Fox 8 News in Cleveland Releases Casino Surveillance Video of Dice-Sliding Craps Cheat Scam.

Two casino craps players at the Horseshoe Casino in Cleveland, Ohio were convicted of casino cheating, put on probation and ordered to make restitution of $39,000 to the casino, the amount they earned cheating the craps tables at the casino.

I took a look at this tape and can't really see jack shit, so maybe someone else out there can take a look at it and tell me if they see anything that would constitute real evidence of dice-sliding.

Who Really Cares About Artificial Intelligence Computers Beating Poker Players?

Poker Players Against AI

Like many of you, I have been reading a lot about this artificial intelligence poker player called AI who's beating the world's best poker players at special tournaments set-up just for this purpose. I ask myself who is interested in this crap anyway? In fact, the whole scene reminds me of chess computers and backgammon computers that work on the same principles as the poker AI computer. You can read all about AI here.

But who really cares about this stuff? Unless AI can be used by poker cheaters in live games, I don't see the interest in it. We of course already know that AI or other intelligent poker bots can win at online poker, but up until now I have not heard of any attempts to somehow get an AI player into a live poker cash game or tournament, and unless we do see such attempts, the whole AI poker thing is just going to be another case of backgammon and chess computers matching human manufactured wits against humans themselves.

Let me know what you think.

The Invisible Card-Marking Ink That Wasn't!

His Invisible Ink Shined Like a Star

This is one of the most interesting and funny incidents of card-marking in casinos that I have ever heard! It actually came to light back in 2014, but I hadn't heard of it.

I just did last December when the Las Vegas Gaming Commision announced it was considering Bujar Kaloshi for a page in its infamous "Black Book," formally known as the Nevada State List of Excluded Persons.

Those unlucky enough to make this list cannot enter any Nevada State casino under the penalty of being arrested for felony trespassing. They are a collection of gaming and casino cheats, organized crime figures, and people with generally unsavory reputations who are considered harmful to the integrity of Nevada's casino industry.

Bujar Kaloshi, a long-time casino cheat specializing in card-marking and who has many funny-sounding name-aliases, may be the first card-marker in history to be using invisible ink to mark the cards that really wasn't invisible! He wore special contact lenses to see the marks on the backs of the cards, secure in his confidence that casinos' surveillance video aparatus could not see the markings.

Well, he was almost entirely right. But one surveillance operator at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut had another idea, and what he did to implement it reminded me of the Beatles' publicity stunt in 1969 whereby spinning the album Abbey Road backwards, you heard chants that Paul McCartney was dead.

What the surveillance operator did, after recognizing Kaloshi playing at the poker table, was rewind the tape and put it in black-and-white mode which enabled him to clearly view the markings on the cards.

So the jig was up and Kaloshi's casino cheating career took a major hit.

He was subsequently placed in the black book

World's Number One Casino Cheat Catcher Robert "Bob" Griffin of Griffin Investigations Dies

Legendary Cheat Catcher

Any poker cheat or casino cheat worth his weight in chips knows very well who Robert Griffin was.

For those of you who don't, Griffin was the founder of the original Griffin Detective Agency in the 1960s, which fast became the private investigation service used by the majority of Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe casinos. Today the agency is called Griffin Investigations and still serves as the number-one private casino-detective ageny, not only in the state of Nevada but throughout the entire world.

That is mainly because of the advent of his infamous "Griffin Book," which was (and still is online to those who employ Griffin) nothing less than the Who's Who of poker and casino cheating. Casinos around the world paid Griffin for his book in order to keep track of and identify hordes of international casino cheats and poker cheats.

I myself have an entire page (or more)  in the Griffin Book.

Though I never met Robert Griffin personally, I am sure he was as familiar with me as my own family.

His number-one prized agent, Andy Anderson, who recently passed away himself, was my personal nemesis in Nevada casinos during more than 20 years. He once told me it was his life mission to bust me and put me permanently out of business.

He of course never did.

And after I retired I actually became friendly with Anderson and saw him at various casino game protection conferences and seminars.

As for Griffin, his agency was responsible for putting many casino megacheats out of business and
some into prison, including those involved in the Tran Organization baccarat scam that bilked North American casinos out of some $20 million in the early and mid 2000s.

Griffin was also instrumental in putting the famous MIT blackjack card-counting team out of business.

Well, the Las Vegas casino-cheating world lost a legend, regardless of which side anyone occupied in that world.

The Grab Chips and Run Casino-Cheat Scam outdoes the Bet Chips and Run Casino-Cheat Scam...

Big Piles and Big Balls!

and that's not an easy thing to do!

When I was heavily into cheating Las Vegas casinos during the 70s, 80s and 90s, sometimes the heat in casinos that I generated was even too hot for me!

Which meant I had to put casino-cheating to the side--at least for awhile.

And during those lags in the cheating action, I often got bored--until I came up with what I later named the Harley-Davidson Bet and Run Scam. This scam was exactly what I called it: I bet the chips and if I didn't win, I grabbed the chips I'd bet right off the table before the dealer could take them and ran out the door, jumped on the back of a Harley Davidson 1200 and sped outta Dodge.

Read a full description of that move here.

But decades later, a guy by the name of Tony Carleo, who became known as the Bellagio Biker Bandit, outdid even me. He walked up to a craps table at the Bellagio, and without making a single bet grabbed up $1.5 million in chips off the table, ran out the door and jumped on his waiting Harley outside.

His take was mainly in $5,000 and $25,000 chips. I would have thought that it would have been next to impossible to cash out even the $5,000 chips, as the casino would have probably immediately taken them out of circulation and replaced them with a new series of $5,000 chips with a different color, essentially rendering Carleo's stolen chips worthless.

But that didn't happen and Carleo was able to go back into the Bellagio and buy in with them at various tables, then cash out lower denomination chips at the cage. He was able to convert $500,000 of the stolen $5,000 chips into cash.

But the $25,000 chips were a different story.

The Bellagio kept strict tabs on them, so Carleo had to find another way to cash those out.

He actually (if somewhat subtily) advertised them for sale at a discount on poker forums. Of course that was stupid. This eventually led to him getting set up by a Las Vegas Police Department sting operation, and he got busted selling one of the $25,000 chips to an undercover detective.

Well, he should have quit while he was ahead, like any other lucky gambler, and either thrown those $25,000 chips in the garbage or just kept them as a memento of his  brazen act.

But it's just too hard to throw out a million bucks!

Interesting Article on "The Secret World of Casino Security and Surveillance"

How effective is it really?

This is a very interesting article on casinos' high-tech efforts to battle the casino cheats. Although I beg to differ on the effectiveness of all the recognition software, it is still something to see and read about for those interested in the subject.

I will never be convinced that casinos will be able to recognize a large percentage of casino cheats the minute they walk inside, especially those who make an effort to disguise themselves. But on the other hand, getting instant information from license plates on cars entering the parking garages is certainly much more credible.

Kelly Cheung Yin Sun "Queen of Sorts" Goes into Casino Cheats Hall of Fame

Much more than Ivey's cheat partner

Cheung Yin Sun, also known as the "Queen of Sorts," for her prolific baccarat edge-sorting career, and for her casino-cheat partnership with Casino-Cheat Hall of Fame inductee Phil Ivey, has now been inducted herself.

Sun is the thirty-first person to be inducted into the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame and the seventh woman to have the honor.

Read Sun's history here.

Please! Let's Cut out the Sympathy Crap for Master Casino Cheat Phil Ivey!

Yes, he IS a cheat!

Last week a US District Court ruled that Phil Ivey must return the $10 million he won at the Atlantic City Borgata casino through his edge-sorting technique...or I should say "he cheated" instead of he won.

Ever since, all the gaming-guru writers who are ex-advantage players are crying over what they write is an unjust decision against Phil Ivey. They claim that Ivey simply took advantage of the casino's ignorance to the fact they had received defective playing cards from the manufacturer and let them into play, and therefore Ivey and his partner, Cheng Yin Sun (who masterminded the scheme with financial backing from Ivey), did not cheat the Borgata casino. They further support this claim with statements alluding to how the casino makes so much money because of its built-in advantage with all the table games, that they shouldn't complain when someone comes along and beats them. They should just "lick their wounds and move on."

Gimme a break!

This is total bullshit!

What these advantage-player writers are not mentioning is that Phil Ivey and Cheng Yin Sun MANIPULATED the deal of the game by having the dealers abandon their proper procedure to deal the cards the way Ivey wanted so that he could see the defects in the cards and use them to his advantage.

That alone is an indisputable definiton of casino cheating, not to mention the forethought and planning of Ivey's casino-cheat crimes.

Look, I for one am not very sympathetic to casinos and enjoyed ripping them off as much as Ivey did, but let's call a spade a spade and stop spouting this crap that Ivey got ripped off by the court system.

Had Ivey been able to edge-sort WITHOUT having the dealers change the way they deal, then and ONLY THEN would his edge-sorting attack on the casino not be cheating.

So--I call on the advantage-player community as a whole to stop supporting a cheat who is not one of them.

Nevada on Campaign to Increase It's Infamous Casino Black Book Population

Nevada's Black book

If you didn't know it, the State of Nevada maintains a "Black Book" whose pages are filled with names of people who are permanently excluded from entering the state's casinos. If they enter and are caught, they are immediately arrested and charged with felony trespassing.

There are currently 32 people on what Nevada officially calls its "List of Excluded Persons." There were 33, but the recent death of notorious slot machine cheat John Vacaro (which, by the way, is the only way to get your name erased), the population is back to 32.

Now, however, the Nevada Gaming Commission wants to up that population. Feeling threatened by the increase in high-tech and casino-employee-insider cheating scams, they want to get the message out that if you screw around in casinos, you're gonna find yourself in their Black Book. Years ago you needed at least two felony gaming-related convictions to make the grade, but now you don't even need one. The Gaming Commission can place anyone on the list whom they feel is a threat to the integrity and safety of the Nevada Gaming Industry.

Just last year, famous gambler Archie Karas, a legend who once turned fifty bucks into $40 million in what is considered Las Vegas's hottest hot streak of all-time, was placed in the Black Book after being caught marking cards in California casino poker games. He'd had a few run-ins over blackjack cheating incidents before that.

My take: I think that putting Archie Karas in the Black Book is a little harsh as he doesn't seem like much of a threat to Nevada's gaming industry, but I agree that people who use high-tech equipment or corrupt dealers in furtherance of cheating scams should indeed be put on the excluded persons list.

I think that Phil Ivey is a good candidate for that list as he did corrupt dealers in the furtherance of his baccarat edge-sorting scams.

New Maryland MGM Casino Worried about Onslaught of Casino Cheats

New Casino Cheat Zone?

A big new MGM casino has just opened in National Harbor Maryland, and it's the closest casino to the nation's capital,Washington D.C. As with all new casino openings where the bulk of the employees, especially dealers, are novices, there is usually concern about professional casino-cheating teams coming in to take advantage of the rookie dealers and floorpeople.

I have seen and read several news accounts how Maryland's authorities are taking special care to avoid or at least minimize the problem. In fact, they have done virtually everything outside of calling me to come help them! They have set up special classes for dealers, studied loads of data on casino cheating, which they must get from other jurisdictions since Maryland does not release this type of data when it pertains to its own casinos.

They seem to be particularly worried about employee-involved cheating in cahoots with professional cheat-gangs such as the infamous Tran Organization, a Vietnamese clan of baccarat cheats who bribed and corrupted dealers throughout the US and Canada in the early and mid 2000s. They bilked casinos in both countries for some $20 million. Their operation was eventually busted in 2007 and lots of ex-casino dealers went to jail and tarnished their reputations forever.

My take: I think the approach that Maryland's gaming authorities are taking is the right one. New casinos are always extremely vulnereable to both pro casino cheats and those not so pro, and if the problem is not tackled early in a casino's existence, the result could be a disastrous casino-cheating paradise like the pair of casinos in Singapore.