HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!

To All of You!

I want to wish all my blog readers a very happy and healthy New Year, and I look forward to writing more interesting blog articles in 2019!

Thank you all very much!

WSOP Cheating Allegations Fly!

Justin Lapka accused of Poker Cheating

I personally believe that cheating at the World Series of Poker Tournament has gone down substantially over the past decade but we still certainly hear of cheating incidents. The big one coming from the 2018 $600 No Limit Hold'em Double Stack event is Justin Lapka being accused of starting the tournament with $5,000 more in chips than the rest of the players, and trying to get away with it. All the players were given $40,000 in chips but Lapka was given $45,000.

According to reports, a player named Shawn Daniels was sitting near Justin Lapka and noticed that Lapka had $5,000 more in chips than everyone else at the table. Daniels said he tried to get Lapka to acknowledge the error, made by tournament employees who just accidentally distributed the extra $5,000 in chips, but Lapka got mad and supposedly said, "I will do what I have to...it's business." Daniels posted this account on Twitter and warned players to be aware whenever they interact with Lapka.

Lapka responded to the Daniels' tweet by saying he had been aware of the error in his favor but since it wasn't his fault he wasn't going to return the extra $5,000 in chips. This type of excuse is not accepted in the poker-tournament community. The error was ultimately noticed by the dealer, who took the extra chips away.

Another player named Steven Snyder said this about Justin Lapka: "He has to be the biggest douche I've ever met at the tables...Constantly talking shit when he loses a pot and just always unhappy making smart ass comments to everyone. He thinks he's some hotshot player."

Another player named DJ MacKinnon said of Lapka: "If he admitted to the table he knew and didn't do anything about it, I would definitely give him a one or two-round penalty."

It seemed all the backlash finally got to Lapka. He issued this apology: "I just wanna acknowledge that I made a decision tonight without a full understanding of how my decisions may affect other people or the poker community at-large.

My take: This is more or less a minor cheating incident that, I would say, a fair percentage of poker players would let slide if the same over-distribution of chips went their way. However, that does not mean it isn't cheating.

An old retired casino-cheat seriously ups the ante!

Louie and his fake casino chips

I am talking about Louie "The Coin" Colavecchio, the now seventy-six-year-old man who in the 1990s flooded Atlantic City casinos with high-grade $100 counterfeit chips. His casino exploits have been profiled on TV shows such as the History Channel's "Breaking Vegas" series. He ended up serving more than two years in federal prison for his counterfeiting-$100-chips crimes.

Well, apparently Louie has been up to his old tricks. He is still counterfeiting $100 items, but now it's US $100 bills, not casino chips, which is a far more serious crime than counterfeiting chips. He was arrested last Friday at his Rhode Island home and charged with possessing equipment for manufacturing phony $100 bills and actually manufacturing them. According to reports, Louie had been under surveillance for several months and his telephone conversations were recorded.

During one of those conversations, Louie purportedly said that if he were arrested he would claim he was working as a counterfeit-bill detection specialist LOL. He also purportedly said that he had developed technology that could replicate US currency security features including how genuine bills react to UV light.

Louie, who was already serving 7 years of a suspended sentence for possessing more than 5 kilos of marijuana, could be looking at some serious time if convicted on these new charges.

In fact, the next thing he may be counterfeiting is "Get out of jail free" cards.

Robert Asiel's Casino Cheat Memoir "The Unexpected Gambler"...Any Credibility?

Credible Cheat Tales?

Back in April of this year, Robert Asiel released his self-published book "The Unexpected Gambler," in which he claims casinos rampantly cheated customers and explains how they did it. He then goes on to detail his own cheating moves that he used against these very same casinos, claiming that his moves are still being used today on casino blackjack tables.

Is there any credibility to this book and Asiel's claims?

Frankly, I don't know. I have been in and around casino cheating for 40 years, 25 as a top professional casino cheat and the better part of the last 15 as a game protection training consultant helping casinos protect themselves against all levels of casino cheats. Yet I never heard of Robert Asiel before I stumbled upon his book on Amazon.

I will say this for starters: Asiel supposedly began his casino career as a casino dealer in a legitimate Nevada casino and then became a "crossroader," which is the casino vernacular for cheat. Inasmuch as that goes, his career is very similar to mine up to a point. That's to say that I began my casino career as a dealer in a legitimate casino before becoming a casino cheat.

So, not having heard of Mr. Asiel, I went online and did some research. I came upon accounts of his involvement with Louisiana mob figures in a long-ago card-marking scam that beat the President Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi for $500,000. It is not clear exactly what Asiel's role was in this card-marking scam, but it appears it might have been limited to being a connecting contact to some of those who carried out the scam by sneaking the marked cards into play. I do not know if Asiel was a player taking down profits once those cards were in play.

I do not have any other accounts of his cheating. No pastposting, capping or pinching scams.

I have not read the book, and I am not sure I will, but I have spoken to several people who have. In spite of the raves for Asiel's book on Amazon, the general consensus among seasoned casino people who have read the book is that they believe Asiel participated in the marking-card scam, which took place in the 1990s, but find his tales of legitimate US casinos rampantly cheating customers far-fetched.

Interesting Baccarat Dealer Cheating-Case in Australia...Another Big Inside Baccarat Cheating Scam at Australia's Crown Casino Melbourne

Accused Baccarat Dealer Cheat

Supposedly it came to light during the Crown Casino's routine review of its big baccarat winners. The group of winners in question won some $430,000 during several baccarat sessions last April and May. Then the suspected dealer was taken to the casino's back room and interrogated. As is normal procedure, or at least what should be normal procedure, the interrogation of the dealer was recorded.

The dealer's attorney then requested access to the audio tapes but was told by the head of Crown Casino's investigation unit that the tapes no longer exist. 

Finally, the shit hit the fan!

The scam itself, although not detailed, supposedly has the dealer informing a group of players what the cards were before the deal so that they could bet accordingly. Surveillance operators claimed they noticed the dealer lifting and shifting the cards before he dealt.

In any case, this is one of the most complicated cases of baccarat cheating I've yet heard of.

Here is the related news article that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The head of investigations at James Packer’s Crown Resorts says audio recordings from a “holding room” used to interrogate an employee who allegedly scammed the casino giant out of more than $400,000 no longer exist.

In the high-roller Mahogany Room at Crown’s flagship Melbourne casino last year, baccarat dealer Michael Huo is alleged to have looked at cards and informed his associates – card players Fiona Shum, Yixuan Cui and Ke Wang – which cards were about to be dealt, helping them win $431,000 across 58 hours of playing at his table in March and May.

Mr Hou came to the company's attention during a “routine” review of the previous day's 10 biggest winners, including examining CCTV footage of their betting and pulling up data on their betting patterns.

Crown’s internal investigators arrested Mr Huo and his co-accused on the night of May 1, when the three women were playing at his table. Mr Huo was detained for more than three hours in a “holding room” before police arrived, the Melbourne Magistrates Court was told.

Defence lawyers have sought access to a logbook of the personal audio devices worn by the casino’s security and investigations staff on the night of the arrest, as well as audio and visual recordings of the interrogation of Mr Huo, and copies of text messages sent and received by investigators during the interrogation.

Peter Haag, representing Mr Hou, said Crown was refusing to comply with court orders to produce evidence and on Monday subpoenaed Crown’s investigations manager, Jason McHutchison.

“The orders of the court last time were not complied with,” Mr Haag said, “and the subpoena endeavours to obtain the materials that were the subject to the court orders last time by a different route.”

Mr McHutchison said his text messages were cleared when he replaced his smartphone late last year because he “didn't think they contained any evidentiary value”, while an audio recording from the holding room that day had since been deleted, because a request was not made for it to be preserved within 14 days.

“It wasn’t requested in the time frame,” he said. “It’s no longer in existence.”

Defence lawyers also sought a logbook of personal recording devices worn by Crown staff on the night, and copies of those recordings.

But Mr McHutchison said the logbook did not contain relevant information and did not produce it. He also said the “only recording I was able to obtain was my own”. “The rest cannot be found,” he said, adding that one had malfunctioned on the night.

Daniel Harris, the former senior surveillance analyst at the casino, said it was Crown’s routine practice to conduct a review of CCTV and internal betting data for the top-10 winners each day, to “see if they are legitimate”.

Mr Harris said surveillance footage showed Mr Huo spending an unnecessary amount of time straightening and handling cards.

“The front few cards could be seen to shift slightly and were leaning over the deck,” he said.

The hearing before Magistrate John Bentley continues.

5 Best Gambling Books

Bestselling Gambling Book

If you’re a reader and a casino fan, there 5 books are good reads. But, if you’re a gambler and you want to improve your gambling skills, then these books are a must. Some of these books are actual autobiographies, some are biographies and some are fictional but with a lot of research done on the subject. Nevertheless, you will learn a lot about gambling, the life of gamblers and most importantly, the tips of real pro gamblers.

Bringing Down the House – Ben Mezrich

If reading is not your strongest suit but you’re still interested to know what this number one gambling book is about, you can watch the equally popular movie. It is actually quite an interesting book that narrates the true story of a group of MIT students that decided to bring down the house by counting cards in blackjack. Thanks to their brilliant, genius minds and exceptional MIT math skills and knowledge, they started training as a card-counting team, with the sole aim of winning over the house and make millions, which they eventually did.

Gambling 102: The Best Strategies of All Casino Games – Michael Shackleford

This book is more of a beginner’s guide to the casino games strategies. However, the author supposes that you have a previous knowledge of at least the basic rules of the games and gradually teaches you how to improve your odds of winning. The author is a statistics and mathematics expert analyst, so the book is based on real statistics made over years of study and experience. Essentially, you will learn about the house edges and the best strategies that can be used for winning at online casinos.

Beat the Dealer – Edward O. Thorp

Although quite an old book, Beat the Dealer is definitely not a book to be underestimated as it is actually the first book that proved the ancient myth – that you can use card-counting to win over the house. As a mathematician, Edward O. Thorp proved that mathematically speaking card-counting is real. In fact, the entire book is scientific, with equations, charts and all, and it served as the beginning of the card-counting movement, inspiring many authors to keep digging into it.

The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time – Michael Craig

Michael Craig did a fascinating job in capturing the world of the high-rollers, the huge bets and the lavish lifestyle of big-time gamblers. It actually tells the story of a billionaire banker Andy Beal, determined to beat the most skilled poker players at their own game of choice. With detailed descriptions about the secrets of the poker strategies, Craig skilfully combined a good story with a useful gambling material.

Blood Aces – Doug J. Swanson

You must have heard about the World Series of Poker, but do you know the true story about its creator, the mob boss and casino owner Benny Binion? Well, if you're interested in having a peek into the world of mobsters and their notorious lifestyle, you must read this book, with a gangster movie dynamics.

Game Protection Robots Cruising Casino Floors...Are They Coming Soon?

Can "Buddy" catch casino cheats?

For those of you who missed it, the Pechanga Casino near San Diego, California has debuted roving security robots that patrol the casino, or at least areas near the casino such as the hotel lobby and hallways, in order to give casino guests more security and, even more important, a sense of more security and being as safe as possible.s

This brings an interesting question. These robots (for now) are more of a security apparatus than a game protection one...but will we ever see robots patrolling the actual casino floor looking to spot cheats, advantage players and even scams in progress?

Honestly, I don't know. The first thing that comes to my mind is: even if these robots were equipped with enough cameras and artificial intelligence to perform such a vital game-protection task, would they be able to walk themselves around a casino floor without getting in everyone's way?

I mean, picture a crowded Vegas casino on New Year's Eve, which happens to be the annual preferred working-night of professional casino-cheating teams. Forget about the angst those professional casino cheats would feel at the sight of robotical armies honing in on their scams and then one of them rolling right up to their roulette table and in a metallic-pitched robotical voice saying, "You guys are caught cheating"!...what about the regular players only wanting to grab a seat at a slot machine or blackjack table who might be bumping into these strolling robots? Sure, it might be fun greeting and taking selfies with a robot or two in the middle of the casino as long as it doesn't interfere with the gambling.

So just the mechanical driveability of the robots might pose a difficult problem to solve.

But beyond that, would digitally-equipped-video robots on the casino floor actually help casino surveillance departments identify cheats and spot their scams going down?

I must say it would be possible. Although I have never been a big believer in the usefulness of facial recognition technology in casinos, if it were directly put to use right on the casino floor, I might be convinced otherwise, especially if the robots zeroed into a face of a suspected casino cheat and zoomed in, then compared the contours of the face with an existing casino-cheat data base. In that scenario the robots could help.

But what about detecting a scam going down without any facial-recognition leads to the cheats being there, or more specifically, being at a table in set-up or operation of their cheat moves?

That remains to be seen. Of course these robots could be programmed to recognize tells of professional and sophisticated casino-cheat teams, but wouldn't a skilled human being with knowledge in those tells have to do the programming?

Of course he or she would.

And that's where these robots, named "Buddy" at the Pechanga, might fall short...though by no fault of their own! 

Another Connecticut Casino Insider Scam nets Cheating Dealer Probation

Mohegan Sun...More insider cheating

The player/agent, who had previously worked at the same casino for nearly two decades, got a year in prison.

It all happened on the blackjack tables at the Mohegan Sun casino, and like nearly always, it was a rinky-dink scam where the dealer, fifty-five-year-old Roy Mariano, simply overpaid the player, Marlene Rivera, many times when she won her hand. According to accounts I have read on this, there was nothing more than that going on. And their total take was nearly $80,000!

Imagine that...a simple overpay-scam taking down eighty grand! I don't know how long they were running it, nor do I know why the casino's surveillance department didn't catch it quickly, assuming that it went on for awhile. I mean, they had to be doing this for at least heavy green and black-chip action to get that kind of money out off  the tables.

It is just truly amazing all the insider scams that have happened at the two major Connecticut casinos over the years, the other of course being Foxwoods. I am not going to blame table-games staffs, nor am I going to blame surveillance departments. I guess the reason for this must be related to the simple fact that these two casinos are huge in size and congruent high-action, and cheating from the inside for several hundred dollars or a few thousand per night just stays under the radar.

Perhaps more details about this scam will emerge. If they do I will keep you posted.

A Game Protection Dinosaur

The Boxman...A lost breed

No, I am not talking about George Joseph (excuse the joke but he does refer to himself as a game protection dinosaur), but rather about a game protection dinosaur that George Joseph indeed knows very well.

Yes, I am talking about Las Vegas craps boxmen, who have more or less been gone for a decade now. Of course 10-years-gone doesn't yet qualify them as extinct, but in Vegas lore that is indeed becoming the case.

There has been a long debate in the casino industry about whether the demise of Las Vegas boxmen is a positive or negative for casinos' bottom line. The argument pits game protection people against casino finance executives and accountants, or should I say bean counters?

The game protection people of course argue that cutting out the  boxmen hurts that very protection of games and makes craps more vulnerable to cheating scams, both from the outside and those from the inside that involve dishonest craps crews who take advantage of boxmen's perpetual absence.

The finance executives and accountants say that the 3-man craps crew of two dealers and a stickman can adequately observe and protect craps tables just as well as they did in the era of boxmen. Therefore, boxmen were expendable and cutting their salaries more than made up for losses to cheats taking advantage of one less set of eyes watching the craps games, albeit an extremely important set of eyes.

Okay, which side do I take? I bet you can guess.

True, the reduction of salaries is certainly black and white and does reduce payroll.

But on the other side, the game protection side, things are not quite as clear. From a cheating point of view, I, for one, can attest to the huge increase in vulnerability to cheating that craps games have without the boxmen sitting on duty. The first casino area I ever noticed not sitting boxmen was Reno and Lake Tahoe, Nevada. And I first saw the boxmenless tables there in the early 1980s.

And boy did our cheat teams make Reno and Lake Tahoe pay! We bombarded all the casinos in those two Nevada gambling-hot-spots with purple check pastposts, sometimes for as much as $5,000 per move, pastposting both the pass line and the odds simultaneously. We didn't even need a distraction because there was no one there to be distracted. The stickman was always busied following the dice and placing the prop bets and the two base dealers, normally refusing to hawk the opposite end of the table (which is proper adherence to game protection), could never see the cheat moves going down there.

It was as easy taking those speckled purple checks off the craps tables as it is taking red and white candy canes from a baby, thus my point on cheating boxmenless craps from the outside.

So what about craps-cheating the same tables from the inside, by wise and dishonest craps crews who appreciate the existence of boxmen--or should I say non-existence of boxmen?

Need I remind you all of the infamous Bellagio Casino hopper scam that took place between 2012 and 2014, just a little while after boxmen began disappearing from Vegas craps tables? For those of you unfamiliar with a craps hopping scam, it is basically nothing more than players calling out verbal bets (hopping bets) before or as they are putting their checks on the table. The craps crew is then supposed to place the chips on the called-out number as soon as possible, before the dice are rolled.

Well, in the case of the Bellagio scam, the dishonest craps crew of three, a stickman and two dealers, simply placed the hopping chips on the number that was rolled, not the number that was called out or hoppped. This ridiculous amateurish scam went on in the Bellagio, a major Las Vegas Strip casino, for more than a year to the tune of $1.5 million without anyone not involved in it noticing.

Not even surveillance had a clue!

So who finally noticed it? I'm told it was another dealer not involved who wanted to be just that...involved. He supposedly approached the crooked threesome and demanded to be cut in on the scam, and those three cheating dealers were obviously as rudimentary as their scam was--they refused--and kept on cheating with the knowledge that another dealer who wanted in and was denied was on to everything!

So no surprise that the jilted dealer dropped the dime on the three dealer-cheats who eventually were all convicted of felonies and sent to state prison.

I firmly believe that had boxmen been present at the Bellagio during that time, the scam would never have come off, or at least it would have been much less costly if it did come off and a boxman was in on it. That because the crew would have had less opportunities to cheat in light of the fact they had to occupy all four crew positions around the craps table.

And what about the sliding-dice scams, today's modern craps table scourge? Sliding dice were mainly the responsibility of boxmen who more than not never let the dice out of their sight. So without them there, skilled dice-sliding teams who are capable of simulating a legitimate tumble with an illegitimate spin can easier get off their sliding scams.

And there's still another negative element the casinos' financial guys never take into account when arguing to get rid of boxmen...mistakes.

Mistakes! Dealers at craps make them more than dealers on the other table games. No doubt. Why? Because craps is by far the most complicated game to deal, so even craps dealers with tons of experience make errors on the payoffs.

And who do you think is there--or was there--to spot the errors and inform the dealers so they could be corrected?

You're right!...the boxmen.

But you know what? There's one element about the boxmen's disappearance that for me has even more significance than the game protection loss. That is simply the loss of ambience. For me, Las Vegas boxmen were a symbol of the action throughout the whole casino, the entire town. Perhaps as well a symbol of the showy machismo that Las Vegas craps games brought to the otherwise dry desert. Just the image of boxmen settling disputes, calming irate gamblers down, smiling at the attractive women, or the fancy way they rotated a die in their hands before examining it after it flew off the table, making sure it was the same die that had flown off the table and not a loaded one that may have been switched into the game by a cheat. The whole process of an experienced boxman examining a die was nothing short of a Las Vegas ritual. And I miss that.

So now that we are getting more and more into the boxmenless craps era in Las Vegas, you know how I feel about it.

How 'bout you? Do you side with the game protection guys or with the bean counters?

And one final thought: Just think that casinos in Las Vegas used to sit two boxmen, one for each side of the table, on jammed-up high action games!

What does that tell you about boxmen's true importance to game protection?

Widespread Insider Employee Cheating Rocks Mark Twain Casino in Missouri

Lotta employee cheating going on!

Talk about brazen if amateurish casino-cheating scams!

The Mark Twain Casino in La Grange, Missouri certainly had its share.

According to accounts, the Missouri Gaming Commission is proposing a $50,000 fine for the casino for having allowed blatant cheating violations over an eight-month period between December 2016 and August 2017.

That's a long time!

It seems that the cheat scams, involving dealers, supervisors and pit managers, revolved around the casino's craps tables, where we have seen a sharp increase of insider employee scams, most notably the recent $1.4 million hopping-bet scam at the Bellagio in Vegas.

Just like that scam, which unbelievably occurred without interruption over more than a year, the Mark Twain scams were relatively simple, even ridiculous at that. The dealers, in collusion with their supervisors and pit bosses, allowed players to cap, pastpost and change their bets at will, either after they already won the bets or were in a favorable position to do so. It went to flagrant extremes such as the dealer calling a "no roll" on the thrown dice if they crapped out against the players.

There are two amazing things about the scam. The first is that the whole thing seemed carried out only to collect tips from the beneficiaries of the cheating. Unless those tips amounted to at least half the profits, these casino employees were risking their careers for virtually chump change.

The second incredible thing that hits home with this scam is: where was surveillance? Unless they were in on it, which does not appear to be the case, how could this go on for eight months without someone from surveillance catching on to it through routine reviews and observation.

In all, three employees were fired and arrested. A table games supervisor and pit manager have already pleaded guilty and received probation, community service and lifetime bans from casinos in Missouri...pretty light sentences for a continuing criminal enterprise, I would say.

My take: This relative amateurish scam scenario is just more plain evidence that table games dealing-procedures must be adhered to and stressed over and over again via repetitive training. Same thing goes for surveillance.

Poker Cheating at Charity Events...That's Bad!

Cheating Charity Poker...Bad!

Have you ever wondered about people cheating in poker games that are run by and for charities? Does it happen? Are there people out there who would actually do this, especially if their cheating would affect monies earmarked for helping those people who are suffering and depend on charities to make ends meet and get by?

Well, I hadn't thought about this until I read an article about an Indianapolis charity poker room being under state investigation. That certainly got my attention.

A poker room run by the Northside Knights of Columbus that generated some $4 million in player rakes but only showed a profit of $150,000 is being investigated by Indiana State officials, who were apparently tipped off by an angry player who'd been barred from playing there.

The first question is why was that player barred. Was it for cheating? Or was it for being drunk or some other disorderly conduct? According to some newspaper accounts, the state is investigating only minor issues such as not properly displaying rules signs and allowing players to tip the dealers, which is prohibited by charity gaming regulations dictated by Indiana law.

However, most people, me included, do not buy that this is some kind of investigation into minimal violations of gaming law, especially with the knowledge that just last year another charity poker room in neighboring Fort Wayne was cited for giving only a small percentage of its revenues to the charities it represented.

I don't know exactly what's going on at the Northside Knights charity poker room, but I do know this: someone is cheating. It could be the players, the organizers or both.

I'm gonna say it's probably both!

Meet Terry Roses! Then learn how to spot marked cards in live casinos!

Training wih Terry and Steve Hamilton

I just met Terry Roses at the 2018 Upper Midwest Intelligence Gathering (UMIG), which is the intelligence unit of casino security and surveillance personnel for midwestern casinos. I was the main speaker there, scheduled for the second day of the two-day conference. I had no intention of being there the first day, until a Minnesota surveillance director emailed me about a guy who was going to do a presentation that first day all about identifying marked cards in casinos. 

That guy was Terry Roses, and after hearing about his "secret lab," I became so intrigued that I made a last minute change of airline tickets to be able to get there in time to see Terry's presentation the day before mine.

And boy was it some presentation! The best and most interesting I´ve ever attended at any game protection conference. Terry perfectly presented his material, interweaving his own life and how he developed a keen interest in marked cards with that of displaying several casino-cheating gadgets and finally his own invention, which is a fabulous little handheld gizmo with which ALL daub card-markings can be seen and identified on the spot. I have been told by several high-profile surveillance executives in Las Vegas that it is the BEST DEVICE of its kind ever to hit the market.

I then had the unexpected pleasure of Terry helping me with my own presentation! He was tremendous!

And Terry, who goes by the name of the "honest cheat," is just that. I mean this guy is even more honest than he looks. He is also humble, so much so that he had to be pushed to aggresively market his product.

It is called the Inspecta Card Scanner and you can see it by making an appointment with Terry. Perhaps he'll show you his secret lab!

So I urge all surveillance departments that want to be able to detect marks on suspicious cards on the spot to get a hold of Terry's Inspecta Card Scanner. It will serve you well!

Man Arrested for Cheating Hollywood Casino in Indiana Tries Hollywood-Worthy Funny Bribe on Gaming Agents!

Big Mac to avoid Casino Cheating Charge?

A thirty-four-year-old man named Justin Athey got caught pastposting bets at the Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. He was taken to the casino's back room, where he was interrogated and then placed under arrest by Indiana Gaming Commission agents. Then in a final desperate attempt to get out of the hot water, Athey allegedly offered to buy (or get) the gaming agents as many Big Macs as they fancied.

The reports of the incident do not say whether or not Athey is an employee of McDonald's, nor does it detail which casino game he was pastposting and for how much. What is clear, however, is that the gaming agents did not accept the Big Mac bribe.

My take: Maybe those agents just had lunch and weren't hungry! LOL. Also, I think it would make a funny Hollywood scene if Martin Scorscese ever make a sequel to his movie "Casino."

All Casino Employees in the Philippines now Banned from Gambling in Casinos!

Message to Casino Employees Only

And we're not just talking about dealers, floorpeople and other persons directly involved in the gaming aspect of casinos. The Philippine national casino gambling ban affects all casino employees, right down to custodians and parking attendants.

This casino-banning seems to be following a trend of other Asian casino jurisdictions that have either done the same or are in the process of enacting similar legislation. In a previous blog article I wrote about the pros and cons of this issue, and, more importantly, whether or not governments should have the right to ban employees from any sector from gambling in casinos.

The reasoning for these bans are usually twofold. First is the common claim that casino employees could develop problem gambling habits that could have a negative impact on their job performance or even on their ability to work.

Second, and probably more the reason for doing so even though it is much less publicized, is the casinos' desire to reduce the chances of any dealers and floor personnel getting involved in inside cheating scams to rip off the casinos in which they work. The thought does make solid business sense as a dealer who is losing too much money gambling is certainly more probable to compromise his job than dealers who don't take such risks at losing money.

My take: I do not think the government of any country that allows gambling casinos to operate should have the right to ban specific sectors of the work force from gambling in casinos, even if they work in one.

Card Counter Tommy Hyland caught....AGAIN!

Face to well known!

What's the matter with this guy? He's been getting caught card-counting at Eastern Seaboard casinos so much over the past few months it makes my head spin!

Hyland, who just might be the most dedicated professional card-counter with the most longevity of all time, was recently booted out MGM's new Springfield, Massachusetts casino. Just a few months ago he received that same welcome in several New York State casinos. Of course Hyland has blackjack card-counting heat all over the United States and probably Canada as well.

You would think he should emigrate to casinos overseas...at least for awhile.

Here's an article recounting his MGM Springfield tossing.

Just How Bad can Casino Game Protection Get?

Why is there a dolly?

EXTREMELY BAD!

Don't just take my word for it. Simply take a look at this casino game protection training video released by an Asian TV station.

It appears to be a training class for a real casino staff or regulatory body, although I am not sure. The trainer is from the NSW Liquor and Gaming Control Authority, which indicates New South Wales in Australia, but all the attendees appear to be Asian, therefore I cannot pinpoint where this happened and for whom it was given.

In any case, I have never seen such an utter display of lack of credible cheating knowledge by a game protection trainer. The woman shows nothing but low-level scams, and does a hesitating job at best. She then makes the incredibly naive statement that the dolly "will certainly stop people from putting bets on top."

She means to say pastposting or capping bets, which respectively is making a new bet after the winning number has been determined or adding chips to an existing winning bet.

The correct lexicon aside, her statement is so false that making it puts the casinos she trains at much higher risk and vulnerability to professional cheats who already feast on casinos lacking proper game protection training.

This is because the best professional roulette cheating teams only do exactly what she tells her students cannot be done--pastpost maximum straight-up bets on the number-- UNDERNEATH the dolly. I myself pastposted $100 checks straight-up underneath the dolly hundreds of times. So this terrible piece of misinformation being fed to its dealers is just one example of why some casinos remain the professional casino-cheats candy stores of the world.

I urge whoever hired this trainer...IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HIRE ME TO TEACH YOUR CASINO REAL GAME PROTECTION, AT LEAST HIRE SOMEONE WHO HAS A CLUE!!!

By the way...now that we're speaking about the roulette dolly, how many of you know that before the mid 1950s it did not exist on American and Asian-style roulette wheels? Just like with French-style roulette wheels that never used the dolly, dealers simply pointed to the number and verbalized it with "red-black, even-odd," etc.

Now that you know this, how many of you can guess why the dolly was invented?

Online there are many accounts of this, but most of them are inaccurate. Some say that it was to help people remember the last winning number in order to facilitate their betting patterns for upcoming spins. Others say by the dealer removing the dolly after all the winning bets are paid, the players know when they can begin their betting for the next spin.

Although these reasons are partially correct, they have nothing to do with the one reason the dolly was invented. In fact, the ubiquitous roulette dolly has a colorful history, and I am actually a descendant of it...so to speak.

Prior to 1955, there were no such dollies in existence. Roulette dealers would simply point to the winning number on the layout, announce it, and then begin sweeping the losing chips off the layout and the process of paying the winners, first the outside winners then the inside winners.

The early and mid-fifties were the heyday of roulette pastposting (placing late bets), especially straight-up on the numbers. In fact, it was like a roulette cheating epidemic. The biggest roulette pastposting cheats at the time were Henry Classon, a cheating ancestor of mine, and a mute gentlemen named Mumbles, both inducted in the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame.

This pair terrorized casinos in Las Vegas, Reno and Puerto Rico to the point that a fed-up pit boss named Kiki Vargas at the Americana casino in Puerto Rico decided to do something about it: he invented the roulette dolly.

His idea was that if the dealer placed the dolly atop the chips on the winning number or on the naked winning number, roulette pastposting cheats would no longer be able to manipulate those chips or place ones on the number that weren't there before the ball dropped.

BOY WAS HE WRONG!

But in spite of that, casinos across the world have been using the roulette dolly ever since.

MGM National Harbor Dealer Pleads Guilty in New Casino's 1st Big Baccarat Cheating Scam

High-Limit Baccarat Pit at MGM

It was a combination false shuffle/digital camera scam, where the baccarat dealer exposed part of a baccarat deck so his cohorts playing at the table could photograph it, and then protected the slug of cards by performing a false shuffle.

The scam netted more than $1 million.

The dealer, Ming Zhang, worked with a group of players with whom he shared the proceeds from the scam. I don't currently have details on how the scam was detected or if any other casino employees may have been involved.

Zhang will be sentenced on January 31, 2019.

My take: Where there is baccarat...there will be big baccarat scams.

Listen to UK Supreme Court Justice Deny Phil Ivey's Appeal in $12 million Baccarat Edge-Sorting Case

Phil doesn't look to happy listening to this

GREAT RULING AND THOROUGH EXPLANATION!

My take: This judge leaves no doubt as to what Ivey planned and did...and he got what he deserved!

It wasn't a Casino-Cheating Murder!..Good thing!

Scene of accident not murder

Yesterday I blogged about this case where a Mohegan Sun Pocono casino dealer who had led casino authorities to a huge $400,000 free-slot-play credit scam was found dead in a creek near that casino. There was speculation that the dealer, Matthew Crane, might have been murdered as a revenge payback for causing the convictions of three people, two of whom are currently in jail.

I stated in my blog account of the case that I thought it was highly improbable that this really was a payback murder, based on my analysis of who the three convicted casino cheats are. One was vice president of player development at the casino, another a cocktail waitress there, and the third a gambler who frequented it.

It turns out that an autopsy has determined that Crane died of accidental drowning, nothing more.

I'm glad to hear that it was not a sinister case of killing someone of casino-cheating.

Did this Casino-Cheating case lead to murder?

Casino Dealer found dead

In 2016 a Mohegan Sun Pocono dealer named Matthew Crane blew the whistle on a $400,000 free-slot-play credit scam using the theft of personal information that sent three people to prison, one of them Robert Pelligrini who was the cassino's vice-president of player development at the time, another a casino cocktail waitress named Rochelle Poszeluznyj, the third a gambler who frequented the casino named Mark Heltzel.

Well, tragically, Crane's lifeless body was found yesterday in a creek in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, not far from the casino where he worked. Although the police have not given details as far as a cause of death, nor stated that it was a homicide, it is easy to make that assumption based on the fact that Crane was an informant who helped send three people to federal court and plead guilty to various federal crimes in connection with the case.

Pelligrini received a federal prison term of 32 months, while Heltzel got 18 months and Poszeluznyj six months house arrest and two years probation. Allegedly Crane led casino authorities to the scam because he had been dating Poszeluznyj while she was also involved in a romantic relationship with Heltzel, which caused him to be jealous.

Pelligrini and Heltzel are currently in prison, so they could not have physically murdered Crane, but of course that doesn't mean they were not somehow involved in it, if, of course, it was a murder.

My take: This one is difficult to call. The prison sentences were not too lengthy and neither incarcerated man has a history of organized crime involvement, as least none that has been reported by the press. Poszeluznyj was described at trial as being a student who was also holding down two jobs. Taking all this into account, I find it improbable that any of these three initiated or participated in a murder-for-revenge scenario.

But stay tuned...I am sure something very interesting will surface with this case.

Playing Card Manufacturer Released from Liability in Ivey Edge-Sorting Case

Off the hook!

The Borgata Hotel and Casino has dropped its claim of expressed warranty breach against Gemaco Inc., the card-maker who supplied the cards Ivey and his partner Cheung Yin Sun edge-sorted to beat the Borgata casino out of some $10 million, which a New Jersey court ruled they had to return.

To read more about edge sorting and the details of the edge-sorting scam Ivey and Sun used to be casinos, simply search out more articles on this blog by entering "Edge-sorting baccarat cheating scam" or "Phil Ivey baccarat scam."

Two Roulette-Wheel-Clocking Pioneers Inducted into Casino Cheats Hall of Fame

Richard Jarecki

Richard Jarecki and Joseph Jagger, two tremendous pains in the asses to European and American casinos who assaulted their roulette wheels by simply clocking their performances to note imperfections they could exploit, have been inducted to the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame.

Both with extremely colorful histories, they are the 32nd and 33rd casino cheats to be bestowed with this honor.

Joseph Jagger

Should casinos have the right to prosecute a patron who stumbles upon a computer glitch and then uses it to gain free slot credits and cash out large sums of money?

Major Redeeming Credits Case

This article stems from the recent ruling of three appellate judges in a Singapore slot-machine credits case. A Hong Kong woman in the casino playing slots stumbled upon such a glitch and ended up maximizing the casino error to the tune of nearly a million bucks!

She did so by enlisting the help of two people to help her cash out the money to stay under the radar, thus preventing the casino from realizing the computer malfunction for as long as possible.

She and her two recruits were subsequently arrested and charged with conspiring to dishonestly misappropriate a large sum of casinos funds.

At trial, her lawyer argued that the case was no different than someone finding a wallet on the casino floor and keeping the money, which did actually happen in the same Singaporean casino, and ended with the acquittal of the person charged in that case.

But in this case, obviously involving lots and lots more money, the court convicted the woman and her friends of the charge and sentenced them to prison terms. The guilty parties appealed but to no avail.

The whole argument is based on, or at least should be based on, the woman's state of mind when she first came upon the glitch. She obviously had no premeditation on her mind at that moment, and only later decided to take advantage of the glitch, moving into a "conspiracy" once she brought the proposition to the two other participants.

One thing to note here is that the two other participants entered into the "conspiracy" with premeditation to take advantage of the glitch, which doesn't necessarily mean they were guilty of a crime but does mean they were never just stumblers onto a get-rich-quick scenario.

You can look at this case similarly to the Phil Ivey baccarat edge-sorting case, where he and his partner came upon defective cards in casinos and then premeditatedly used those defective cards to win millions from several casinos. In two major jurisdictions where Ivey pulled off the feat, neither charged him with a crime, in spite of his forethought to swindle the casinos out of the millions.

That said, you might think the woman taking advantage of the Singaporean computer glitch is even less guilty of a crime than Ivey was judged to be. After all, she did not come to the casino thinking of scamming it out of money, whereas Ivey and his partner did.

Also, some might believe it's just plain-old human nature for any person, or perhaps I should say "most people", to look upon the situation as serendipity and thus milk it for all it's worth. Therefore, you may think the casino is responsible for their own error and should not have the right to prosecute people who happen upon it and take advantage...especially so far as the woman is concerned.

I guess you could look at the situation somewhat differently once she got the two other people involved, seeing it as the furtherance of a conspiracy...but did that conspiracy ever really exist in the first place?

So you might still say the woman should not have been charged.

I also guess that you could look at the case of the two other people she recruited differently, since they entered the situation with the intention of ripping off the casino--if you want to call it that.

Here, you may not be so sure, but then again, how could you accuse the recruits of a crime if you're not accusing the woman who first stumbled upon the opportunity to commit the crime...if you want to call it that?

I realize all this sounds a bit discombobulating to say the least!

What do you think?

Wait a minute! Do we have another Father of Modern Roulette Wheel Clocking?

Is he the first father of modern roulette wheel clocking? 

Just a week ago I wrote an article about Richard Jarecki, the father of modern roulette wheel clocking who passed away at 86 years old after a lifetime of clocking biased roulette wheels for a living while he moonlighted as a doctor, researcher and scientist.

But suddenly an article has appeared in the UK Daily Mail newspaper claiming that a broke Victorian textile boss in the 1880s is the real father of beating casinos out of fortunes by clocking biased roulette wheels.

The man's name was Joseph Jagger, and according to the newspaper's account Jagger beat the storied Le Grand Casino of Monte Carlo out of 80,000 pounds back in 1881, which is the equivalent of 7.5 million pounds today.

According to a new book by Jagger's great-great niece Anne Fletcher, who happens to be a historian, Jagger was facing debtors prison after failing to pay off a series of loans he had taken while his textile business was going bankrupt. He then, as a last-ditch attempt, borrowed money from family members and friends and hightailed it to Monte Carlo, heading right for the roulette tables.

Taking advantage of a lifetime of working with textile wheels, Jagger was convinced he could survey all the roulette wheels in the casino and determine which ones had a bias in their revolutions. He knew that at the time no wheel of any kind could spin perfectly; there had to be a tilt in each one. So he spent an entire month, twelve hours a day, sitting at roulette tables and observing and recording the spins of every wheel in the grand casino.

Then he finally made his move, beat the casino for a small fortune, returned home to the UK, supposedly bought 30 houses, one for himself and his family, the rest for his friends, and lived happily ever after.

Le Grand Casino is said to have refurbished all its roulette wheels in Jagger's wake.

My take: Well, I don't know whether to believe this father-of-modern-roulette-wheel-clocking story...but then again, I don't know if I believe the first father-of-modern-roulette-wheel-clocking story about Richard Jarecki either.

But I ask myself one question: Didn't anyone working at Le Grand Casino in Monte Carlo notice the guy sitting at roulette tables twelve hours a day for a month without ever making a bet???

Do Today's Legitimate Brick and Mortar Casinos Cheat Their Players?

Sexy woman luring victims?

I bet you have all heard stories about legitimate gambling casinos in the past willfully cheating their players. Most likely you heard the stories about card "mechanics"operating in the early days of legalized gambling in Nevada back in the '30s. Or those about shady casinos on cruise ships sailing in the middle of a dark and murky ocean.

But what about today's casinos? Do they cheat you?

Most of you would probably say no. Casinos have so much the best of it as far as odds go and are so heavily regulated that they simply would not and could not cheat their players...right?

WRONG!

And guess what: legitimate casinos cheat their players far more than you think.

Many of you probably disagree. You're working in reputable casinos all over the world and news of your casino deliberately cheating your players would be "fake news."

So let me qualify my statement.

I said that casinos today do deliberately cheat their players--but most of the time they are not actually doing it themselves and at times might not even be aware they're doing it.

At other times they are surely aware of it but feign ignorance to it.

Now you're saying to yourselves, "What is this guy talking about?"

I will give it to you straight.

The vast majority of casinos that intentionally cheat their players do it indirectly. By that I mean this casino-cheating happens through a process in which casinos lease casino space to disreputable gaming operators that are private entities and not affiliated with the ownership or operation of the casino itself.

A prime example of this are the casinos in the Dominican Republic. In many of them, off to the side in a shaded corner of the casino often not covered by surveillance cameras, are carnival-like bingo and keno games fronted by a sexy girl dangling free-bet coupons to draw players to the game.

One of these games goes by the name Jackpot-8 Ball or other names like Super Bonus Bingo or Keno. This questionable game is played at the Avalon casino in Punta Cana, the Diamante casino in Santo Domingo and in others throughout the country. Each casino offering it has the sexy girl luring customers to the table, which has a roulette-type layout for the bets.

The game starts where you get eight balls in a cup and have to throw them into a bin with numbers. They tally all the numbers and you get a chip on the corresponding number. There are three spaces on a board where your bet will double as well as the pot. These are common numbers, so the bet doubles frequently and you cannot lower your bet. They give you several legit ways to win but in order to win the jackpot you must reach 100 points total on the board.

That's where the scam comes in. The game itself is not a scam but making you believe you can win the jackpot is the BIG SCAM...HUGE SCAM!

You see, the only way you can get the 100 points and win the big jackpot, usually more than a hundred grand, is by repetitive investing in the game. And as it doubles and doubles again that investment becomes a fortune and ultimately breaks you.

So if you start out betting $10 and the pot is $1,000, you think you're looking good. Then you hit the double and your bet doubles to $20 per roll and the pot doubles to $2,000. Then both the betting and pot double again and again, and while this is going on the dealer and supervisor (who happen to be Americans I am told) are notifying you that all kinds of payment forms including credit cards are accepted to keep up with the frenzied betting pace.

What eventually happens is that the players max-out their credit cards because they've already invested all their cash, and finally the corresponding banks say "no more credit" or the players finally realize they cannot take the chance investing more money into this crazy game in a Dominican casino.

The casino con men running the scams know this...that everyone chasing the jackpot will eventually bust out chasing it. Therefore, no one wins and the casinos get an average take of about seven to ten grand per victim.

And they can claim there was no scam because the prospect of winning the jackpot is real.

This is a brutal scam and one to be very wary of. And for those who fall victim to it there is no recourse. The casino claims it has nothing to do with the game and refers you to the "casino vendor" who runs it in their casino. The vendor, you will painstakingly realize, is virtually non-existent, at least as communication goes. And the actual dealers and supervisors of the scam, who may or may not be real employees of the actual casino, will deny any knowledge of any impropriety whatsoever.

Then when you go looking for a casino gaming commission or control board, you learn there is neither in the Dominican Republic. And when finally, exasperated, and heartbroken over a ruined vacation, you go to the United States Embassy, or that of any other major country, you are cordially informed that the State Department consular page on the Dominican Republic warns of this very casino scam and to avoid separated areas of casinos!

Damn! You should've listened...but how the hell are you supposed to know there was a casino-cheating warning on, of all  places, the State Department consular page for the Dominican Republic.

And your last bailout-hope...of course is your bank. You call them and explain you've been victimized by a vicious casino scam and want to stop payment. But your bank can't help you either: you have already authorized the payment and the transaction for it is etched in stone.

So you're stuck the money and hopefully you've learned a painful lesson.

And be aware! This type of leasing-casino-space-to-shady-gaming-operators scenario is not limited to the Dominican Republic. I have heard of casinos in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries doing the same thing, and there surely are incidents of casino-cheating-by-casino in these areas.

Note that this type of scam almost never happens in reputable jurisdictions such as the US, Canada and Western Europe.

And be aware as well that in some casino jurisdictions willful casino cheating by casinos themselves, not by vendors leasing casino space, does go on. I would point at Cambodia, Vietnam and perhaps Russia as places to be wary of as far as crooked casinos go.

So now that you know that legitimate casinos, either directly or indirectly, can and will cheat you, I offer you one single caveat: Never and I mean NEVER chase a jackpot or any other casino proposition where you have to keep paying to obtain your "guaranteed" win or jackpot.

And never...EVER...get your credit cards involved!

It all goes back to the ages-old axiom: "If it seems too good to be true..."

Beware of 8 Ball Scam against American tourists in the Dominican Republic...

Crooked Keno/Bingo in Punta Canta

The scam game

especially in Punta Cana.

I have gotten several reports on this and noticed the same reports in the Trip Advisor blog.

They use a game called Jackpot-8 Ball (or other names like Super Bonus Bingo) where you get eight balls in a cup and have to throw them into a bin with numbers. They tally all the numbers and you get a chip on the corresponding number. There are three spaces on a board where your bet will double as well as the pot. These are common numbers, so the bet doubles frequently and you cannot lower your bet. They give you several legit ways to win but in order to win the jackpot you must reach 100 points total on the board.

That's where the scam comes in. The game itself is not a scam but making you believe you can win the jackpot is the BIG SCAM...HUGE SCAM!

You see, the only way you can get the 100 points and win the big jackpot, more than a hundred grand, is by keep investing in the game. And as it doubles and doubles again that investment becomes a fortune and ultimately breaks you.

So if you start out betting $10 and the pot is $1,000, you think you're looking good. Then you hit the double and your bet doubles to $20 per roll and the pot doubles to $2,000. Then both the betting and pot double again and again, and while this is going on the dealer and supervisor (who happen to be Americans I am told) are notifying you that all kinds of payment forms including credit cards are accepted to keep up with the frenzied betting pace.

What eventually happens is that the players max-out their credit cards because they've already invested all their cash, and finally the corresponding banks say "no more credit" or the players finally realize they cannot take the chance investing more money into this crazy game in a Dominican casino.

The casino con men running the scams know this...that everyone chasing the jackpot will eventually bust out chasing it. Therefore, no one wins and the casinos get an average take of about seven to ten grand per victim.

And they can claim there was no scam because the prospect of winning the jackpot is real.

The Dream Casino and Avalon Casino, both in Punta Cana, have been alleged to be running this scam.

My take: This is a brutal scam and one to be very wary of. Never and I mean NEVER chase a jackpot or any other casino proposition where you have to keep paying to obtain your "guaranteed" win or jackpot. It goes back to the ages-old axiom "If it seems to good to be true..."