Is This World Series of Poker Cheating Allegation Real?

Accused poker cheat

The Las Vegas Review Journal published this article about suspicions of cheating at the World Series of Poker. Have a read and then check out my take on it.

 World Series of Poker officials said they are investigating allegations that a player cheated his way to a fifth-place finish in one of its most prestigious tournaments. The alleged incident took place during the $10,000 Heads-Up No-limit Hold ‘em Championship that ended Thursday and were levied against Valeriu Coca of Moldova. “We are aware, monitoring very closely with all the resources at our disposal. Those include surveillance/security, forensic examination of cards, etc,” WSOP tournament director Jack Effel wrote on Twitter.

“We take integrity very seriously, as evidenced by our lifetime bans, and would enjoy nothing more than catching a cheater in our midst.” Coca defeated five opponents in the Heads-Up Championship before losing to eventual winner Keith Lehr in the quarterfinals Wednesday at the Rio Convention Center.

According to PokerNews.com, Connor Drinan believed there were several irregularities in Coca’s play during their match in the round of 32 and posted his concerns on the TwoPlusTwo online poker forum early Thursday. Drinan also spoke with other players who faced Coca in the tournament and had similar suspicions. The players then contacted Effel later Thursday and WSOP officials began their probe.

“We take these types of allegations very seriously & an investigation began immediately upon learning them. It is ongoing,” WSOP spokesperson Seth Palansky wrote on Twitter. “Preliminary testing of cards show no markings or use of any foreign solution. Further tests will be done to confirm initial.” Palansky wrote in a text message Friday morning that the cards from the tournament remain out for testing and that officials will be “thorough in conducting” their investigation.

Coca collected $54,545 for his fifth-place finish and denied any wrongdoing in an interview with PokerNews.com. “This is a fantasy,” Coca told the website through a translator. “The players who lost are very good, so they just don’t believe they could lose to me for an honest reason.”

My take: Well, the only poker-cheat vehicle I see here is card-marking and that would be very unlikely at an event as prestigious as the World Series of Poker. I know that Coca has been accused of marking cards in poker games in the Czech Republic, but to pull it off successfully would be much more difficult at the world's most important tournament. In the '90s the WSOP was rampant with poker-collusion cheating syndicates, but today with such huge numbers of players entering the tournaments, even the ages-old collusion-cheating methods would be difficult to pull of fruitfully. Thus I would have to agree with the accused poker cheat here and say it's just a bunch of losers who don't know how to lose.

However, in the WSOP ring games, where real cash changes hands with rapidity, the poker-collusion cheat teams are much more rampant.

The Big, The Small and the Ugly!

Big-time Casino Cheat

Casino cheat scams range in all types and sizes. Recently there have been two of them as far away from each other on the casino-cheat spectrum imaginable.

So let's start with the Big: A Singaporean man defrauded the Solaire Casino in the Philippines for $8 million using a series of fraudulent bank wire transfers to get the casino to surrender $8 million in gaming chips. The casino eventually recovered $3 million of the chips but it is still stuck the rest. Read the article here and then see my take on it.

My take: Well, just about every casino in the Philippines and Singapore has been the target of all kinds of major scams, both financial and on their very gaming tables. Security and surveillance is terribly weak in these two hot casino spots, so I expect the proliferation of varied casino scams and financial scams related to casinos to continue right on into the next decade, probably even into the decade after that!

Now let's go to Small: A woman got arrested at Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course for swiping a $5 losing-bet from a mini-baccarat table. That's right, you heard me! A five-dollar losing-bet! And they actually arrested her! So what is this world coming to...or I should say, What is this casino-cheating world coming to? The woman claimed that she didn't intend to swipe the chip, that the dealer simply didn't take it, so she simply pulled it back from the table.

My take: Well, this might be a tiny, minute variation of my famed Savannah pinch move, but surely is not worthy of an arrest for God's sake!!!

Big-Time Card-Marker Caught in UK after cross-country casino-cheat romp!

It may be the oldest scam in the poker-cheating annals but this guy really took it to the hilt. Card-marking keeps keeping pace with all the surveillance and security apparatus designed to stop it. It's a never-ending war that has few cease-fires and very few truces, and it will never had an end or a winner or loser.

Take a look at this article and you'll see what I mean.

How accurate is television in its treatment of poker cheat and casino cheat moves?

Casino Cheat Documentary shot 

By now you've all seen at least two TV documentaries about poker cheating and casino cheating. In the past ten years there have been a flood of them on the History Channel, Bio Channel, Travel Channel, Learning Travel, and even the National Geographic Channel. They all deal with casino cheating but more from the point of view of surveillance and security people rather than the poker and casino cheats. I have heard, however, that National Geographic will air in October or November a special about scams in Las Vegas, including one about professional casino cheats, which will show how they plan their moves, operate in casinos and divvy up the profits. I believe this show will be quite interesting. It will be an episode of its very popular"Underworld Inc." series

So, overall, do TV documentaries depict casino and poker cheating well?

In fact, they do. The general verbiage about the cheat moves is pretty accurate, and those that include real film segments of real casino and poker cheats can make even people foreign to this casino-cheating underworld understand what is going on. The problem is with the shows that do not use the real cheats to film the poker cheating and casino cheating sequences.

One early example of really bad video is the "Breaking Vegas" series that debuted in 2005 on the History Channel. The very first of its thirteen episodes was called "The ultimate Cheat," the life-story of yours truly. Although its detailing of my career cheating the world's casinos was accurate, the filming of the actual cheat sequences was a horror show! This because they used actors, not my ex-casino-cheat buddies and myself, to film the cheat-scenes at the roulette, craps and blackjack tables. Of course, I'd objected to their doing so, but they informed me that due to contractual obligations with actors' unions, the actors had to film the moves without any participation from me.

However, in more recent documentaries about casino and poker cheating, the quality of the film sequences is getting better, so the viewing public can follow along and understand the logic and design of casino-cheating moves. So with this in mind, stay tuned for National Geographic's Underworld Inc. episode about casino cheating, which I think will be called "Casino hustling in Las Vegas."  

How can you get your name removed from Nevada's notorious Black Book?

Okay, you've had a run-in or two with the Nevada Gaming Commission and/or the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and your name is now on the Nevada Gaming Commission's List of Excluded Persons, more commonly known as the "Black Book." And now you're either repentent and want to clear your name, or your a recidivist cheat, or simply an ex-cheat who wants to get back into the business. Once you're on this list you are prohibited from entering a Nevada casino and subject to arrest if caught inside one, although it is only a misdemeanor offense.

So is there any off this list? I konw of only one. You can succeed getting your name removed at a 100% rate of success!

But there is one small "but."

Some of you may have by now guessed it: You're right...you have to be dead. So unless you're a cat with nine lives, or at least two, getting off the NGC List of excluded persons won't do you much good....unless there are gaming casinos in heaven.

And for those of you wondering, Atlantic City and other US gaming jurisdictions have similar "black books" with similar requirements for getting your name off them.

And for those wondering if I am on that list and waiting to die to get off it, the answer is no. I have never been convicted of any gaming crime whatsoever and am clean as a whistle in any casino....at least as far as the law is concerned.

Below is a Nevada Review Journal article about a man who managed to get his name off the list...the hard way!  

Article: 

Commissioners on Thursday voted unanimously to strike Bulgarino from the list after regulators determined in a routine update that he died in Phoenix a little more than a year ago.

Bulgarino was placed on the list Sept. 24, 2004, after he served nearly four years in prison. Identified by the state Gaming Control Board as an associate of Philadelphia’s Bruno crime family, Bulgarino had a criminal history dating back to 1955. In 1999, he pled guilty in federal court for participating in a multimillion-dollar slot machine cheating operation as one of four co-conspirators.

Bulgarino purchased slot machine parts that were used to fraudulently manipulate slot machines. In addition, he actively recruited persons to claim fraudulent jackpots. He admitted that from September 1996 through November 1997, he aided an illegal slot machine scheme in collecting 10 separate jackpots at various Las Vegas casinos totaling $6.1 million, including cheating the Excalibur out of $200,500 in 1996.

Bulgarino also has been on the New Jersey Attorney General’s Exclusion List since May 17, 2006, after he was convicted of conspiracy, interstate travel in aid of racketeering, interstate transportation of stolen property, money laundering and aiding and abetting.

The Pennsylvania Crime Commission identified him in 1980 as associating with the “Bruno La Cosa Nostra Family.” His criminal exploits were chronicled in a book, “Jackpot: The Story of Eugene Bulgarino,” by Tarvis El Alberty.

The List of Excluded Persons, which now has 31 men and one woman, identifies people who have been convicted of crimes against the casino industry and bans them from entering a gaming establishment.

A representative of the state Attorney General’s Office distributed copies of Bulgarino’s death certificate to commissioners at the meeting.

Thursday’s action prompted Commissioner Pat Mulroy to inquire whether there would be a way to streamline the removal process when the person dies.

Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett said his office always verifies deaths of persons on the list before recommending their removal.

Smart Watch Casino Cheating

Well, we just heard about a chess grandmaster running into the toilet between moves of his championship match to consult with an app on his smart phone that was hidden inside a roll of toilet paper, and more of these "smart" cheating plots are sure to find their way into gambling casinos. I have been getting emails from people curious about this...or more than curious...and here´s one that is really intriguing:

The Apple Watch has what it calls a “taptic engine,” which alerts you to different digital notifications by silently tapping out one of several distinct patterns on your wrist. 

I would imagine that with a little programming, one could combine the ability to speak into one Apple watch, like Dick Tracy, with the taptic engine output received by another Apple watch user. All of that could be done using devices that would not inherently be for illegal purposes. The programming could itself could also serve legitimate purpose. I imagine a legitimate app that provides such a function will likely be offered soon.

I saw that you already blogged about other ways smart watches could be used in casino cheating.  I would imagine that offering those sorts of insight on applications of Apple watches to a mainstream media outlets could get some decent coverage at a time when Apple is in the midst of a big PR push for its watch. I might also indicate that you want to work with some programmers to develop such an app ... of course for legitimate purposes to allow discretely sending quiet messages. 

As an aside, I wonder, but don't know, if the taptic engine could be used in reverse, where you could input information by a pattern of flexing your wrist, or whether it is only a data output method. 

Ummm

April Fools' Casino Cheating Questions

No longer worth it?

Here we are into April, 2015, and I am still getting loads of ridiculous questions from would-be and wanna-be casino cheats and poker cheats. Leading the pack are those inquisitive novice casino cheaters who are still determined to steal their fortunes from brick and mortar casinos by way of using computers and scanners to beat the roulette wheels.

I have been saying for some time now that the window on roulette computer-cheating has been diminishing with an accelerating rate. This means that the old scanner-devices are no longer effective and that the new devices that are effective are very costly and accessible to a select few, who, unless they are more casino-skilled that just having their equipment, will run into the old casino-cheat-nemesis law known as casino-cheats' attrition. This means that even with the best roulette-ball reading devices, the casimos will catch up to you in a matter of time, usually quite quicker than is worth the investment.

So with this in mind, you no longer need to send me your roulette computer-cheatng queries, or anything else that has been clearly answered repeatedly in my blog.

The Newest High-Tech Casino Cheat Device...You Guessed It!

Time to Cheat!

Of course you did! It is nothign other than the smart watch, the next increment after (you guessed it again!) the smart phone.

So how is it being done...or how will it be done?

Well, let´s start with what these smart watches have, realizing that all these components are neatly tucked into a smaller device than the smart phone any other communication devices and computers that have been used before to cheat casinos.

For starters, there is, of course, the camera. Next comes the accelerometer, thermometer, altimeter, barometer, compass, chronograph, calculator, cell phone, touch screen, GPS navingation system, map display, graphical display, speaker, scheduler, SD cards recognized as mass storage devices by computers, rechargeable battery, and, of course again, the watch.

Add to that the reality that the smart watch can communicate with a wireless headset, heads-up display, insulin pump, microphone, modem and other devices that lots of you (including me) probably never heard of.

So...need I say more?

Well, I guess I have to in order to complete this article.

Just thing about a game like roulette where you want to calculate the speed of the spinning ball and the rotation of the spinning wheel. Does that ring a bell? Now you can throw out that old, grimy roulette computer and get to work tracking the ball on your smart watch.

What about height? I did mention the smart watch´s altimeter, right? Can that help with the roulette ball´s jumps in and out of  the wheel´s number-pockets? You bet (but don´t ask me how!).

What about the thermometer? Well, I don´t know about that one, but maybe you can take a nervous pit-boss´s temperature.

And finally a word or two about the compass and camera. The compass can surely help you with your own logistics inside the casino, especially if you have to escape or hide, and the camera, as all you cheats and casino personnel know, will always be of great use in cheating casinos and poker rooms. Photos and videos will always be an integral part of the casino cheat´s arsenal.

One last question you might ask: Does the $10,000 solid-gold smart watch help the casino or poker cheat more than an ordinary smart watch?

No! In fact it´s a hindrance. It weighs too damn much!

Talk About STUPID with a capital S!

STUPID casino cheat 

Now there are lots of brazen casino cheats and poker cheats out there. Some of them are smart, so of them are not so smart, and some of them are downright STUPID! Read the following article about a long-time Las Vegas based blackjack and roulette-pastposting cheat and you´ll get what I mean. 

Convicted casino cheater Jubreal Chahine may have been slick enough to elude Las Vegas police, who have lodged seven arrest warrants against him for casino-related crimes in the Silver State.

But the 40-year-old Nevada resident wasn't smart enough to fool security at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem this week. Maybe he wasn't on his game.

Despite being listed on the Nevada Gaming Control Board's "Most Wanted" list, Chahine applied for a player's card using his correct name and birth date.

Sands casino officials quickly determined that he was wanted and alerted the Pennsylvania state troopers stationed at the casino. Officers approached Chahine on the casino floor Saturday afternoon and arrested him.

"Sands subscribes to various industry databases, through which they were able to see who he was," state police Sgt. Robert Caprari said. "The trooper confirmed his identity and found that he was also wanted on charges from two other Pennsylvania casinos."

Chahine was arrested without incident, Caprari said.

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Las Vegas officials say that Chahine is one of the worst cheaters to stroll the strip.

Court records show he's been arrested 14 times since 1999, in gambling halls all over Las Vegas and Reno. Casino security officers have caught him slipping more chips on roulette tables after the wheel was spun, and surreptitiously upping his blackjack bet after seeing his hand.

There are seven active warrants out for Chahine, for allegedly failing to show up for trial in Nevada for casino-related offenses.

"He's a repeat offender," said Karl Bennison, chief of enforcement for the Nevada Gaming Control Board. "Guys like him, they get caught, and they just come back. He's gone to prison for this, but he keeps doing it."

Chahine was charged in Bethlehem with being a fugitive from justice and jailed in Northampton County Prison under $150,000 bail.

Bennison, who spent part of his childhood in Easton, said he was pleased to hear that Chahine was caught. Although Chahine is well known in Vegas casinos, he's been slick enough to get away with the same crimes over and over.

"Our casinos are pretty open, so it's not hard for people like this to get in," he said. "In some overseas casinos, players go through a turnstile, but we have multiple entrances. And it can get very crowded."

Dealers are trained to thwart scammers like Chahine, Bennison said, but sometimes they get distracted.

"That's why we have the eye in the sky," Bennison said, referring to the numerous security cameras in modern casinos.

Chahine is wanted on seven counts of attempting fraudulent acts in a gaming establishment, a felony. Court records say he uses numerous aliases, including Alexander Allen, Allen Gabriel, Gabriell Allen, Gabriel Alexander and Allen Allen.

If convicted in Nevada, he could face more than a year in prison for each crime, as well as fines exceeding $10,000.

While the casinos are the alleged victims in Chahine's case, Bennison said scammers often don't stop at stealing from the establishments — they target other players.

"They'll take your chips when you're not looking, or reach over and print out your winnings at a slot machine while you're distracted," he said. "Casinos do a lot to protect their guests, but you should definitely be aware of your surroundings and take precautions."

Casinos on the Lookout For New Year`s Eve Casino and Poker Cheats!

I have mentioned many times over the years that New Year`s Eve is the biggest night of the year for casino cheats as well as poker cheats, mainly for professionals. And the most important gambling area in the world for them on this night is clearly Las Vegas, where I have made HUGE scores during my days as the World`s most prolific casino cheat.

Casino surveillance and investigative agencies know this as well, thus they will be out in numbers patrolling casino floors and poker rooms, and they will be passing along info to all their client casinos upon spotting known professional cheats.

But does this mean they will be effective stopping the hordes of casino cheats New Year`s Eve?

Not really. They might make an arrest or two, but with the huge crowds and party atmosphere flowing up and down the Strip and along Fremont Street, the casino cheats and the poker cheats will make more than enough cash cheating to pay for their expensive champagne during their celebratory parites after cashing out their chips!