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!!!

How Cheating Live Casino Dealers Slip Under the Radar

Despite the state of the art high-tech video surveillance systems protecting land-based casinos throughout the world, those dishonest employees who want to cheat their bosses still operate with huge success. Of course I am talking mainly about cheating dealers, some of whom work in tandem with crooked supervisors and pit bosses, others who keep their cheating gigs to themselves and the partners they use to take the money off the tables.

Trust her?

These dealers use a variety of methods to cheat the house, to cheat other players and then dump off that money to their cohorts, and even to cheat other dealers out of customer tips in certain situations. I will cover these methods in an upcoming article.

But here I want to talk about how and why they get away with it.

First and foremost is that sharp dealers who are educated in the goings on with casino table-game protection and surveillance know that video cameras can actually be their friends and not the deterrence to cheating and stealing that most people think they are.

This is because with the advent of more  and more state of the art technology designed to pinpoint surveillance personnel to inside dealer-cheating scams, the human beings, both on the casino floor and upstairs in the surveillance room, have less and less of an idea as to what’s going on in the real live casino-cheating world.

Knowing that supervisors and pit bosses constantly depend on the cameras to protect their asses, dealers in business for themselves really slip it to them without their ever catching on.

And the ways they rake their extra-curricular profits off the table are usually very simple and for modest amounts at a crack.

You all know about the big false-shuffle baccarat scams where dealers partner-up with Asian gangs and take out huge sums of money. It is true that these major cheating scores are still occurring frequently today, but those dealers who do get caught performing them face stiff prison sentences and lifetime bans from the industry.

Which is why the vast majority of casino-cheating dealers stick with the small stuff: a few hundred bucks here, a few hundred bucks there—just enough to double or triple their legitimate casino earnings.

Game Protection Post: Casino Game Protection--How I Do It

Many of you casino executives may have attended the recent World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas and listened to various game-protection consultants present their methods and credentials. However, if you want the best to come to your casino and train your staff, this is how I do it.

My main goal in training casino floor staffs is to make them as efficient and knowledgeable as possible without depending on the video and surveillance systems. Simply put: to learn and recognize all facets of casino cheating and advantage play before it gets to the surveillance-department stage. As an ex-casino dealer who has performed many highly-effective inside casino scams, followed by 25 years as a professional casino-cheat, I can offer pretty good insight on how these things work from both sides of the tables. 

My main goal in training sureillance staffs is to remove them as much as possible from their video equipment and technology. In other words, teach them to be highly efficient even in the hypothethical circumstance that cameras did not exist. This is because floor supervisors and surveillance departments have become so dependent on the technology that many of its employees have very little knowledge of what cheating and advantage play is really about. I always like to say, "A camera cannot tap you on the shoulder and tell you there´s a cheat-move going down on BJ 4." You´ve got to be able to identify what you see on the video or what you´re watching on the live game. If a floorperson does not recognize a cheat or advantage-play team at the tables, the cameras above are not going to alert them to it. Game protecftion must work from the floor up.  

If you have read anything about my cheating days, I was able to use cameras and surveillance departments to actually help me cheat casinos (see the Savannah move on my website). Capable cheats can actually separate the casino floor from surveillance departments by using psychology that overcomes game-protection procedure. For example, I was able to place $5,000 bets without dealers notifying supervisors, and as well was able to prevent the floor from notifying surveillance when I was actually caught cheating, all by use of psychology. 

Normally when I conduct seminars, the audience is a mix of floor and surveillance people. I find that this works well because communication between the two and working as one is integral for good game and casino protection. In more casinos than not, surveillance and the floor are not on the same page.

One thing I like to do is have a member of the casino floor staff, unbeknownst to the rest of the seminar attendees, participate in my cheating demonstrations while their peers are also seated around the gaming table. I have already met with this individual before the seminar and taught him how to do cheating moves. Then when he actually does a cheating move during the seminar, the audience is shocked to see how easy it was for him to do it. This type of active-attendee participation works really well in generating more interestest and closer attention from the audience.

I do not do any tired-old powerpoint presentations.I do not waste much time going over videos of moves you have probably seen a thousand times. Everything is hands-on work on tables and throughout a casino. I not only teach how casino cheat-moves and advantage-play teams operate at the tables, I stress how they prepare inside the casino before their moves, how they communicate on and away from the tables, how they cash out their checks, and all the other necessary facets that must be known in order to have a chance of spotting the professional teams before they leave the casino with your money. I have found over the years that casinos have very little idea how cheats communicate, nor do they invest much time in learning how cheats, especially those working with high-denomination checks, obtain them and cash them out without drawing suspicion.

For example, in my later cheating-days I worked exclusively with $5,000 checks and on some nights had more than $50,000 of checks to cash out, However, I never once in my life cashed out a single $5,000 check. So how did I turn them into cash without raising eyebrows?

As far as direct training to surveillance depts alone goes, I like to put them in the shoes of a cheat or advantage player, show them how they think, plan and act. As I do with the floor staff, I take one member of the surveillance dept. and work with him alone before I meet the rest of the attendees. Then I teach him some cheating moves, and later we do a demonstration on the table while the rest are watching. As everyone is thinking I am going to do the cheat move, the surveillance guy does it and of course no one sees it go down. The point of this is twofold: firstly to  show how everything at a suspect table has to be watched; the second, how the best cheat moves are so easily done. My Savannah move, which arguably was the best low-tech move of all time, could be taught to you in under five minutes and can still be done at any casino if the staff cannot properly defend against it..

We would also discuss the high-tech scams, the baccarat edge-sorting and other hi-tech scams, but remember, the vast majority of casino scams are not high-tech. We would also spend time talking about inside-dealer and floorpeople scams, on which I have much experience. As a dealer back in 1977, I was probably the first to do the infamous false-shuffle baccarat scam later done on a huge scale by the Tran organization 25 years later. 

Another thing I like to do out the outset of the seminar is give a 20-question quiz to everyone entitled "How good a casino cheat and advantage player would you be?"

Then we go over it without giving the correct answers, and then at the end of the seminar the same quiz is repeated, and we compare the scores to see how much the attendees have learned and retained.

This is a general overview of how I work. Of course each training/seminar is tailored to the property epending on your exact needs and who will be attending.

Casino Game Protection Post: State of the art surveillance systems...Where's the problem?

They See it all, right? WRONG!

We have all seen countless TV programs depicting just how impossible it is to cheat in modern gambling casinos in Las Vegas and across the world. Surveillance and security gurus like the Atrium's Ted Whiting give us demonstrations how they use this ultra-high-tech equipment to monitor their casino floors and then film and nab the casino cheats after gathering all that video evidence. Then, of course, come the big-bad agents swarming to the tables to bust the cheats.

Slam-dunk, right?

Not really.

All those surveillance-camera video sequences you see on TV that lead to putting cheats in jail and saving the casino millions of dollars are certainly true when they happen.

And that is the key: WHEN they happen. The reality is that when you take into account the tremendous volume of cheating that goes down in casinos, all that high-tech video surveillance rarely comes into play--in fact, surveillance itself rarely comes into play.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about the problem. Which is that what Ted Whiting and the other TV casino-surveillance stars fail to mention on the broadcasts.

It is simply this: the more sophisticated that surveillance systems become, the less capable casino floor personnel become. And this is not difficult to understand. Casino floorpeople and pit bosses lose their motivation to learn and understand casino-cheating because they know that the casino's video cameras will record everything, and all they have to do is wait for the surveillance department to call them and report that they have picked up on a casino cheat and now they, the floorpeople, can go and catch him.

But what they don't know, or at least not take into account, is that the cameras cannot initiate anything themselves. They cannot tell the casino employees on the floor that they have just recorded a cheating incident and that someone should call them, the cameras, for details. Video cameras cannot tap a floorperson on the shoulder and say, "Hey, Mac, a guy on blackjack table #4 just capped his bet after getting blackjack," or, "that girl with the blond wig just pastposted a bet on roulette table #2."

It has to work in reverse. The employee on the floor has to see...or at least suspect...a cheat-move going down, and then he has to call the surveillance operators and report his findings so that they can go review the video evidence.

This is how it should work--but it rarely does. In fact, during my twenty-five-year cheating-career, never...and I mean NEVER...did a surveillance operator upstairs catch on to one of my cheating moves. 

And what compounded the problem for the casinos is that their employees on the floor rarely got suspicious of anything I ever did at the tables. And that's because they simply didn't know what to look for because they figured the cameras would do the looking for them.

And imagine how much worse this problem is now. I've been retired from active casino-cheating for 16 years, and surveillance equipment has only improved exponentially. Which of course means that the capacity of casino floorpeople to recognize scams on their own feet has declined, maybe not as exponentially, but certainly significantly.

So what I suggest to Ted Whiting and any other directors of casino surveillance is to get some good training programs into action to teach their casino floor employees a thing or two about spotting a cheat on their own and protecting their gaming tables.

Top 10 Land-Based Casino and Poker Cheat Moves

During the calender year 2015, these ten cheat moves in casinos and poker rooms were the most popular among qualified professional poker cheats and casino cheats. This does not include advantage play methods at blackjack such as card-counting and ace-steering.

1) Poker Collusion
2) Blackjack Hole-Carding
3) Bet-Capping at Blackjack (adding chips to winning or probable-winning bet)
4) Pastposting at Roulette (making original bet after outcome determined)
5) Roulette Chip Fraud (manipulating values of non-redeemable roulette chips)
6) Bet-Capping at Roulette
7) Bet-Capping at Craps
8) Pastposting at Blackjack
9) Bet Sliding at Baccarat (moving bet from losing box to winning box)
10) Pastposting at Craps

Numbers one and two on the list are easy to understand since they are virtually risk-free. Even though casinos and poker rooms consider collusion and hole-carding as cheating, the courts in Nevada and other casino jurisdictions do not. So why wouldn't professional cheats take advantage of this kind of "free shot" at casinos?

Note that all the high-tech scams using electonic and laser equipment do not appear on the list. This is because pro cheats tend to avoid them like the plague. Almost all casino jurisdictions treat cheating that involves equipment as major felonies and judges routinely had out prison sentences to those convicted of it.

Vegas Set for New Year´s Eve Casino Wars!

New Year´s Eve in Vegas

Call it the Great Crusades of Casino and Poker Cheating!

The casino cheats are loading their gadgets; casino surveillance is loading up their cameras; Griffin Investigations and other casino investigatory bodies are beefing up their patrols...everyone´s getting ready for the big New Year´s Eve casino-cheating bang!

And it will come!

New Year's Eve is always the numero-uno prime-time casino and poker-cheat invasion of the world´s casinos, especially in Las Vegas. This is because the vast crowds inside the casinos and the huge action afford the cheats the best possible conditions to work in. There is just too much action in casinos for their security and surveillance staffs to adequately protect their gaming tables and slot machines, and when there is a suspected cheating incident, it is too un-profitable to stop the game and wait while surveillance check the footage from the cameras. Imagine, how much money the casino would lose when stopping a jam-packed roulette or craps game for fifteen minutes!

So how profitable can New Year´s Eve be for a good professional casino.cheat team?

Well, I will tell you this: on New Year´s Eve 1999, which was my last New Year´s Eve working casinos, I entered Caesars Palace with my three casino-cheat partners and did a total of fifteen $10,000 moves, half of them Savannah roulette moves and the other half blackjack pastpost moves. They all got paid without any heat and we cleared $125,000! Not bad for a night´s work, right?

And of course this time of year I get a vast increase in emails, lots of them asking me if Savannah still works in casinos.I do not want to encourage anyone to cheat in casinos, but I cannot lie either, so you can figure out what the answer to that question is.

Overall, I expect Las Vegas alone to lose some $2 to $3 million to cheats tonight, with maybe an arrest or two of those unlucky enough to get caught and busted, But all considering, the odds are never more with the cheats than on New Year´s Eve.

And Happy New Year to you all!