignored.

Want To Buy a Special Poker Cheating Card Table?... Just Check Out This Poker Cheats Equipment Auction!

Throughout the 1970s, a Las Vegan by the name of Ray Carson was a dealer, floorman and pitboss at the fabled Horseshoe casino, which at the time was home to legendary poker cheats such as Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim and Puggy Pearson. He later became a surveillance supervisor at Caesars Palace. But what Carson is well-known for in gambling circles was his ability to design and manufacture gambling cheating devices, especially cheating devices used to cheat poker games.

Carson died last year at 102, so he surely had a long life that revolved around lots of poker and casino cheating. His first cheating device was the famous blackjack prism card shoe, which allowed cheating blackjack dealers to peek at the next card in the shoe to be dealt, as well as give them the capability to deal the second card beneath it. However, his most notorious cheating device was the poker holdout table. You have probably heard of poker holdout devices that poker cheats used to pack and carry cards up their sleeves, but the poker holdout cheat table was really something special. It looked just like a regular poker table, but when the cheat sat at the ideal spot and applied pressure in a certain area of the table, it sucked up the card in his hand. Then when he applied pressure in another exact spot right next to the first, the table spit out the card the cheat had already hidden there. To camouflage the entire cheat operation, all the cheat had to do was lay his hands or cards and chips over the two spots, very easy to do without drawing suspicion.

One of Carson's prized holdout tables was a 32 by32-inch folding card table with a smooth wood top and felt inlay supported by plain metal legs. It was cheap and completely innocent looking. But it was the most functional holdout card table in the history of cheating at poker and gambling. It worked with a springboard hidden underneath the felt on the table. When the cheat pressed the exact spot, the spring pushed a card through the slot where the felt center bordered the wood. Well-known magician Jason England said, "The Carson table was most likely also used for gin. In gin, a single good card, like an ace, seven or eight, could be very useful. And if you’re playing in a big game, where twenty-five or fifty grand could change hands, a single good card could be really useful."

So, why am I writing about Ray Carson and his poker cheat tables? Because next week one of his special holdout cheat poker tables will be auctioned off at Potter and Potter Magic Memorabilia's auction house in Chicago, Illinois. It is expected to fetch up to five grand! I don't know if any perspective buyer is planning to use it to actively cheat poker games or if he could recoup the five grand if he did, but it sure is a handy piece of equipment to have around the house and show and tell. It would certainly generate some good poker cheat war-stories if the eventual buyer knows a thing or two about the history of card cheats.

Magic historian Gabe Fajuri, who is presiding over the auction of Carson's gaffed poker table, said, "Ray Carson definitely built this table for crossroaders--cheaters. But we're selling it for entertainment purposes only. It will probably go to a magician or to a collector who can show it off. It's not our goal to arm Legion of the Night with tools of their trade."

We will see about that!

Fajuri said that these type of poker cheat tables are not generally available to the public. "This stuff trades privately. It's rarely available by auction. You can count the number of times these things have come to auction on one or two hands." Did Fajuri mean "poker hands?"

When asked about the danger of the cheating device falling into the wrong hands, Fajuri said it was unlikely to happen, that "most magicians don't have the balls to be card cheats, let alone use a holdout table (this is true, the magicians I have met at gaming shows are ball-less)). If you secretly palm a card or do a shift or second deal and get caught, there’s no real evidence against you. But if you get caught using a holdout table, it'd be hard to deny."

My take: Heck, if you ain't gonna use it, don't buy it!!!

Humongous Online Poker Cheat Russ Hamilton Involved in Florida Brick and Mortar Poker Room Fracas!

Source: Poker News Daily

A recent sighting of 1994 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event winner Russ Hamilton in a Florida poker room and a verbal altercation at the tables have sparked the ire of the poker community once again.

A poster on the TwoPlusTwo forum named “Slifdog” detailed a trip to Gulfstream Park’s $5/$10/$20 No Limit Hold’em tables on Tuesday evening. Slifdog and a friend allegedly sat down on each side of a player with “well over $10K” in front of him, only to realize that the mystery man was the alleged mastermind of the Ultimate Bet scandal, Hamilton. From that point, Slifdog and his partner decided to take a few potshots at Hamilton.

According to Slifdog, his partner dug into Hamilton about how he is “karmically screwed” over his actions at Ultimate Bet before the duo administered their coup de grace that set him off. After Slifdog bluffed the former WSOP Main Event titleholder in a hand, his friend commented, “(It’s) a tougher game when you cannot see your opponents cards.” Then, Hamilton erupted in fury.

“You are a f***ing d*ck… a f***ing d*ck,” Slifdog quoted Hamilton as saying. “If you believe everything you read, you are just stupid, just a stupid f***ing d*ck. You do not know what you are talking about; you were not there. You just read about it and think you know.” Soon after this tirade, the floor tried to gain control of the situation, which only seemed to prolong the disagreement.

Slifdog reported that the floor man, apparently in response to Hamilton’s status at the betting windows and on the felt of the Gulfstream Park facilities, came to the table and “[asked] Billy to stop tormenting this lard a**. Billy says loud so that most of the room can hear, ‘You let cheaters play here and then you make me stop talking when he screams at me?’ The floor says that Billy is going to have to leave if he does not settle down and Billy responds, ‘I don’t want to play anywhere that caters to this type of cheating scum.’ We pack up our chips and leave.”

Poker pro Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar, who apparently was at Gulfstream as well on the night in question, confirmed the incident. On his Twitter account, Aguiar chirped, “Playing PLO in a Florida casino and Russ Hamilton is here walking around!” Several of Aguiar’s followers responded to his Tweet, including 2010 WSOP Player of the Year Frank Kassela, who added his insight regarding Hamilton: “You gotta be brave.”

Hamilton masterminded the $20+ million cheating scheme on Ultimate Bet and used a superuser program to empty the bankrolls of hundreds of players like top pros Brad “Yukon” Booth and Prahlad Friedman. The latter is now a sponsored pro of UB.com, which was formerly Ultimate Bet.

The resulting outrage over the involvement of Hamilton has earned him the scorn of the poker world. Because of the unregulated nature of the online poker industry, no charges were filed in any jurisdiction that could hear the case. Hamilton himself was excluded from the 2009 WSOP Champions Invitational, which featured all of the living WSOP Main Event champions, and the scandals on Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker were chronicled in a feature on the CBS news program “60 Minutes.”

Not unexpectedly, the forums were overwhelmingly against Hamilton regarding the events of Tuesday night. On PocketFives.com, poster “iamthedeck ftw” said, “LOL well played. Can’t even believe this scumbag shows his face at a poker table still.”

At TwoPlusTwo, a ten-page thread had developed by this morning, once again with many the comments praising the duo for their efforts in Florida. Poster “Jetto” perhaps summed up the situation when he commented, “Thing is the guy is still out and about and many people still respect him. You could score one for the good guys. But he scored big against many.”

Minnesota Mystic Lake Blackjack Dealer Cheated His Casino To Attract Hot Women!

No doubt that casino action and hot women go together, and no doubt that cheating and cheating go together whenever there are hot women playing blackjack in casinos. I am talking about hot women cheating on their boyfriends and husbands and, of course, hot women involved in casino and poker cheating.

Jacob Christensen, a blackjack dealer at the Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake, Minnesota, must have been dealing blackjack with a constant hard-on watching those midwestern lovelies stroll across the casino floor. When a trio of them sat down at his table, Christensen got really excited and blew his load...or I should say "blew the casino's load." Without a word to them about what he was going to do, Christensen began paying their winning hands...as well as their losing hands and push (tie) hands, which is a very amateurish cheat scam. I guess he was trying to get into their pants by giving them a very lucky night in the casino, which turned into many lucky nights!

Casino surveillance eventually caught on to Christensen's shooting the casino's load and Minnesota State Police were notified. They conducted an investigation and busted the smitten dealer. Christensen immediately admitted cheating the blackjack table and explained he only did it because the women were good-looking and he wanted to impress them. He pleaded to fraud on January 6th.

It was determined that Christensen paid out a total of $3,875 to one woman, $9,500 to another (who happened to be the daughter of his landlord), and $5,075 to a third. The prosecutor entered into evidence a number of suspicious checks written by the landlord's daugheer to the dealer, which suggests to me that Christensen was at least getting something out of the blackjack cheat scam. However, the judge presiding agreed that Christensen's motive was his lust and not his greed, so she gave him a lenient sentence of eighty hours of community service and three years' probation. Christensen will also have to reimburse Mystic Lake Casino for $18,720, the amount he paid out to the women. He has also been placed in the Minnesota Casino Black Book, which bans him for life from all the state's casinos.

The women were not charged.

My take: Well, I hope the poor guy at least got laid for his casino-cheat efforts! At least by one of hot ladies if not two or all three! But I would bet my last dollar that he didn't get any sex, as that's the way it usually goes.

I was a casino dealer myself and cannot deny the temptation of all those big-titted, round-assed strutting their stuff through the casino, but the worst thing a dealer could ever do is get involved in a cheating scam with people he doesn't know--especially women!

Women will rat you out faster than casino security can get the handcuffs on you! Luckily for Christensen, the judge was a woman...who probably felt sorry for the poor chap.

Off-Duty Poker Dealer Caught Cheating Poker Game as Player and Subsequently Fired Loses Wrongful Dismissal Lawsuit

Rezi Ghadipasha had been employed as a poker dealer for 12 years, the last four of which he dealt at the Cascades Casino in Langley, British Columbia in Canada.

Back on January 11, 2009, Ghadipasha was playing in a high/low poker game at the Boulevard Casino in nearby Coquitlam after his shift at the Cascades Casino. He was accused of cheating in that poker game by way of
switching cards from his high poker hand to his low poker hand after the dealer had exposed his hand. The effect of this poker cheat move was getting a push (where the player wins one hand against the dealer and loses the other) instead of a loss, so there is no exchange of money. In some cases, that poker cheat move results in the player winning both the high and low hands.

When the dealer caught on to Ghadipasha's cheat move that resulted in a push and confronted him, Ghadipasha denied it and kept his original $500 bet instead of losing. But then surveillance at the Boulevard casino reviewed the video of the table and determined that Ghadipasha had indeed switched cards from one poker hand to the other. The poker-cheat dealer then admitted to having cheated and gave the $500 back to the casino, but he was banned from the Boulevard for one year.

Ghadipasha stated to authorities that he made a dumb mistake that he couldn’t explain, but perhaps it had something to do with his drinking heavily that night. In spite of his coming clean, the British Columbia Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch terminated his work registration and he was fired from his poker dealing job soon thereafter.

He then filed suit and lost. "This is a very sad case," British Columbia Provincial Court Judge Jim Jardine declared. Jardine ruled that the Gateway Casino Corp., the owner of the Cascades Casino, had every right to terminate his employment based on his being convicted of a gambling offense.

My take: When I was a casino and poker dealer some 30 years ago, I witnessed many dealers get into trouble gambling away their tokes (tips) after their shifts. Some of them then resorted to cheating the games to get their money back so that they could pay their rent. Unfortunately this is a problem that occurs readily today as well, and I believe that casino and poker employees should not be allowed to gamble in their own casino or in other casinos in the same jurisdiction, which is the case in many gambling areas.