Man, I hate when I read about casinos busting people for not paying their casino markers, mainly because the vast majority of those who don't pay their markers already have ruined their lives by losing everything they own in the casinos. I do realize that the casinos don't put a gun to anyone's head and force him or her to gamble, but they are the true masters of both regular and subliminal advertising, right?
The Wisconsin businessman charged with not paying his gambling debts was accused of trying to skate on nearly S4 million in markers, most of it from Caesars Palace (as you all know, my favorite casino!), and the remainder from the Hard Rock Casino.
Christian Peterson, 41, of Verona, Wisconsin, pleaded not guilty to one count of theft in connection with four markers and to two counts of drawing and passing a check without sufficient funds with the intent to defraud.
According to Peterson's attorney, his client went on a reckless gambling spree in 2008 and was an addicted degenerate gambler who needs therapy for his problem.
The indictment accused Peterson of trying to flee town like Flint, literally in a run for his life to get out of Vegas before he got caught. He'd moved his chartered flight-time up to evade casino hosts looking for him. They had the right to demand payment before he left the premises.
Peterson made it out of town and into the air--but then the pilot, receiving word from Vegas officials on the ground, actually turned the plane around and brought it back to Vegas.
"All of it is in dispute," Peterson's attorney, Chris Rasmussen, was quoted as saying.
My take: Getting the plane turned around on you like that is one tough beat! If Peterson ever tries a marker scam, he ought to try the Casino Credit/Identity Theft Scam on my Casino Scam of the Month page.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
First Singapore Casino Cheating Bust! It Was a Pastpost Move.
Congratulations, Loo! Somebody had to be IT! LOL!
He has been charged with five crimes related to his pastpost attempt: attempted cheating, cheating by impersonation, theft and giving false information to the police upon his interrogation.
He allegedly tried his cheat move on a casino dealer at one of the Casino's baccarat tables. He placed two SD $100 chips on the 'banker' after the cards had been dealt and the banker already won the hand. This was not a chip-switch move, which would have been better, but simply an amateurish attempt of slapping $200 down on banker and hoping the dealer wouldn't notice it was a late bet.
He also allegedly entered the casino illegally (which seems to be Singapore's casino's biggest problem thus far, as dozens have been busted for entering on false pretenses) by posing as Loh Siow Kok, who happens to be his brother. He used the brother's drivers license to get in.
He was then charged with another crime when he again showed the brother's driver's license to police inspectors called to the scene. He was then charged with stealing his brother's license! LOL! Some brother this guy is!!!...I mean Loo, the casino cheat/thief, not Loh, the brother/victim.
Bail was set at SD $15,000 for all of the above.
My take: This guy went through an awful lot to get himself busted doing a rank amateur move. Better luck with the next stolen ID he uses!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Is Ladbrokes Casino's New Live Dealer Blackjack Any Safer or Riskier Than Regular Online Blackjack as far as Cheating is Concerned?
Here's an article by gamingsupermarket.com about Ladbrokes' live dealer blackjack:
Ladbrokes Casino has some exciting things going on for those that love live blackjack. Now, the online casino features a live dealer blackjack game. At the present time, this is the most life like blackjack game that you can find in any online casino. This game has been made possible by Microgaming, a leader in the development of online casino software.
This new blackjack game has some features that are new to online blackjack. The first of these is a feature known as bet behind. With this feature, you have the capability to make wagers on players that are seated at the blackjack table. Therefore, if you happen to observe a blackjack player that seems to have a good grasp of the game and plays well, you can choose to bet your money on his performance rather than actually playing the game yourself. Keep in mind that with this bet behind feature, you have no way of actually interacting with the chosen blackjack player. You will not be able to tell them how to play their hand. This is the same as in live land based casinos.
The other feature that is part of Ladbrokes’s latest blackjack offering is the waiting list. As the name implies, it is a waiting list for a specific blackjack dealer. You would add your name to the list and wait until a seat is open. What is nice about this feature is you can enjoy other casino gaming while on the waiting list. Names are added to the waiting list on a first come, first served basis. Playing while waiting is much more enjoyable than watching a table continually for a free seat to become available.
Along another line, this live dealer blackjack game also adds other aspects to the game in order to make a most realistic blackjack experience. The addition of video streaming technology permits players to see their hands being dealt by a live dealer. Secondly, this technology allows players to interact not only with the dealer but also one another. For those gamblers holding out for a more real life blackjack experience, this is the game for you!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Good Oldfashioned Poker Card-Swapping is NOT a Dying Art!
Well, in some well-groomed and practiced cases this does actually happen, and the cards one player happens to see another player holding happen to belong to his partner in poker crime. I'm talking about amateur and professional card-swapping teams, and the good ones are quite effective and get your money very quickly. Read more about card-swapping here.
And it happens in other games besides poker, usually hand-held blackjack.
But then again, not all these poker and blackjack card-swapping teams are that great. Here's one that recently got busted looking pretty bad:
In South Wales (don't know how much action there is over there), a team of card-swappers got nabbed plying their trade in the city of Swansea's main casino. One 34-year-old poker player ID'd as Ozgur Aytekin (rough sounding name, like a terrorist!) was seen on videotape peeking at the playing cards of the man sitting next to him at the table and then switching a card with him. Apparently there were four members to this team that had claimed to be tourists visiting England and Wales. The three caught were jailed for four weeks while one got away and remains at large.
3-Card Poker Operation
Theirs seemed to be quite blatant. According to a casino official, the members of the cheat-team would discuss openly their strategies while showing one another their hands at the three-card poker table. Then the one member not playing would distract the dealer while the other three removed their bottom cards and swapped them under the table. Of course the main poker cheat, Ayetekin, would end up with the winning hand.
In addition to moving cards around the table blatantly, they also moved chips in the same fashion. Ayetekin was observed passing his chips to a man not playing who was standing behind him.
The casino claims it was cheated out of £75 and an additonal £425 was recovered at the poker table.
My take: What a mere pittance to go through all this for!
But don't be fooled by the misadventures of this bumbling card-swapping team. There are lots of good ones operating, especially in California's huge poker card-clubs. I have written extensively about them in my book Dirty Poker.
Friday, February 19, 2010
DNA Casino Game Protection...Fact or Fiction? Will DNA Be Used as Evidence Against Poker, Casino and Slot Cheats?
Scenario 1:
Back in 1996 at the Horseshoe casino in Tunica, Mississippi, I pastposted a $100 chip straight-up on number 32 after the roulette ball fell into the inner pocket for that number. As always, I immediately left the table as the claimer (person who claims the pastposted bet) moved into positon to begin his claim to get paid the $3,500 for the fraudulent bet. But that fateful day, my claimer, Lou Alaimo, who didn't last long on my cheat team, froze up and never opened his mouth. Then he shit in his pants and left the casino in a hurry, leaving the pastposted $100 chip lying there on number 32. My old teammate, the legendary Pat Mallory, was not involved in the laying or claiming of the move, so he was able to stay behind to gage the casino's reaction, which would have been fairly easy to predict after the dealer asked everyone at the table "whose winning bet is this on number 32?" The dealer was not the least bit spooked and only wanted to pay the right person the $3,500. But when no one responded, naturally things in that Horseshoe roulette pit began heating up fast!
When the dealer told his floor supervisor that no one at the table claimed the $3,500 payoff, he immediately got suspicious and called casino surveillance. It just so happened that the overhead camera had filmed me putting in the move. They also had some videotape of my face underneath the baseball cap I had been wearing.
The Horseshoe tried to mobilize as quick as they could to grab me up, but naturally I was long gone, at the casino bar in the nearby Sheraton casino. When Pat arrived to tell me what had happened, we immediately picked up the lame claimer Lou and got out of Dodge! I later learned that I was ID'd by Griffin Investigations and Mississippi Gaming as having been the "mechanic" on that aborted roulette move.
However, they only had overhead video shots, not enough to positively ID me in court.
But what if they had immediately closed down that roulette table without touching anything and called the local CSI (or the closest thing to it at the time), and a team of CSIs arrived at the casino to investigate the "crime scene"? They surely could have taken fingerprints off that pastposted $100 chip. That alone with the videotape would have nailed me, right?
What about DNA? I had been sitting at the bottom of that roulette table for half an hour before I put the move in. In spite of the ballcap, a hair or two or three had to fall from my head onto the layout, my chair or the floor, right? I know there could have been hundreds of human hairs in the vicinity, but they could have scooped them if they'd wanted. Then after gathering hairs, they could have taken the videotape evidence to a judge and probably gotten an order to get a DNA sample from me to compare with the hairs.
I would have been dead to rights again, right?
Back then DNA was already in use, as we all know from the O.J. murder trial a year and half before that. I always wondered why casinos still have not used DNA in poker, slot and casino cheat investigations. Will it happen soon? I would think so, especially if we see the likes of another giant slot machine scam where members of the cheat team leave DNA evidence on or near the victimized slot machines.
Scenario 2:
A juicy high-stakes poker game is going on at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. During the game someone notices what he thinks is a high-tech card marking on one of the aces. The highly skilled card marker gets wind of this and quickly gets up and leaves the table and the casino. Later, infrared surveillance technology confirms that a high-tech card marking operation had been taking place. The suspected card marker is picked up on video but he is not recognized by investigators and not in any of the facial recognition data bases. Fingerprints are taken off the particular marked ace and other cards, but they don't match any prints in the state or federal systems. Hairs are collected from the table, chair and floor where the card marker had been playing. They are put into evidence storage with the marked cards.
All this sounds like the guy would be cooked if he ever came back into the Bellagio and got apprehended, right? Or for that matter, if he ever got caught marking cards anywhere in the world.
So, did this scenario really happen at the Bellagio?
No...but when it does we will surely get a gander at it on a future episode of CSI...with the poker card-marking cheat opening his mouth and Marg Helgenberger sticking in the Q-tip.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Early Reports of Massive Casino Cheating in Singapore's New Casino!
Of course the world's best card-counting and advantage play teams have joined the feast, working over the blackjack and baccarat tables.
Funny, but the casino itself is admitting to nothing of the kind going on. According to press releases from Resorts World Sentosa and independent Singaporean news articles, the main casino cheating problem is just people breaking the law simply to get into the casino. There have been underage people using phony IDs to get in. But a bigger entrance problem is for the native Sinaporeans who, unlike foreigners allowed to enter free, have to pay SD$100 to gain entry for a single day, which is roughly $71 US dollars. This must be the highest casino entry fee in the world! Imagine paying seventy bucks to enter a goddam casino! The yearly fee to Singaporeans is a whopping SD$2,000, that's $1,420 US. There should be a huge outcry over this...better yet, a revolution!!!
I also heard that one angry loser in the casino, apparently a Singaporean who may have also been upset with the entry fee, was later arrested at the airport for stealing communications equipment from a passenger in transit.
My take: This casino is going to get KILLED by the cheats. The professional teams will run over the tables and the rookie surveillance crew, despite its state-of-the-art video technology, have no chance in hell of stopping the invasion, or even slowing it. The same thing will occur when Singapore's second monster casino, the Sands Marina Bay, opens up later this year. When new casino areas open, the casino-cheat shelling usually lasts a year before the casinos start to learn how to defend themselves. No new casino area will ever take the "welcome-to-the-casino-cheat" shellacking that Atlantic City did when it opened up in 1978.That bombardment, of which I was an integral part, lasted a good six years!
Doyle Brunson Denies Poker Cheat Allegations!
As far as the other negative stuff about the old time cheating, I spent two long years defending myself about that. I don’t intend to go through it again. For the record, I never had any involvement in cheating in poker from any era. This is America, believe me or not, I really don’t care any longer. It does look like there would be some evidence somewhere besides wild stories."
My take: LOL! Come on, Doyle, you are (or better said, "were") at least as big a cheat to poker as I was to casinos! You're right, this is America, the land of the home and the brave...and the cheats!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Isildur1 Back Playing Full Tilt After Online Poker Cheat Scandal!
There have been possible sightings at Absolute Poker, and he’s been seen at some lower stakes here and there. But his brief appearance yesterday, and his much more exciting re-debut today, Isildur1 has been harder to track down than Elvis and 2pac since he got bitch-slapped by the card player fellow’s.
Since he’s been gone, we at 4flush have been forced to do some crazy things, like call an earthquake a hurricane, misquote some very dull drama, and throw crumpled up balls around the news room to amuse ourselves.
Isildur1 was spotted by playing a wicked stretch at Full Tilt Poker where he met up with LuvtheWNBA (who‘s bankroll he lightened by about 120k.), also known as Isaac Haxton, and Justin Bonomo known as Zeejustin when he’s playing poker online. Isildur was down to Haxton early on but he picked it up, before moving on to accept a game with ZeeJustin,
Zeejustin lost $550k to isildur1 in one hand. Amazing.
Good news for Bonomo though, according to High Stakes News, a buddy had a piece of his action, cutting his laws. After dumping 550k + at tables, ZeeJustins backer, backed out. He told Isildur1 he could continue playing, but he’d half to drop down to the $100/$200 tables, Isildur1 passed, claiming he was to tired for that, and the two bid each other good night.
In all seriousness though, the question we’re all dying to see answered is this: Will Isildur1 face Brian Hastings (and team) again? According to High Stakes Poker News, the Swedish poker player’s bankroll should be right around a million bucks right now.
Should Probability Tell You You're Being Cheated in Your Home Poker Game?
One good idea for analyzing probability deviations is to consider them strictly as evidence. For instance, if you are playing poker with your buddies whom you know fairly well, especially their abilities at the poker table, and you believe you are a better player than most or all of them, and you are consistently losing to them over a significant period of time, then this deviation might be telling you that one of your buddies is moonlighting as a poker cheat!
The best way to do this sort of analysis is to use a sample grouping, say the number of hands played over a long period of time, say 20 to 40 sessions at the poker table. Remember that the smaller the sample group, the more the influence of luck, usually bad luck. If your sample group is too small, you most likely are looking at a run of bad luck where your amateur poker buddies are just getting lucky...or maybe they're just better players than you had thought. What you should do is use probability to figure what your win rate per hour should be, and then if there is more than a 30% negative deviation from that over a period of 10 sessions, you should begin to look into the possibility of cheating going on. I would say that deviations of 10 to 20% should not set off any alarm bells unless they go on and on and on. The long-term negative deviation difference between 10% and 30% or more might also be reflected by the ability of the poker cheats in question to cheat.
Remember one thing that is very important when you are trying to determine if somebody in your home game might be cheating: the cheating poker player has nothing to fear legally from his attempts to cheat in home games. True, he might risk getting the shit kicked out of him if exposed, but that is a helluva lot better than going thru the legal system and possibly ending up in prison, which are the results of getting caught cheating in public cardrooms.
BTW...how accurate is my assessment of home games poker cheating?...100%
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Negative or Counterproductive Casino Surveillance and Security
These HUGE errors in judgement by casino staffs, almost always by surveilance people, cost their casinos lots of money. Lawsuits like this are always open-and-shut cases with the plaintiffs walking out of court with between $50,000 and $500,000 depending upon the size and power of the casino involved, as well, of course, as the judge or jury.
Casino surveillance staffs are supposed to safeguard the casino's assets, which in turn is supposed to save the casino money that would end up in poker cheats' and casino cheats' pockets. But when people are detained and arrested for cheating and then let go (which is far worse for the casino than being found innocent in court), the surveillance operation proves to be negative or counterproductive.
The main reason for these horrific lapses in casino surveillance and security is simply that the huge majority of their staffs are trained by people, the so-called "game protection consultants," who really have no clue about real casino surveillance themselves.
This is why the casinos who do not use my training seminars ought to be calling me instead of the incompetent people they hire to teach them surveillance academics and game protection.
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