Why Poker Collusion Cheating is so popular

Who's telling who?

The vast popularity of Poker Collusion Cheating is growing every day. It may just be the most common form of cheating in brick and mortar casinos today. And note I said "casinos" and not "poker rooms". That's because poker collusion might be even more prevalent than bet-capping at roulette and blackjack.

Colluding at the brick-and-mortar poker tables is by far the most popular form of casino or poker cheating out there. And if you add online poker-collusion to the mix, you are talking about a staggering number of cheats, many of whom are professional. 

The art of two players covertly sharing information on their hole-cards and then using it to bet, raise and re-raise to induce opposing players to either call or fold is just too easy to do. It entails nothing more than perfecting a silent but visual language usual involving chip and card-formations on the table. In big-action cash-games in Vegas, top-notch collusion pros hustle high-rolling tourists out of tens of millions annually.

And even more than blackjack hole-carding, poker collusion is extremely safe inasmuch that no one can ever be prosecuted for it. In fact, only in the most obvious situations is a poker-colluder ever approached by poker room employees and asked to leave.

Online poker games are a little tougher because of all the anti-collusion programs that can go back and analyze every hand, card by card. Collusion patterns can be detected, but the most skilled of cheats will reduce their colluding and manage to stay under the anti-collusion radar for the most part.

Why is Blackjack Hole-Carding such a popular cheating method?

Did someone catch the hole-card?

Imagine being able to cheat in a casino without really cheating. Sounds like a pipe-dream, right?

Wrong!

It actually exists on the blackjack table. And it is the number one from of blackjack cheating by skilled and professional blackjack cheats. 

There have been numerous discussions and debates whether or not hole-carding is actually cheating, some of which have ended up in state and federal courts. Despite the fact that there have been arrests of card-cheats for hole-carding blackjack games, not one has ever been convicted. In fact, there have been cases of false arrest stemming from these incidents where casinos ended up paying damages to those they arrested, in effect making them double-victims of the same scam.

The reason blackjack hole-card cheating is not really cheating is because the hole-carders are doing nothing to alter the deal and motion of the game. They are simply taking advantage of a weak dealer when he slides and tucks his hole-card underneath his up-card. 

Even after casinos greatly reduced the number of handheld blackjack games in which hole-carding was ridiculously easy, skilled cheats still manage to position themselves around and behind a blackjack table to get a good line of sight at a portion of the hole-card´s face to determine its value. Then one cheat (the reader) signals the value of the hole-card to his partner(s) at the table who use the information to alter their hand-strategy decisions

How profitable is blackjack hole-carding? 

Well, that of course, depends mainly on the percentage of hands the reader can glimpse the hole-card. If he is successful every time, the cheats have a 13% advantage over the casino, which is huge. In reality, that utopia is never reached, but if the reader manages a 25% accurate read-rate, the advantage is still healthy enough. The key is not to make mistakes reading. It’s far better for the team to play basic strategy when the hole-card is not readily defined.

And there are other ways to enhance the hole-carding edge. Most Skilled blackjack cheats already have substantial knowledge on card-counting and other legal advantage-play techniques such as ace-steering and identifying clumps of ten-valued cards and aces. So when a good team goes up to the blackjack table with the main hole-carding plan of attack, they have other weapons in their arsenal to fully take advantage of favorable situations. 

So when you take a good look at blackjack hole-carding, you can see why skilled blackjack cheats swear by it.

Is This a Bad Attempt at Savannah?

Bad attempt at Savannah?

Holiday weekends usually bring out the cheats, as they do the legitimate players, and this past July 4th weekend in the US was no exception.

But apparently there was one exception to the normal cheating moves seen across roulette layouts.

At the Sands Bethlehem casino in Pennsylvania, a roulette cheat named Lalit Taneja, of unknown national origin, tried a roulette "pinch" move that may have been a silly attempt at my famous "Savannah" pinch move.

A pinch move is when the cheat removes a losing bet from the layout without the dealer noticing it.

But unfortunately for Mr. Taneja, a supervisor did notice his attempt to remove what was a losing bet of four $500 chips beneath two $5 chips, $2,010 in total, from the third-section box on the outside of the roulette layout. Apparently, Mr. Taneja tried to hide the bet from the dealer by placing other much smaller bets with his arm extended over the $2,010 bet just as the ball was beginning to drop. Then when it lost, he raked back the big bet which he thought nobody saw.

The covering of $500 chips with $5 chips is very reminiscent of my Savannah move, although it doesn't appear that Taneja tried to hide the $500 chips under the $5 chips as I did with Savannah. He went through this complicated action of trying to hide the bet while making other bets with his arm slung over his big bet.

I gotta wonder why he went through all that when it is so simple to hide the $500 chips underneath the $5 chips the way I did with Savannah.

Perhaps he never saw or read about the Savannah.

In any case, Mr. Taneja is busted and sitting in jail. Perhaps someone can send him a copy of my book "American Roulette" and he could read about what he should have done.

First High-Tech Casino Cheat Using Smartphone to Cheat Slot Machines Goes Down!

Bet he never thought his smartphone would film this!

An Eastern European mobster who is the first person convicted of using a smart phone to cheat casinos has been sentenced to 22 months in a Singapore prison for his role in cheating slot machines at the Resorts World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands casinos last June.

Forty-year-old Radoslav Skubnik, a Czech national, copped out to several cheating charges in front of a Singaporean judge, who surely has seen his share of casino and slot cheats before him. Skubnik admitted that he used his smart phone to get an advantage on the casinos’ slot machines.

The case was much more complicated than that of simple casino and slot machine cheating. Skubnik was part of a criminal gang that preyed upon casinos worldwide. The gang attacked slot machines throughout Europe, in Macao, and even in the United States, mostly at tribal casinos whose employees might not have as much slot machine protection experience as their Las Vegas and Atlantic City counterparts.

According to the prosecutor, Skubnik and two Russian accomplices, forty-year-old Vladislav Logachev and thirty-three-year-old Andrei Egorov, used smart phones to film the slot machines’ play patterns and then uploaded the information to a complex server that analyzed and decoded it before sending it back to the cheating slot players.

With this information, they were able to gage upcoming large payouts.

Singaporean police reportedly recovered $125,000 in slot winnings from the guilty parties. The two accomplices, Logachev and Egorov, have not yet met their fate although they are charged with similar crimes

It came out in court that the three slot machine cheats were educated in their art in Russia and then sent all over the world by mob leaders to raid casinos’ slot machines. 

This goes well with Eastern Europeans’ history of high-tech casino cheating. Back in 2004, in what was the first well publicized high-tech casino cheating case, a group of Hungarians and Romanians used lasers to clock roulette wheels in London casinos, although they were never charged with a crime.

My take: Hooray! Chalk one up for Singaporean gaming agents, they finally nabbed a high-tech casino cheat team. But watch out for these Eastern European high-tech cheats…they’re extremely dangerous to casinos’ coffers!

Dealer Insider Trio Busted For Roulette Pastposting Cheat Scam at Iowa Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs

Dealer placing bets?

A floor supervisor and his ace roulette dealer teamed up with a patron to cheat their Iowa Horseshoe casino out of some thirty grand.

Their roulette cheat scam was rather basic if not altogether amateurish. The dealer and the supervisor simply looked the other way as their cohort roulette player made late or pastposted bets on the layout.  On many spins, the dealer himself pastposted the bet or added chips to a winning bets after they had won.

The dealer most likely had some of the cohorts chips palmed during play and simply dropped them on the winning number as he swept away the losing chips. This is not a new scam and usually gets discovered by casino surveillance long after its inception.

In this case, the roulette cheat scam fell apart when another roulette player not involved in it became aware of the hanky-panky taking place on the layout. He alerted another supervisor who, unfortunately for the crooked supervisor and dealer, was not in on the scam. Surveillance was then notified and a three-month investigation gathered enough evidence to charge the guilty parties.

Roulette supervisor Jonathan Rumery, 28; roulette dealer Jonathan Waugh 24; and roulette patron Cody Schroeder, 28, were all charged with cheating at gambling and conspiracy to cheat at gambling.

My take: Well, the “Jonathan Brothers” had a pretty good run for an Iowa casino cheat scam, but now they´ll never work in another Iowa casino again, and probably not in any casino. And to boot they´ll probably get some county jail time to think about it.

Are you cheating yourself by Splitting Aces in Blackjack?

Should you?

All serious blackjack players know the basic strategy and card-counting decisions for splitting pairs, and it’s pretty hard to go against them.

Many say impossible.

 But I disagree in two cases, and both are among the strongest pair-splitting cases etched in stone:

 Always split Aces.

 Always split 8s.

 Is my reluctance to always do so based on odds?

 Absolutely not!

It’s based solely on what seems to happen each time I make either of those plays.

Splitting Aces:

If you’ve got a pair of Aces against a dealer’s stiff up-card, then splitting them is of course a no-brainer. But when you’ve got them against a dealer’s up-card of 7,8,9,10 or Ace, you need two successful hits for a chance to win both hands if the dealer already has a made hand, quite difficult when you’re permitted just one card on each split-Ace.

I prefer just hitting Aces with the opportunity to hit again…and again. With each Ace counting as 1 or 11, I like my chances of making a pat hand.

Splitting 8s:

Basic strategy says always split them. I sure as hell don’t like the looks of that when I see the dealer’s up-card is 9, 10, or Ace. If he’s got any ten-value card in the hole, my goose is cooked—twice!

But what the heck do I know?

Game Protection Post: How Pro Cheats Psych Out Their Casino-Victims

Casino Cheat Brain Power

The world´s best cheats use a powerful and proven 10-step method to dummy-up casinos into believing their cheat moves are legitimate bets and that they’re legitimate high rollers.

1)    Buying the chips they need away from the table they’re about to move on.

When a casino-cheat team wants to do a blackjack move using $1,000 chips, they get those $1,000 chips at the craps or baccarat table, thus avoiding any heat on obtaining large-denomination chips at the blackjack table they’re targeting. This gives them the element of surprise when putting them into dishonest play.

2)     Making set-up bets to establish credibility as a high roller.

When the team pastposts or bet-switches a $1,000 chip, the person who will claim that phony        bet will first make a legitimate bet using the same denomination chip. The dealer and supervisor will both remember this big original bet and not be suspicious when the same high-roller appears claiming a bet-switch containing a $1,000 chip.

3)    Using a little psychological “force” when possible.

When trying to manipulate a dealer’s mind, a little physical touch can go a long way. As casino dealers are almost never touched, a switched-bet claimer can reach out and gently tap the dealer’s hand to alert him to the cheat-move and speed up the process of getting paid. This soft touch has the effect of whacking the dealer’s head with a baseball bat because he’s totally shocked at being touched at all by a player. The result is that he forgets what he´d seen in the betting circle and therefore cannot contest the cheat’s claim as to how much is in the circle now.

4)    Betting back after the switch goes down and gets paid.

The best way to avoid post-move heat is to cool the casino down. Doing this entails a bet-back, which is the same as the set-up bet but placed after the move goes down. If the cheat-move earned $1,000, then a bet-back or two of $200 will do the trick. Of course those bets are at risk, but in the long-run the cheats will only lose a small percentage of their cheat gain.

5)    Being gabby from the start to the finish.

The best way to control the situation at a table and avoid having it turn negative is to create the mood the cheat-team wants, which is obviously a jovial one. When there is talk and laughter at the table, it is much more difficult for negative reaction and suspicion to surface. With this in mind, the cheat who is raking the cash off the layout engages his gambling neighbors in affable conversation during the entire time he’s at the table.

6)    Chumming-up the supervisor.

The cheat wants to immediately establish a rapport with the supervisor, who is the second most important person at the table and the one who ultimately determines whether or not the cheat-move will be paid. As most supervisors come over and greet the players, especially those showing big action, the cheat wants to ingratiate himself right away. He thus accepts the supervisor’s offer to rate his play in order to qualify for casino comps. What better outcome to get paid on a cheat-move and then wine and dine yourself as the casino’s guest!

7)    Not coloring-out chips at the table.

Although the cheat wants to leave the victim table as soon as possible after the move and subsequent bet-backs, he doesn’t color-out his chips to a higher denomination. Doing so gives the impression that the cheat may have finished his gambling and is headed to the casino cage to cash out and then leave the casino. Not doing so leaves the impression that the cheat who has just been paid on a bet-switch is still ripe for lots more gambling and will probably give the casino back its money at another table.

8)    Tipping the dealer.

Last thing a top-cheat wants to do is leave the table having an unsatisfied dealer. If the dealer is a little suspicious or upset, he might nudge his supervisor to call surveillance to have them take a closer look at what went down on the table. A good secret that cheats know is that a nice tip will remove most of the doubt from the dealer’s mind.

9)    Leaving the table aggressively.

Another last thing a cheat wants to do after cheating a casino game is leave the table as if he’s trying to escape. Doing so will pop red flags in casino-employees’ minds. Leaving sheepishly or in a hurry does not seem natural for a high roller who’s just won a grand or more at the table. So the masterminding cheat walks off with tailing conversation and laughter, maybe even a friendly slap on the back or handshake to his neighboring player.

10)   Avoid talking to the teller at the casino cage while cashing out chips.

The chatter cheats use to control the atmosphere with neighboring players and supervisors at the table is not needed at the casino cage. Skillful cheats just lay their chips on the counter and wait for the cash. If the teller has any questions as they sometimes do, the cheat just answers them succinctly. As the casino cage is a prime locale for money-laundering and other serious criminal operations, the less felonious casino-cheat just wants to get outta there as soon as possible.

Total psychological effect

Psyching out the casino is probably the strongest weapon in the skilled casino-cheat’s arsenal. Most actual cheat-moves are quite easy to do and contain nothing more than good timing and hand-coordination. But the key to cheating-success is to keep the casino oblivious to the very fact they are being cheated, and the only way to do that is by building a psychological step-by-step ladder that leaves their personnel so dumbfounded that they just go along for the ride.