Worldwide Baccarat Cheating Wave Continues

Another foxy baccarat cheat

It seems that each time we hear of a major casino baccarat cheating scam, a few more pop up on its heels. And besides them, there are the mid-level and low-level baccarat scams, the high-tech and the low-tech baccarat scams...or just plain and simple: BACCARAT SCAMS!

No doubt that the popular game and its classy ambience, long the casino favorite of two of the world's most dashing gamblers, James Bond and Omar Sharif, is just irresistable to all classes of casino cheats...from Singapore to Canada and beyond.

I get wind of all the baccarat scams and write about the ones I find either most interesting or most ridiculous.

Of course the multi-million-dollar baccarat edge-sorting scam carried out by World Series of Poker champion and recent Casino Cheats Hall of Fame inductee Phil Ivey is one of the interesting ones.

One of the more ridiculous ones was carried out last February at the River Rock Casino in Vancouver, Canada, by Thi Lien Chu, a very attractive 44-year-old Asian woman who uses her hands a lot as a professional esthetician.

And she was using her hands a lot at Richmond's River Rock Casino as well!

Believe it or not, her scam was simply sliding her bets from the losing side to the winning side after the hands played out. When she bet "player" and "banker" won, she switched her chips from player to banker--and repeatedly did the same when her losing  bet was on banker...all right in front of the dealer whom she managed to distract (I don't know how!).

Though this move if reminiscent of the classic roulette slide-move done by generations of Italian roulette casino cheats, I doubt Ms. Chu's skills in any way matched theirs.

But she did get away with it and earned several thousand dollars before her "casino-beauty" luck ran out.

Ms. Chu told the judge that she was desperate because her esthetics business was failing (despite that she'd been implicated in some other petty casino scams), and the judge must have been impressed by either her excuse or her esthetics--he gave her a year of community service.

New Online Casino and Online Poker-Cheat Bulletins Page Coming to Richard Marcus Books!

Very shortly I will be introducing a new web page dealing exclusively with online poker cheat scandals and scams as well as online casino scams and scandals.

This feature will be reporting not only on documented and proven online poker and casino cheating but as well suspicions being voiced by online players who are more than not the first source in uncovering online cheating in poker and in online casinos.

I will be monitoring online poker and online casino chat rooms as well as other relevant blogs to gather all the cheating information you need to find the safest online poker rooms and online casinos.

STAY TUNED!

Finding Biased Live Online Roulette Wheels to Cheat Casinos Online?

Can it be clocked?

The mass expansion of live online blackjack and live online roulette has created new opportunites for traditional online players, but has it also created new opportunities for traditional brick and mortar casino cheats?

Yes it has!

But calm down a bit! It has created some online casino cheat opportunities but they are very few and very far between.

As both live blackjack and live roulette do not use random number generators but rather real human dealers who deal real cards and spin real roulette balls, the games they deal are indeed open to cheating vulnerabilities. But it is not the human factor that is the chief vulnerability.

It is the equipment used by live online blackjack and live online roulette.

In live online roulette, the dealers are spinning real roulette balls on real roulette wheels,so we can make one logical conclusion: If biased wheels can be found in use inside brick and mortar casinos, they can also be found in live online roulette games, therefore if a roulette clocker wants to come in from the cold of outside brick and mortar casinos and ply his craft to the warmer roulette wheels online, he's got tons of live online roulette wheels to clock.

But the problem for him is that, just like in brick and mortar casinos, biased wheels with enough of a bias to make clocking them profitable are very VERY hard to find. I would think that live online casinos are even more wary of this and thus have their live online roulette wheels checked and rechecked and re-rechecked.

So the bottom line is: Finding live online roulette wheels to clock is extremely tough--but they are out there!

Phil Ivey is 30th Casino Cheats Hall of Fame Inductee!!!

Newest Hall of Fame Cheat!

It has happened!

Phil Ivey has become the newest and 30th member of the International Casino Cheats and Poker Cheats Hall of Fame! 

Congratulations, Phil! If anyone deserves this honor, it is surely you!

 Ivey had been under consideration for induction since just after his massive baccarat edge-sorting scam came to light, and while casino sleuths and experts debated whether or not Ivey's casino actions constituted cheating, the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame Induction Committee could not reach a verdict, thus being the first time we've ever had a hung casino-cheats jury.

But the cheating credentials Ivey has, not only as a baccarat edge-sorting cheat but also as a master of poker cash-games collusion (BIG CASH GAMES COLLUSION), were just plain overwhelming and could no longer be ignored by the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame.

So now we have a second professional World Series of Poker tournament champion in the Hall, so I am sure that the first, the notorious Russ Hamilton, will be glad to slide over a bit and make room for Phil's bust in the haloed Hall!

And I imagine that the Induction Committee will soon be considering Phil's foxy-lady partner in casino crime for induction as well. Her name is "Sun" and her bust would look just great next to his!

Read Phil Ivey's Induction here.

How effective is NORA software against Casino Cheats and Advantage-Players?

You make sense of it!

If you haven't heard of it, NORA (Non-obvious relationship awareness) software probes gigantic data bases in search of obscure matches between pertinent information. Two of its biggest subscribers and users have become law-enforcement personnel investigating terrorists, and, believe it or not, casino security and surveillance agencies investigating casino and poker cheats as well as their own crooked employees.

The NORA software is able to sift through masses of seemingly meaningless data and come up with connections between people at the same workplace or connected to the workplace that raise suspicion and eventually lead investigators to criminal conspiracies or worse.

 So--what about casinos...any value in this?

Okay, let's take a hypothetical casino situation involving Tom, Dick and Harry.

Tom lives at Address A. He is a casino dealer at Casino A. This information by itself means very little if nothing.

Now add Dick to the equation.

Dick lives at Address B, which happens to be a block away from Address A. He is a casino floor supervisor at Casino  A. This information by itself means very little, but if coupled with the info on Tom, we note that they live near each other and both work at the same casino...big deal, right!

Now add Harry to the equation.

Harry lives at Address C, which is far from Address A and B, but he happens to work for the company that distributes playing cards to Casino A, where both Tom and Dick happen to work. 

Getting interesting?

Well, not right off the bat, but then let's add this BIG hypothetical ingredient to the stew: Casino A gets hit by a major edge-sorting card scam at the baccarat table, the same scam made notorious by poker great/alleged casino-cheat Phil Ivey, in which the cards used in the baccarat game had defects that allowed the cheats to know their values when lying face down on the table and when they're the top card in the shoe.

The cheats walk with millions.

Then during a long investigation, surveillance sleuths using the NORA software come up with the above cross-referenced informaton and conclude that Tom, Dick and Harry all knew each other and therefore had the means to pull off the scam. The obvious reasoning is that Harry at the card-distribution company passed the info on the defective cards to either Tom or Dick or both, and then the conspiracy was hatched.

Should you buy into this?

Well, I have never been a big fan of the high-tech recognition software that supposedly puts casino and poker cheats out of business before they start.

It all began over a decade ago with the biotech facial-recognition software that reportedly recognized cheats and hustlers right between their eyes when they walked into the casino--even if in full disguise--because no one can change the metrics of their eyes.

All I can tell you is that even though I've been retired from cheating casinos for a decade and a half, I still am constantly inside them during my duties as a casino game-protection consultant and surveillance and floor staff trainer.

Working undercover, I got recognized just one time by a casino employee who hadn't known I was to be at his casino.

Did he recognize me from any facial-recognition software?

No...absolutely not!

He recognized me from a History Channel casino documentary TV show that he'd seen a dozen times. And besides, I have never heard of any major casino scams thwarted by early recognition of casino cheats through facial recognition software.

So what about NORA?

Well, it might help out substantially locating terrorists, but I am not sold that too many of the Tom-Dick-and-Harry scenarios like the one I painted above are going to re-play in the real casino world. 

One reason is that even if NORA software can sift through all that meaningless info and make it appear relevant, there are just too many casino employees, suppliers, distributors and other connected people living near each other and working in the same casino.

Much better chance of catching the poker cheats and the casino cheats at the tables.

What about Poker Computers in Live Brick and Mortar Poker Rooms?

At a brick and mortar poker table?

I am hearing about this online-poker cheating transformation to live brick and mortar poker games, which raises many new questions in the poker and poker-cheating world.

First of all, the use of any electronic or digital gadget in a poker room is considered cheating, and may in some jurisdictions, especially Nevada, be prosecuted as a felony.

But apart from the legal ramifications, do poker brick and mortar bots work well enough to give players using them a distinct advantage over their opponents at the table?

The theory is that the poker computer, which of course has to be well disguised and avoid casino surveillance detection, can memorize all the exposed cards, calculate the cards remaining in the deck, and then feed that information to the user, who then decides how to play the hand. This is much the same function of poker bots being used to cheat online poker games.

But is it enough?

I do not think so.

In a casino game like blackjack where there is no human element affecting the bets after they’re placed, computers can be very effective for card-counters and advantage players. The same holds true for roulette where computers can help determine biases in the spinning wheel and quadrants where the ball will land depending on speed and revolution.

But poker, both online and off, is a game of intricate strategy and bluffing, in which skilled players constantly change their strategies to enhance their chances in any given set of conditions. That facet of the game is too hard to keep up with—even for computers. As far as I know, even the most sophisticated computers cannot latch on to players’ changing strategies and bluffing patters.

So the bottom line here is until someone invents the ultimate poker computer that can read players’ minds, this is one type of artificial intelligence that can stay away from the poker tables.

Casino Game Protection Post: How Live Casino Surveillance Communication Fails

Do I see it?

An integral part of the surveillance and security apparatus protecting live brick and mortar casinos is strong communication between surveillance operators upstairs and casino personnel on the floor working table games. This will not only better protect the casino where a cheating sequence occurred, but it will also serve other casinos down the block quite well.

Without it, protecting casinos will not get optimum results from all that state of the art video and audio technology.

A prime example of the failure of these systems occurred when I was active cheating casinos.

I was pastposting $5,000 chips (called “chocolates” in some high-end Vegas casinos) underneath $100 chips, known almost everywhere as “blacks.” This was a major move taking five grand a pop out of casinos, sometimes ten when my teammates and I used two chocolates at a time.

After an incredible run of consecutive successful chocolate-chip pastposts in July and August 1995, we finally had a “miss” on a Caesars Palace blackjack table when a pit boss refused to pay the pastposted bet. In the aftermath, the heat that came down inside the Vegas casinos was a helluva lot hotter than the scorching desert air outside.

Griffin Investigations and the totality of Las Vegas casino surveillance shot into action to try and put my team and I out of business. They immediately flooded Vegas with circulars (no widespread Internet at the time) advising casinos that a pastposting team was running amok slipping chocolate $5,000 chips underneath $100 blacks.

It was enough to make us stop using that move—but not enough to put us out of business.

We discussed our “big heat” problem and soon came up with a very clever idea that enabled us to go right back into the hot casinos:

Pastpost yellow $1,000 chips under $25 greens.

True, the change was a reduction in our profit-per-move, but taking a grand off the table each time was better than having to pack up and leave town.

So we went on another casino-cheat rampage doing the reduced pastpost move, the same exact move with different value chips. Right back inside Caesars, we encountered another steamy situation. The floorman was suspicious but still ordered the dealer to pay the bet.

Why?

Because the intercasino advisory warned of chocolate $5,000 chips being pastposted underneath $100 black chips—not $1,000 yellow chips being pastposted underneath $25 green chips.

For this reason, we were able to continue doing the same move as if we had never been doing it with the chocolate chips. After bunches more of the yellow-green combo, we took heat again, and then, believe it or not, went right back into the casinos slipping $500 purple chips underneath $5 red chips. With no problems getting paid.

Even I couldn’t believe it!

Where’s the surveillance communication failure?

Simply its lack of communicating the totality of the move. The advisory should have given a description of the move AND advised that it could be done with other high-denomination chips besides the $5,000 chocolates.

This failure of proper and complete communication between casino surveillance departments and the casino personnel in the gaming pits still exists today, in spite of all the technology. I realize that what happened back in the mid-90s could not happen today, but this was only an example to show the damage that miscommunication between the floor, surveillance and associate casinos can do to any casino and all casinos.

Proper communication is always one of the key points I make to casino floor and surveillance staffs when I train them in the field of casino table-game protection. 

Casino Game Protection Post: Top 10 Reasons High-Tech Surveillance Systems Do Not Always Protect Casinos from Cheats

Many of you experience the latest state of the art surveillance video systems at the World Game Protection Conference, but what you should also know is that in many cases it is not enough to stop the casino-cheats and advantage-players.

Here is a top-10 list why:

1) Casino personnel depend too much on them.

2) Casino personnel lack ability to spot cheat scams on their own.

3) Professional cheats have much more knowledge about cheating than casino personnel.

4) Lack of proper and rapid communication between casino floor personnel and surveillance operators.

5) Casino personnel lack ability to pick up on cheats and their scams before they’re put into operation.

6) Failure of casino personnel to understand how cheats silently communicate in casinos.

7) Failure of casino personnel to recognize how casino cheats obtain large denomination chips without their knowledge.

8) Failure of casino personnel to differentiate between a set-up bet and a completely honest bet.

9) Casino personnel lacks understanding of the psychology casino cheats use to control them.

10) Casinos do not implement proper cage operations to pick up on cheats cashing out chips.

My Own Investigation into 2015 WSOP Cheating Allegations against Valeriu Coca

WSOP Cheat?

You've all heard about the very serious card-marking cheating allegations against Moldavian poker player Valeriu Coca at the 2015 WSOP $10,000 Heads-Up Championship, in which several players were spooked by the handsome player whose face was shielded by dark sunglasses during the play of that tournament. They accused Coca of somehow marking the cards with invisible dye, perhaps only viewable through the lenses of those glasses or contact lenses behind the glasses.

The WSOP officials released this statement about their findings: "Once issues were brought to our attention, we immediately commenced an investigation and worked cooperatively with the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The investigation that was performed has now been completed by all parties. At this time, the matter is considered closed and the fifth-place finisher in Event Number-Ten will now have his funds released for payment."

I took a serious look at this matter and I do believe that Coca had indeed cheated via marking the cards. I also believe the Nevada Gaming Control Board behind closed doors came to this same conclusion. However, it is always in the best interests of the WSOP that no cheating scandals envelop the event, especially after the huge UltimateBet online scandal engineered by for WSOP Main-Event Champion, Russ Hamilton.

I have no proof of my claim here, as I did not have access to any evidence or materials in the case...but it is my strong gut feeling--and I am usually right!

No! It’s not me out there doing Savannah!!!

Me doing it--but it's only a Game Protection demo!

I can’t believe I’m even saying this! Or better yet…that I have to say this!

It’s been twelve and a half years since I wised up the casino world to my notorious Savannah roulette pinching-move, still generally considered the best casino-cheat move ever concocted, and I am still getting twenty emails a week from both sides of the table.

The cheats are asking me the obvious: Does it still work? Can I still go out and do it?

Casino and surveillance personnel ask if I am aware of anyone out there doing it! LOL

Well, I have to be honest, in spite of my sworn commitment not to encourage casino-cheating to anyone. But the truth is that Savannah is still super effective in the world’s live casinos, mainly because the vast majority of them still haven’t figured out how to safeguard their roulette tables against it. The few casinos that do know how to combat Savannah happen to be my clients in the field of casino table-game protection.

But the REAL Killer is the email I received yesterday from a Midwest US casino surveillance director whom I’d met several years ago at a game protection conference.

His email read: “Rich, I thought you retired years ago…but did you come out of retirement? I’m asking you this because a guy did a Savannah on us with a purple chip ($500) and I could have sworn it was you. The video was top-quality and he had on a hat, but I think I still recognized you! Please say it ain’t so!” (He did not add LOL)

Well…wow! That really threw me for a loop! I wrote back simply: “It ain’t so!” (I did not add LOL either)

Well, to all you casino and surveillance bosses out there who might see video of a guy who looks like me cheating casinos…

I did retire some fifteen years ago—and plan to stay that way! NO BULLSHIT PLEASE!

This all reminds me of a funny story that happened at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut in 1994. I had just laid and claimed a $1,000 Savannah move that took tons of heat. The supervisor told the pit boss, and the pit boss held up the game to check with surveillance before paying me. After he received video verification that it was a legitimate bet, he ordered the dealer to pay me. Then he apologized and said to me,” I’m sorry for the delay but we received photos from Atlantic City casinos of some guy who looks like you cheating roulette wheels with the same bet.”

I nearly shit it my pants! Not from fear but from the unbelievable stupidity of his remark.

Oh, you have a question, right?

The answer is no…this wasn’t the same guy who is now a surveillance director in a Midwest casino…at least I hope not!!!