Student Claims To Be Able To Expose Blackjack Card Counters--I think He´s Full Of Crap!

Yet another so-called math geek/wizard claims to have invented the ultimate defense system for casinos to spot blackjack card counting players. It´s the same old story of using digital video cameras and statistical analysis to identify who the following UK Sunday Times Article inaccurately calls "casino cheats." The newspaper needs to be informed that blackjack card counters are NOT casino cheats, and I think they have given the subject of their article way too much credibility. Here´s their article:

Student Exposes Casino Cheats.

Creator of Automated Surveillance System Claims to Unmask Blackjack Card Counters.

AN IRISH mathematician could help to clean up the world’s casinos after devising a system for detecting cheating in Blackjack, one of gambling’s most popular card games.

Wesley Cooper, a PhD student from Trinity College, Dublin, has created an automated surveillance system that can spot if a player is “counting” cards. Using “smart” video cameras and statistical analysis, Cooper’s system can build up a profile of players and spot anomalies during a game.

“Blackjack is beatable if you have a good maths brain,” he said. “At the moment, casino surveillance staff have to watch the tables and try to identify suspicious play using their experience and instincts. This system does the same job automatically using computer-vision techniques and algorithms.”

Clear Deal, which Cooper developed at Trinity’s Graphics, Vision and Visualisation research department, is being tested with an international casino operator. “The feedback has been good and I’m hoping that other casinos will adopt the technology once the trial is over,” he said.

As part of his research, Cooper worked as a croupier in Las Vegas. “I learnt that one of the most important things in a casino is to build up a profile of each serious player, so they can identify the ‘profitable’ patrons and target them with complimentary drinks and food to keep them at the table,” he said.

Cooper’s system, funded by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology, compares each decision a player makes to that of a “perfect” simulated player to determine a gambler’s skill.

“It can determine if someone is proficient or just lucky. A skilled player with a good mathematical mind can count cards, giving them a statistical edge over the casino. Blackjack is 3,000 years old and people have been counting cards as long as it has been around,” he said.

Players who count cards gain an advantage in Blackjack by keeping track of what cards have already been played from a deck. Knowing what cards are left allows a player to decide how much to bet and gives them a slight but potentially valuable advantage over the casino, typically between 0.5% and 2%.

Although not illegal in most casinos, they reserve the right to ban players for counting cards.

Teddy Hickson of the FitzWilliam Card Club in Dublin says counting cards gives players only a tiny edge. “It’s a slight advantage, but it can be significant. If we catch someone, we would ask them to leave and make it known that they weren’t welcome back,” he said.

The system was recently dramatised in 21, a film starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth, which tells the story of how a group of maths students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) won more than €500,000 from Las Vegas casinos by counting cards. Raymond Babbit, the autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man, also beats the odds at a Las Vegas casino by counting cards.

Hickson said that monitoring games such as Blackjack is hugely labour intensive. “We spend a huge amount of money ensuring that it’s nigh-on impossible to cheat by monitoring betting patterns and keeping a close eye on players. At the moment, the dealer watches the players and an inspector watches the dealer.

“A pit boss watches everything and, on average, we have between two and four cameras on each table,” he said. “If a system could be found to streamline the monitoring, it would be hugely popular with casinos but my instinct is that it would be difficult to replace human intuition.”

Cooper said: “I saw 21 [the film] and the automated system we’ve developed would have identified what was going on and alerted the casino that it was being targeted.”

Enterprising Las Vegas Casino Cheats Do More Than Cheat The Casinos!

THE HOLE IN THE WALL GANG

Some notorious casino cheats had other scams going in addition to trying to take down Las Vegas’s glitzy casinos. One of these was the infamous Kansas City mobster Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, upon whom a character in the Martin Scorcese film Casino is based. While having a run of bad luck at the gambling tables in the early 1980s, Spilatro had an innovative idea for burglarizing Sin City’s luury hotel rooms. First thing he did was to grease certain hotel registration clerks working in the top casinos on the Strip. Then when one of these clerks became aware of the impending arrival of an extremely wealthy international high roller to his hotel, he informed Spilotro and reserved him a suite in a phony name adjoining that of the high roller.
Spilotro knew that many of casinos’ superrich preferred clientele did not bother with storing valuables in safe deposit boxes on the casino floor. It was too much trouble having to go through the process and the waiting each time they wanted to get into their boxes. And many did not trust or bother with the mini-safes in the hotel suites, thus they often left their valuables hastily hidden in their rooms. So when the clerk checked a member of Spilatro’s gang into the suite adjoining the high roller’s, the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang was ready to go to work.
They waited for the high roller to go down into the casino, where he was kept under surveillance by one of the gang, who’d alert Spilotro upstairs if the mark entered the elevator to go back up to his room. Then they got out their top-of-the-line Black and Decker power drills, equipped with customized noise reduction jackets expertly made in an auto repair shop owned by the mob (like car mufflers in theory), and began drilling through the wall into the adjoining suite. Once the hole was big enough to walk through they simply did so and rummaged the suite until they came upon cash, diamonds or other kinds of booty, or had to face the fact that this one was just for a view of an identical suite.
Two-dozen suites got hit in less than two years. When the cops investigated the “drill-ins” all they discovered were phony names and ID documents from hotels’ registration records and rooms containing no fingerprints other than those belonging to the victim or hotel employees. A connection to the front desk clerks was not suspected. The press lapped up the story and one mob reporter, who only assumed it was a mob operation involving several perpetrators, nicknamed them the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang in his series of articles.
And it was not only hotel rooms getting hit. In the middle of the night jewelry shops in malls were drilled into from neighboring stores rented and then abandoned afterward by the gang. Spilotro also hired mules, furnished them with fake ID and had them rent apartments in luxury highrise condominiums, where an assortment of people prone to have large sums of cash and jewelry in their apartments resided, mainly high-class call girls and drug dealers. When the cops investigated these residential cases all they found was the other side of the hole. In the apartments adjoining the victims’ there was never a single piece of furniture or anything else that left a clue of someone having recently lived there.
But one member of the gang was not happy with his share of the booty, so he called the cops on Tony, who was arrested in his own luxury highrise condo, which happened to be in a building where his gang had hit two apartments. The cops not only found the drills but even their bits containing plaster from the last wall they drilled through. The evidence was rock-solid and Spilotro was convicted and served several years in prison. Soon after his release he was found in the trunk of a car in Kansas City with several holes drilled into his body—though not from a Black and Decker but rather a Smith and Wesson.

Accused Online Poker Cheat Claims Innocence

Phil Tom "vehemently" denies 911 reports

Allegations in reports carried by online gambling information portal Gambling 911 that he was the subject of a sealed indictment in the United States have been "vehemently" denied by Phil Tom, father and alleged investor in Absolute Poker.com, which is widely believed to have been founded by his son Scott. Tom spoke directly to online poker information site Poker Daily News regarding rumors that he had been indicted in connection with the hole card cheating scandal at Absolute
Poker, indignantly denying involvement and saying: "I don’t know what I’d be indicted
for! How do they know what’s in the supposed indictment? It’s sealed!" He went on to threaten legal action, claiming that the reports represented "unfounded falsehoods." Tom is a portfolio manager by profession and he asserted that the negative publicity was neither warranted or welcome: "I’ve already had three phone calls today from people I know wanting to know if I’m okay. This rumor is getting out to people and I’m a portfolio manager. This isn’t good for business," he told a Poker Daily
News staffer.

My take on this? Well, I wouldn't stake my last dollar on either his innocence or anyone else´s whose name has come up in an online poker cheating scandal!

Alleged Online Master Poker Cheating Living Large while Mocking Online Poker Community!

ALLEGED FRAUDSTER LIVING LARGE IN COSTA RICA

Does Crime Pay?

With the Absolute Poker and UltimateBet cheating scandals still very much centre stage for the online poker player community, it's perhaps not surprising that characters allegedly involved in the scandal attract media coverage whenever they surface. One such individual is "AJ Green", also known as Allan Grimard, who was the subject of much discussion and conjecture at the height of the "hole card" debacle on which players still seek closure.

This week the online gambling information portal Gambling911 reported that Grimard is apparently living it large in Costa Rica, home to many online gambling companies. The mysterious Grimard is reported to be building a large home in Los Suenos, an upmarket Pacific coast resort in the area, driving a new and expensive SUV and sailing a "huge" yacht.

How a once low level supervisor at an online gambling company who later is alleged to have become involved with the poker company has managed to amass sufficient wealth to indulge in these projects remains a mystery. It has to be noted that Absolute Poker has not publicly identified Grimard as being involved in the scandal despite lengthy investigations by Gaming Associates and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

Canadian born Grimard is alleged to have been a close college friend of the man widely regarded as the Absolute Poker founder, Scott Tom, and this was another familiar name that surfaced in the 911 report. The information portal claims that the AP investor for which a sealed US indictment is being held is Tom's father. It is not clear what charges are involved, and it does not appear that the indictment has achieved wide public coverage despite the multi-million dollar nature of the Absolute Poker hole card cheating scandal (see previous Online-Casinos.com/InfoPowa reports).

911 claims that it has been informed by insiders that none of Absolute Poker's management or investors are to travel to the United States for fear of further indictments, although Scott Tom is no longer involved with the company, which is now owned by former Kahnawake chief Joe Norton's Tokwiro Enterprises group.

Absolute Poker and UltimateBet recently announced a planned merger into a new, re-branded super-network titled Cereus. This is perhaps an unfortunate choice of branding, described as it is by Wikipedia as either a cactus or "Bacillus cereus - an endemic, soil-dwelling, Gram-positive, rod-shaped, beta hemolytic bacteria that causes foodborne illness!"

In other related developments, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which licenses both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet, recently hired a former New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement director, and respected online gambling regulatory consultant, Frank Catania, to head a team investigating the cheating scandals at the two sites (see previous Online-Casinos.com/InfoPowa report).

Judging by the high posting traffic across leading online poker message boards, the poker playing community does not appear to have achieved satisfactory closure on the controversial issues, probably the worst that have occurred in the relatively short history of online poker.

Although Tokwiro brought in the services of Gaming Associates to assess and recommend remedial measures, paid a $500 000 fine to the KGC in respect of the Absolute Poker debacle and addressed the complaints of prejudiced players, scepticism and doubt remains over the apparent lack of public exposure and pursuit of the perpetrators of the massive frauds. Many others emphasise the initial denialist reaction of the sites when players complained of cheating, something that was conclusively proved by expert player investigations, resulting in Tokwiro finally taking action.

Online Gambling and Poker Cheating Linked To Some Brutal Worldwide Murders!

Whether good or bad, individuals associated with the world of online gambling have met some of the most brutal of deaths. And this is not to say that all such slayings were directly related to the industry. One of the most disturbing murders, that of Adam Anhang, had absolutely nothing to do with Internet gambling, yet his death resonated throughout the community and has remained difficult to talk about even three years later.

The former CFO of Dr. Ho and CEO of CWC Gaming, Adam Anhang, was brutally stabbed to death September 23, 2005 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His calculated slaying was like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. The murder occurred at a street intersection of Calle de la Luna in Historic Old San Juan, which is typically bustling with tourists and locals (even at the time of this murder took place). The frail man was stabbed nearly a dozen time over his entire body while walking alongside his estranged wife.

A Dateline NBC report profiled Jonathan Roman Rivera, 22, the accused murderer who was found guilty in a San Juan courthouse. But in a shocking twist, US law enforcement agents determined that Rivera was not the murderer. He just looked like him...and as it turns out, that may have been the plan all along. Aurea Vazquez, Anhangs's wife, had hired someone to mercilessly "off" her husband.

Anhang was one of the good guys, a pioneering force in the online sector of the gaming industry and he had benefited legitimately from it. Some have not capitalized as legitimately as Adam Anhang however. In recent days, there have been reports on an especially cold blooded murder that has connections to the darker side of online gambling. A billion dollar industry does attract a rather high percentage of scammers and it appears that Yang Zhen Xing fell right into this trap. Investigators are still trying to determine why Yang Zhen Xing and his girlfriend were found brutally murdered in their Newcastle West End flat in what was described as a "frenzied knife attack", quite possibly related to a gambling scam. At least one of the victims had been tortured for more than an hour.

But all implications are that the couple was involved in an online gambling scam with connections to betting syndicates in China. One line of inquiry involves claims Mr Zhen recruited spectators online to send live updates from UK football matches, according to a BBC report. It is claimed syndicates in China, where matches are televised a minute behind, could take advantage of this. Det Supt Wade stated: "Our officers have the support of forces across the country in their efforts to bring the killer or killers of Xi Zhou and Zhen Xing Yang to justice. Detective Wade said that investigators were sifting through phone records to determine a time of the murder and who the couple may have contacted prior to their bloody murder.

It was just last year that an online gambling employee in Costa Rica was murdered for reportedly stealing a customer list and scamming the customers whose contact information was part of the said list. Two Canadians and a Costa Rican were charged in the murder of Luis Muñoz Vargas. Agents allege that two Canadians along with the Costa Rican bodyguard set up a meeting with the victim a year ago on the pretext of purchasing a car. When Vargas arrived for the meeting in Desamparados centro, he was greeted with bullets and died later in hospital.

Like the Zhen Xing Yang slaying, the murders of Ernie Scherer and his wife Charlene Abendroth remain unsolved a number of months after their bodies were found. Both had received numerous stab wounds. Ernie was popular on the poker circuit and his death sent shockwaves throughout the poker playing community.

Whatever the case, my opinion is that, like in any shady business, violence and death will always be one step behind the scams.

Can Casinos and Poker Rooms Make Cheats Out of You?

Sometimes when you're playing in a casino, things happen that force you to decide whether or not you want to become a poker or a casino cheat. By that I mean mistakes are often made by dealers or other casino personnel in your favor, mainly that you are paid more money than you should have been on any given bet or circumstance. If you accept the unintentional "favor" and don't say anything, does this make you a cheat...or a "passive cheat" to say the least? In my opinion it does not, as most ordinary people out having a good time in casinos would probably just keep the extra payout and say nothing. After all, no one is getting hurt, especially the casino. What do you think?

I came across an interesting survey in the Chicago Herald about this question. Here it follows:

Every once in a while at the casino, the dealer, or the cashier, or another player will do you a little "favor." Sometimes another customer will receive one of these favors while you look on. There's only one little hitch with all of these "favors" however. They were mistakes - and weren't supposed to happen!

Back on July 25, I asked you, the reader whether you'd accept any or all of these mistakes/favors if they were to happen to you. This is how you replied.

Favor #1: You got paid on a blackjack loser.

Consensus: Keep the money. Over 80 percent of the readers said they would keep a mistaken payoff on their losing blackjack hand. Their reasons were that since the house has a built-in advantage anyway, it's OK to accept a financial favor that results from the casino not doing its job correctly. Very few felt obliged to return the casino's chips and their own to the dealer.

One contrarian however, stated that there are many legal advantages obtainable at blackjack, so why go outside the rules to accept one? Another said it was his goal to "beat 'em" - not "cheat 'em" and would return the money.

Favor #2: Dealer forgot to pick up your losing craps prop.

Consensus: Let it ride. Here too, most readers said they would happily accept a free second chance at winning their craps proposition bet, such as on the "hard 8." The same general sentiments applied as with the blackjack hand above, but there were a few dissenters.

One reader cited how some craps dealers attentively coach the players on how to bet appropriate amounts so as to receive maximum odds on their wagers. This reader felt allowing a proposition loser to remain in action would constitute "stepping over the line."

Favor #3: You found a $100 chip beneath a high roller's feet.

Consensus: Split decision. This seemed to be the stickiest scenario of all. Some said if it looked as if the chip belonged to that player, they would simply point it out to him. Others felt was a simple "finder's/keepers" situation. Still others said they would get security involved and let them decide.

Favor #4: You saw a player receive more chips than his buy-in.

Consensus: Unanimously, "Not my business." Everyone said it is the casino's responsibility to count up the buy-in accurately and give the correct number of chips to a new player.

Some even emphasized that they would remain silent to avoid the possibility of a confrontation with the customer who was buying in.

Favor #5: The wrong poker hand was awarded the pot at your table.

Consensus: Split decision. I was surprised at how many readers said they would sit by and allow the pot to be pushed to a player holding the losing poker hand. Only about half said they would stop the dealer and point out the correct winning hand.

The official rule by the way, is that once the cards are shown down, any player at the table has the full right to point out the winning hand.

Also, the house bears no financial responsibility in this matter, and once the cards are mucked (tossed into the discards), the transaction is an officially done deal.

Favor #6: Cashier at the cage gave you $100 too much.

Consensus: Split decision. About 60 percent of the readers said they would return the overpayment at the cashier's cage for various reasons. Some felt the till would come up short and that cashier might either be docked or fired.

Others simply felt bound by their honor not to accept an overpayment in cash for their chips.

The other side reasoned that the casinos get way too much of the customers' money anyway, and any "refund" the players can get should happily be kept.

Send Me $4.95 And I’ll Show You How To Get Rich—Guaranteed!

You think it’s a scam, right? Well, you’re right, and it’s a good one. How good? Well, believe it or not, it’s the best scam I have ever heard of. Why? Because it’s a license to steal! And even better than that, it’s completely legal. You can’t get busted.

Here’s how it works:

You place an ad in the personals of any major newspaper or on the Internet. Your ad reads: “Send Me $4.95 And I’ll Show You How To Get Rich—Guaranteed!” Then when people send you the $4.95, you send them a note that reads: “See, That’s How You Get Rich!”

Did you get it? Well, if not, what you’re doing is simply telling the people who sent you the $4.95 that if they do the same thing, place the same exact ad in newspapers or on the Internet, they will have the same success you did, which is proved by the very fact that they sent you the money in the first place. Of course you’re thinking that only extreme suckers would fall for the ploy—but think again! The first time I heard of this scam was in the 1984, long before the arrival of the Internet. The same exact ad was placed in major newspapers in major cities all over the United States. More than 200,000 Americans sent the $4.95—in cash, personal bank checks and US postal money orders to the single person who’d placed the ad in all those newspapers. The culprit turned out to be an unemployed gas station attendant who desperately needed money to pay his rent. When the magnitude of the scam came to light, several federal prosecutors in different US jurisdictions found piles of evidence on their desks, mainly newspaper ads, cancelled checks and money order receipts. But not one prosecutor went ahead and filed charges against the gas station attendant. Why? Because they concluded that he had done nothing against the law. His ad stated that if you sent him $4.95 he would show you how to get rich. Well, by replying to his senders that “this is how you get rich,” the clever gas station attendant satisfied his promise of guarantee, and the fact that people actually sent him the money was enough proof that his ruse was indeed not a sham!

Believe it or not, the “send me money and I’ll show you how to get rich” scam has been repeated successfully time and again. It is much better than all those Nigerian and Eastern European Internet scams asking people to pay up-front litigation fees to claim multi-million-dollar inheritances and lottery prizes.

Oh, one more thing: just send me $1.95 and I’ll show you how to get rich—guaranteed!
LOL!

Latest Online Poker Cheat, Natalie 'TheV0id' Teltscher, Confesses!

'TheV0id' Admits WCOOP Cheating

According to a press release by PokerStars, Natalie 'TheV0id' Teltscher confessed the cheating at the Main Event of the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and withdrew her claim against her disqualification.

In 2007, 'TheV0id' won the WCOOP Main Event. In the aftermath, PokerStars noticed irregularities in her account and decided after an internal inspection to disqualify the account and 'TheV0id'. The prize money of about $1.2M was stripped from her and handed over to the hitherto runner-up 'ka$ino'. All the other players were upgraded by one rank as well.

The Briton Natalie Teltscher went to court against this decision. There she had to admit though that she didn't play herself under the account 'TheV0id'. A not further named "agent" had used the account and supposedly used several other accounts during the tournament. At first it was assumed that Mark Teltscher is this agent, or at least involved in the case as he is the brother of the plaintiff and a poker pro himself. A confirmation of this assumption failed to materialise though.

Below the press report:

"PokerStars™ are pleased to announce that Natalie Teltscher has recently withdrawn her claim in the Isle of Man Courts against PokerStars.

Furthermore, in discontinuing her claim, she has agreed to contribute a sum towards the legal costs incurred by PokerStars in this matter.

Ms Teltscher brought her claim against PokerStars because she was disqualified from first place of the 2007 WCOOP Main Event after PokerStars internal investigations demonstrated beyond doubt that she had not played on the account. On her disqualification all other players were moved one place higher in the prize table and the money confiscated from her account, TheV0id, was redistributed in full, according to the amended tournament placings.

Ms Teltscher initially claimed that she had played the account. However, when faced with the results from PokerStars' investigation she eventually admitted she hadn't played.

The decision of Ms Teltscher to withdraw her claim fully vindicates
PokerStars' decision to disqualify her from the tournament and subsequently defend the claim, actions which were taken in order to protect the integrity of the games on offer at PokerStars."

Golden Card Counting Opportunities Abound In Casinos Everywhere!

Ever since the ingenious blackjack card counting strategies of Edward O. Thorpe, the father of modern card counting and author of the revolutionary card counting bible “Beat The Dealer,” and Ken Uston, the innovator of blackjack card counting team-play and author of “Million Dollar Blackjack,” became known to casinos, a worldwide casino crackdown on card counters went into effect. It started in the late 1970s and has continued to the present day—or has it? In fact, what is happening now across the world, and especially in Las Vegas and Atlantic city, is that casinos are drastically altering their outlooks and policies concerning card counters. Believe it not, not only are most casinos in the US and UK relaxing their restrictive attitudes toward card counters, many are actually inviting them to come and play at their blackjack tables! Why this sudden change in latitude? Some of you probably guessed it: it’s due to the tremendous success and publicity surrounding the Kevin Spacey blackjack movie “21.” After having seen the movie, everyone and his grandmother wants to rush out to Vegas and become a professional blackjack card counter—and make a killing! But it is possible? Apparently the casinos have decided to make it possible.

For years, or even decades, their attitude has been “absolutely no tolerance of card counters.” Everything from casino security backroom strong-arm tactics to actual Gaming Control Board Enforcement Division arrests (mainly illegal ones as per the James Grosjean case) had been carried out against card counters, and even wannabe card counters. But suddenly casinos have decided to cash in on the newfound blackjack card counting publicity. How? By letting the counters play! Their new consensus, and I agree with it, is that the vast majority of card counters and so-called card counters will only lose their money. Only a small percentage of even what can be considered professional card counting teams will make any serious money in the long-run. So casinos have now been adopting a policy of “let everyone play; we will lose to some really professional card counting teams but we will win tons from those professional card counting “pretenders.” To me their new policy makes great sense, and the casinos will only reap more profits due to the success and publicity of the film “21” based on the MIT Blackjack Team and their new open-door policy.

So, what this really means for those few who are absolutely dedicated and disciplined enough to make a go out of professional card-counting is that golden opportunities to make money will abound—and I think for a long time to come! If you don’t want to take my word for it, take Jeff Murphy’s word for it. Murphy, a casino table games expert as well as an ex-surveillance director and a frequent contributor to Willie Allison’s World Game Protection Conference Newsletter that is sent out to casino surveillance departments all over the world, (and also a personal enemy of mine even though we have never met), wrote in the August edition of the WGPC Newsletter that casinos across the world should indeed welcome card counters with open arms! And don’t forget that his writings are targeted directly to casino executives who make decisions regarding the protection of casino assets, which, according to Murphy, are not threatened by card counters. And, as much as I hate to agree with Murphy on anything, I have to agree with him here: card counters as a whole will never threaten casinos—but for those few who have what it takes, there is indeed a rainbow at the end of the Yellow Brick Road.

For those of you who are interested in more about professional card counting and training, see my blackjack card counting page.

The Luxury Of Being An Online Poker Cheat

The Luxury of Online Poker Cheating really is just that. As most of you are well aware, the past year has been filled with huge online poker scams happening at top sites such as Absolute Poker, UltimateBet and Full Tilt. We have heard about $500,000fines, rebukes from the Kahnawake Online Gaming Commission (which to many is a complete joke), comments from ex-US senators such as Alphonse D’Amato and even signings of players guilty of online poker cheating to represent online poker rooms! But the one thing we have NOT heard about in the wake of all these online poker cheat scams is arrests. That’s right, not a single person has been arrested for online poker cheating in any of these major scams, nor am I aware of a single person anywhere in the world ever being arrested for cheating at online poker.

But in the real brick and mortar world of casinos and poker rooms such is not the case. In the past year there have been many major cheating scams as well, the most infamous of which was the US/Canadian dealer/player collusion false shuffle baccarat scam. The only difference between an online casino or poker cheating scam and a real brick and mortar poker or casino cheating scam is that when you hear about the latter, you always hear about the arrests—and even often the mention of FBI or even Interpol involvement in the case! So, if I were a cheating man—and some of you may know that I once was!—LOL!—I would surely stake my efforts to cheating online poker and casinos rather than real ones. Why? Because I’d truly have nothing to lose!