Poker Cheating and Casino Cheating Blog: American Roulette

Interesting Shuffle Master Cheating Scenario

2012-05-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

I have blogged once or twice about the possibilities and realities of casinos, particularly certain key casino employees like dealers and floor personnel, cheating players or their own casinos by manipulating the Shuffle Master automatic shuffle machines on casino blackjack and baccarat tables. It has actually happened a handful of times around the world, mostly by dealers, sometimes in cahoots with supervisors, temporarily disabling the machine to protect their own false shuffles.

Recently I received the following email from a very knowledgeable person presenting an intersting Shuffle Master casino cheating scenario. Below his email query is my response.

Email:

I read the article on your site about the potential for casinos or their employees to cheat with gaffed Shuffle Master automatic shuffle machines (ASM's). After a brief discussion, you concluded that there is no real risk to players of being cheated with gaffed Shuffle Master machines. You basically concluded that although such cheating is possible the risk for casinos or their employees is too high because too many people would have to be in on the scam.

I question your conclusion that the risk of such cheating is very low.

For instance, there is one likely scenario that you did not consider that I would like your opinion on: Shuffle Master does not insist that casinos using their automatic shuffle machines have only Shuffle Master employees service the machines. Shuffle Master is perfectly willing to train casino personnel to service the machines, themselves. So, suppose a senior manager at, say, a California Indian casino where State and federal oversight is weak) decides to cheat players at, say, double-deck blackjack shuffled with Shuffle Master's MD3 automatic shuffle machines. It would seem to me that all that would be necessary would be for the manager to obtain replacement computer chips with a gaffed shuffle routine, and during "routine" service on the MD3 machines have a trained casino technician (also in on the scheme) modify the MD3 motherboards with the new chips containing the gaffed shuffle routine. This would mean that only two people would have to be in on the scheme (plus the supplier of the gaffed chips who would probably not know where the chips were going).

With so few people aware of the scheme, and with weak State and fed oversight, it seems to me that such a scheme would be relatively easy to pull off. Now, why would a a senior manager of an Indian casino do this? Because (with weak State an fed oversight) the risk of getting caught is very low, and such cheating would provide impressive performance numbers that would increase his performance bonuses and juice his career. Also, at those Indian casinos, such as Thunder Valley in Lincoln, CA, that manage their own casinos, senior casino management often consists of tribal members who benefit directly from increased earnings.

So, what is your opinion of the above scenario, Richard? Do you think it's plausible, or do you still think that even in Indian casinos with weak State and fed oversight the risk of being cheated with gaffed automatic shuffle machines is nominal?

My Response: Although your cheat scenario is very well thought out and plausible, it is still very unlikely. Don't forget, the person you need most in your scenario is the dealer, so now your talking about two inside employees plus someone to supply the gaffed chips. Let's even say that this exact scenario happens ten times a year across the world. That still makes the odds of any player being cheated this way negligible. A better scenario for Shuffle Master cheating is simply having one employee or two disabling the machine for a short period of time. This form of cheating via Shuffle Master automatic shuffling machines has indeed happened, although not very often when you consider the number of blackjack, poker and baccarat tables across the world using them.

The Beauty of the Reverse Casino and Poker Scam

2012-05-08T14:29:00.001-07:00

If you have been following my poker cheating and casino cheating blogs lately, you will have noticed that I have been writing about poker reverse-cheat scams as well as casino reverse-cheat scams. To refresh your memory of what a "reverse" scam is, it is simply a scam in which the primary victim thinks he is involved in a scam that is scamming somebody else and that he will share in the profits. He never has an idea that he himself is the victim. Like any ordinary scam, a reverse scam preys on the victim's greed, not to mention his willingness to scam somebody else, whether that be a gambler or a gambling casino or poker room.

Before you go on reading this article, please read these two reverse scams to get a flavor of how they work. Then I will give you the details on WHY they work.

Scam 1

Scam 2

Okay, now you have read about both these great reverse cheat scams, one at the casino baccarat table, the other at the poker table, and now you are wondering exactly why they work...I mean beyond the obvious driving factor of the victim's greed. Well, for those of you who don't know, even straight people who have never scammed a penny from anyone or anything in their life often fantasize about doing just that. Everyone on the planet, at one time or another, says to himself or herself, "Wouldn't it be just great if I could cheat that bastard out of..." or "Cheat that damned airline or bank!"

You betcha.

So now imagine how tempting it is to become a scammer when you are already embroiled in the poker and gambling world. The first pre-requisite in finding a reverse poker or casino scam victim is that he (or she) be intelligent and know a lot about poker and casinos. You may think this sounds contradictive, but it is not. People with average or below average intelligence are plainly not smart enough to fall for a reverse scam. Such a person would be asking too many stupid questions and thinking too many dumb things, and above all, worrying that he is somehow being set-up. But a sharp casino and poker-seasoned veteran will immediately understand the believability and credibility of the scam that he thinks he will be part of.

So now you have the first step. The next extremely important element of the reverse scam is that you get the victim's money in a way that coincides with what that victim thinks the scam is. In the baccarat reverse scam, the victim does not mind losing his money to the scammer because he believes that the loss is just part of an offset process to make the casino believe that legitimate high action is taking place on the part of the scammer to obtain casino credit.

In the reverse poker scam, the victim does not mind losing his money to the scammer because he believes he will be getting it all back, and then some, when they all cut up the profits they scammed from the other players at the table.

The last phase of the reverse casino and poker cheat scams is escaping with the victim's money in a fashion that does not panic the victim (or at least in the way that he thinks HE is being scammed. If the scammer, just after having taken all the victim's chips, suddenly gets up and leaves the table by himself, the victim might indeed panic and think he has just been taken for all his money. But if the scammer leaves being escorted by what the victim thinks are casino security agents (or worse), the victim's panic will only be directed to his own safety and escape, and not the thought that he had just been scammed.

So there you have it: the beauty of planning and pulling off the poker cheat reverse scam and the baccarat cheat reverse scam...and don't forget: I have been a victim of the reverse scam as well!

Reverse Poker Scam Galore!

2012-04-27T14:53:00.001-07:00

ºThe victim and the scammer are sitting in the scammer's living room when a friend/partner of the scammer who the victim does not know comes into the house, excitedly shouting, "I got the marking solution and the contact lenses!" Of course the friend pretends not to know that the victim is there. The victim, a seasoned poker player, is immediately more than curious. He asks the scammer, "What is going on with marking solution and contact lenses? What are you guys up to?

He knows it's got something to do with a poker card-marking cheat operation. The scammer "hesitates" to tell the victim but then lets him in on it. He first allows the victim to insert the contact lenses in his own eyes while he (the scammer) marks the backs of the cards lying on the coffee table with the solution. As the victim sees the markings on the cards through the contact lenses, he is naturally astonished.

The scammer then explains the card-marking scam he is going to do with the friend, offering the victim the chance to participate. He tells the victim that they are going to scam a big no-limit hold'em game in Vegas's biggest-action poker room. He and the friend need the victim to join in the scam as a player to bump pots and make key bets to allow the scammer and the friend to raise pots as well. The victim is told that he does not participate in wearing the contact lenses and marking the cards. The scammer showed him the markings only to establish the credibility of the card-marking scam at the poker table.

The victim is rearing to go because he does not have to be involved in the risky part of marking the cards and will have no evidence (marking solution and contact lenses) on his person as the scam goes down. He thus thinks he is involved in the scam to cheat all the other players in the big no-limit hold'em game. They choose a $30-60 no-limit game.

Since the scammer and the friend cannot really see the cards, they must signal the values of their own hole cards so that they know what each other has in the hole. But how do they know what the victim has? Simple: they get the victim to tell them without making it complicated. The victim is told to signal only if he has a pair of tens or higher in the hole. He does this by a simple gesture on his cards. He is further told to bet this hand in first position or raise if someone has bet before him. If he turns a set he follows the same bet-or raise instructions. This assures the scammer and his friend of knowing when the victim has a strong hand, strong enough where he can go all-in and reveal his hand at showdown without breeding suspicion.

Now the victim is completely set-up by the scammer and his friend. Since the victim believes he is partners with the scammer and the friend to cheat the rest of the poker table, he does not worry about losing his chips to either of the two. Before the trio hits the poker table, the victim is told that if he loses his chips in the game to the player or his friend, he will be replenished with cash when either the victim or his friend meets him away from the poker table, in a meeting place completely outside the casino.

Before the big reverse scam move goes down, the victim has been raising and re-raising pots according to the instructions he had received from the scammer and his friend. He had been told that his function is to help bump-up pots when the scammer and his friend know they have the winning hand. This goes on for a varied amout of time until the ideal situation develops to take the victim down. That situation is when the victim has the high pair in the hole and flops a set while the scammer and friend enter the turn with straight or flush possibilities. When either the scammer or friend or both connect, the victim is signalled to move all-in. He is called by either the scammer or friend or both, and thus loses all his chips, usually an amount of $20,000 or more. The only thing that can stall the big scam is when the board pairs up and the victim makes a full house or four of a kind. When that happens, the victim moves all-in but is not called by either the scammer or the friend.

So now what? The scammer and the friend have all the victim's chips. Let's say that the scammer won the all-in hand against the victim. Now it is necessary for the scammer and friend to end the contact with the victim. A few moments after the big-scam hand, two men dressed in suits approach the poker table and one of them bends over the scammer and says in a low voice but loud enough for the victim to hear, "Would you please come with us, sir?" As the scammer gathers all his chips and leaves with the two men, the victim, naturally assuming that the two men in suits are detectives or FBI, panics and makes nervous eye-contact with the friend. The friend signals the victim to leave the table and go back to the scammer's apartment immediately. When the friend and the victim are sitting in the apartment, nervously speaking about what could have happened, the phone rings. The friend tells the victim to answer it. The victim does, and of couse it is the scammer on the line, who tells the victim that he is in FBI custody and is being charged with numerous felony counts pertaining to cheating in gambling casinos. He tells the victim that he and the friend had both better get the hell out of town quickly, that the FBI is going to track them down. The victim and the friend part ways in a hurry. The victim probably never comes back to Vegas, or at least not for years, and the scammer and his friend enjoy the victim's money, knowing that the victim probably will never know he had been scammed.

This is one of the greatest reverse poker scams ever done. To read the greatest reverse casino scam ever done, click here.

BetOnline Poker Room Shut Down Amid Alleged Online Poker Cheating!

2012-04-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

I have just gotten word that the sports book BetOnline has ceased operations of its online poker room. I do not know if this will be permanent but it is big news and probably is the harbinger for another major online poker cheat scam. This closure of an online poker room that accepts US players will have some effect on that market. The reasons I am getting are that some pro online poker players have been cheating via collusion scams and that other players are having problmes withdrawing their funds. I am sure more on this will come!

My take: Well, I won't say "I told you so" but I told you so!

Roulette Pastposting Team Leads Massive Casino Cheating Wave in New Zealand!

2012-04-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

Casino Cheating Tsunami!

Source: Waikato Times

Three people – one of them a SkyCity employee – have been charged with attempting to cheat a casino of more than $7000.

Bo Du, 32, worked as a roulette croupier at Hamilton SkyCity Casino when, police say, she deliberately spun her roulette wheel early – or slowly – to allow her two associates Xiaodong Lu, 27, and Zhuo Zhao, 31, to place last-minute bets as the roulette ball came to a stop.

The offending is alleged to have taken place earlier this month.

It is alleged that on April 4, Lu walked away with $1632 and eight days later she and her partner Zhao pocketed a further $5600.

Despite being remanded without plea on one charge of cheating and two of theft, a police summary of facts stated Du had made a full admission and told them she met up with the couple afterwards to collect her share of the winnings.

Lu also faces two counts of theft and one of cheating, while Zhao is charged with one count of theft and one of cheating.

The trio's appearance in the Hamilton District Court yesterday had lawyers scratching their heads as to what a charge of "cheating" entailed.

Justice Ministry figures released to the Times show there have been just seven charged with the Gambling Act offence between 2005 and 2010.

The Times has reported one similar incident in May 2007 when Jing Luo Yan, a 45-year-old chef, tried to cheat at a game of Caribbean stud poker at the Hamilton SkyCity and was convicted and fined $500.

Though rare, the recent alleged offending pales in comparison to an example from November 1998 when Tonga-based Chinese millionaire businessman Zhu Hua Yu and SkyCIty Auckland dealer Lei Zhang were convicted of cheating when Zhang used secret signals to help the punter amass $120,000 playing baccarat.

Internal Affairs gambling compliance inspector Derek Hartley said he and the Hamilton unit were still investigating and did not rule out further arrests or charges in relation to the latest alleged offending.

However, he would not comment on how frequently similar investigations took place or whether SkyCity could face sanctions.

SkyCity Hamilton general manager Arthur Pitcher refused to comment.

He refused also to discuss SkyCity's anti-corruption efforts or staff supervision policies.

It is not known whether Du has lost her job at SkyCity or how long she worked there.

SkyCity Casino has 23 playing tables, 339 gaming machines and revenues of $26.5 million – up 13.7 per cent in the last financial year.

Du, Lu and Zhao were all remanded on bail without plea to reappear in the Hamilton District Court next month.

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Previous casino scams both here and abroad make the winnings collected by Hamilton's three alleged casino cheats look like chump change.

November 2011: Three Italians are charged with cheating at a Cannes casino after French police alleged they used special contact lenses to see invisible ink on the marked cards.

The alert was raised when the gang won NZ$76,300 in an evening of stud poker against the croupier in a night and another $10,000 in a few hours later that week.

January 2007: Two men and a woman cheated at least six London casinos out of nearly $734,000 in a hi-tech poker scam using hidden miniature cameras and earpieces. The sting involved two of the gang playing poker while their accomplice sat in a van nearby.

A tiny camera, hidden up the sleeve of one of the players filmed cards being dealt, with footage beamed live to the van via a transmitter. The poker players were then told via earpieces how to bet.

December 2004: Three gamblers who used a laser device to win over $2.73 million in two nights at a London hotel casino are let off prosecution after police say they did nothing illegal.

The laser scanner measured the speed of the roulette ball as it was released by the croupier, identified where it fell and measured the declining orbit of the wheel.

A computer calculated which section of numbers the ball would land on and dropped the odds for the gamblers from 37-1 to 6-1, with the info flashed to a mobile phone just before bets closed.

November 1998: Tonga-based Chinese millionaire businessman Zhu Hua Yu and SkyCIty Auckland dealer Lei Zhang are convicted of cheating after Zhang used secret signals to help Yu win baccarat bets totalling $120,000.

April 1998: Nevada's premier poker machine cheat, Dennis Nikrasch, who raked in millions of dollars over 22 years, cuts a deal with prosecutors for a lighter sentence in return for telling how he did it. Nikrasch and his cronies' scams brought them about US$40m (then NZ$70m) a year and left officials baffled over how they did it.

Nikrasch was convicted in 1986 of scamming US$10 million from Las Vegas casinos by rigging poker machines between 1976 and 1979. He was freed on parole in January 1991.

My take: Heck, I didn't even know there was major legal gaming casinos in New Zealand! Looks like some pretty big cheating scams are going down there, usually the case with Pacific Rim casinos when they're new. This casino cheat wave kind of parallels what has been going on in Singapore.

Greatest "Reverse" Casino Scam I Have Ever Heard...And Done!

2012-04-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

First of all, if you don't know what a "reverse" scam is, it is simply a scam in which the primary victim thinks he is involved in a scam that is scamming somebody else and that he will share in the profits. He never has an idea that he himself is the victim.

I have been involved in many of these, and even once was the victim. You have probably seen some good reverse scams depicted in movies, but this one, which I helped devise with my partner in casino cheating Pat Mallery, may be the best.

It takes place on the casino's big baccarat table, not the mini-baccarat tables.

Basically the victim (expecting to receive 50% of the scam profits) is led to believe that we are going to scam the casino for tens or hundreds of thousands by obtaining credit from the casino by signing gambling markers at the table. The victim, who believes he knows the scammer's true ID, is shown false ID that that the scammer says he has used to obtain credit. The scammer tells the victim that he needs serious money to finance the scam at the table. The scammer tells the victim that before he (the scammer) signs the markers, he must first show large cash action to make the casino comfortable and believe that he is trully a high-roller worthy of obtaining credit, which is being worked on by the casino's credit department as the scam is actually taking place at the baccarat table.

The scammer may also take these following steps to enhance the scam:

1) Place $20,000 in the casino cage, against which he can sign markers. Most people do not know that you can sign markers at casino tables against your cash deposit in the cage the same way players sign markers against their credit lines. Anyone observing markers being signed at the table would not be able to tell whether the person signing them has a credit line or cash in the casino cage.

2) Actually sign markers against his cage-cash at the baccarat table to further enhance the credibility of the scam to the victim, which enables the victim to be reverse-scammed.

Since baccarat offers two wagers (banker and player) that cancel each other out (one wins while the other looses), the scammer tells the victim to bet approximately the same large amount as he on the opposite side, for example: the scammer bets $2,000 on player while the victim bets $1,850 or so on banker, not betting the exact amount to avoid casino suspicion that an offset is going on. The victim has financed this whole cash operation, usually for a minimum of $50,000 cash. During the play, the scammer is constantly speaking with the pit bosses to reaffirm that his credit is being approved, convincing the victim that he will soon be signing markers in $10.000 denominations. Then the scammer simply waits until the majority of the chips, usually $1,000 and $5,000 denominatons, shifts to him, which always happens because if the victim wins too many of the offset hands, the scammer and victim meet away from the table where the victim then hands chips back to the scammer.

At the opportune moment when the scammer has bt $30,000 and $50,000 in chips, which is all part of the victim's stake investment, two of the scammers cohorts dressed in suits looking like casino detectives come to the table, whisper "Would you please come with us" in the scammer's ear, all this in front of the victim, who is now scared shitless that he will be linked to the scam to bilk the casino out of money via obtaining credit under false pretenses. The scammer is then led away by the two plainclothes "detectives" (casino personnel notice nothing because it just looks like the two men are friends of the scammer). The victim is then left at the table by himself and soon gets scared and returns to the rented apartment where he is staying (leased by the scammers) and while there hears a knock on the door accompanied by a loud voice shouting "Open Up, FBI." Sometimes the victim does not open up, but when he does is then showed two fake badges by the same two cohorts who had taken the scammer from the baccarat table. He is then grilled with questions about the scammer, whom the FBI is now "aggressively looking for." The victim at this point is only worried about himself going to jail on a major crime, not even so much about his lost money, which he as of yet doesn't realized is lost.

Finally, he receives a call from the scammer, who tells him that he managed to escape from FBI custody and has split Vegas to avoid recapture, and doesn't know when he can resurface. Of course he tells the victim that his cash was confiscated by the FBI.

In most cases, the victim will not even know that he had been scammed but rather think he had the bad luck to get caught in an FBI sting.

Macau Casinos Continue to Suffer Baccarat Cheat Scams and Money Laundering Crime

2012-04-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

Source: New Yorker

The United States government has come to believe that the cash changing hands on the tables in Macau is only a small part of the picture. “The growth of gambling in Macau, fuelled by money from mainland Chinese gamblers and the growth of U.S.-owned casinos, has been accompanied by widespread corruption, organized crime, and money laundering,” according to the 2011 annual report by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. The place has emerged as the “Macau Laundry Service,” as U.S. diplomats put it in an internal cable in 2009. Juan Zarate was a senior counterterrorism official in the Bush Administration who worked on sanctioning a private bank in Macau that allegedly facilitated, among other things, the financing of nuclear proliferation by North Korea. “Anyone who knows anything about anti-money laundering understands both the inherent and the real risks in Macau,” Zarate said. “You have an admixture of commercial-financial activity, a way station for people and goods, a casino sector, all in a potentially volatile regional environment.” David Asher, who was a State Department senior adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Bush Administration, calls Macau “a cesspool” of financial crimes. “It’s gone from being out of a James Bond movie to being out of ‘The Bourne Identity,’ ” he said.

Macau garners its share of creative casino cheats; last summer, local police arrested members of a gang accused of embedding miniature cameras into card-shuffling machines. Too much success can be cause for distrust. A casino’s advantage in baccarat—about 1.15 per cent—ordains that the chances of winning all but evaporate for a gambler after thirty thousand hands. A dedicated player can draw a thousand hands in a weekend and come out ahead, but after seven months almost nobody should go home a winner.

My take: Combine the Chinese Triads, Reckless Chinese Gamblers and Giant Las Vegas-Style Casinos and the formula you get out of it is money laundering+casino. Let the cheating scams and money laundering go on!
cheating=Macau

California Group Uses ID-Theft/Casino Credit Scam to Bilk State's Casinos Out of $1 Million--Ringleader Convicted--Scam Eerily Similar to Scam Portrayed on Richard Marcus Scam of the Month Page!

2012-04-04T14:48:00.000-07:00

Source: LVTSG Business News

Following a two-week jury trial, a southern California man has been convicted of defrauding several local casinos of about $1 million by using recruits to obtain casino credit markers that were not paid back, announced Daniel G. Bogden, United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.

De Rong Shang, aka Jason Shang, 50, of San Gabriel, California, was convicted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 of one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and 17 counts of mail fraud. Shang faces up to 360 years in prison and $4.5 million in fines and is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roger L. Hunt on July 16, 2012.

From about December 2006 to April 2007, Shang conducted a conspiracy and scheme to defraud casinos in Las Vegas. Shang and co-defendant Yuli Eaton, 47, of Redlands, California, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy before trial, recruited persons to open bank accounts that were funded by Shang. Shang then helped the recruits apply for lines of credit at several Las Vegas casinos. Once the lines of credit were approved, the recruits transferred the money from their accounts to Shang’s account. The recruits then withdrew chips from their lines of credit (“markers”) and played baccarat at the casinos. The recruits were instructed to use a process known as rolling the chips to make it look like they were actually losing money, when they were actually just hiding chips and transferring them to other co-conspirators. The recruits then applied for higher lines of credit and played baccarat, again using the rolling process to make it look like they had lost. In actuality, they gave the chips to Shang, who cashed them in. The recruits then left Nevada or the country and were paid a small percentage of the total amount of credit under their name, generally $300 per $10,000 line of credit. The casinos attempted to collect the unpaid markers, but by that time, the accounts had been drained or closed. Using this scheme, Shang and Eaton defrauded three local casinos of $1,011,400.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI, and the case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew W. Duncan and Brandon C. Jaroch.

This law enforcement action is sponsored by President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. President Obama established the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to wage an aggressive, coordinated, and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. The task force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes.

My take: Sounds like they got the idea right off this website! If you don't believe it, look here.
and scroll down to "Casino Credit/Identity Theft Scam.

Micro Video Camera Baccarat Scam Hits Korea...Prime Casino Cheat Suspect Flees to China

2012-04-04T14:37:00.000-07:00

Source: Dong-a Ilbo

A person suspected of getting a hidden camera installed at Kangwon Land Casino to cheat at games is known to have fled to China, said police in Jeongseon, Gangwon Province on Monday.

The suspect departed for Shanghai from Seoul Thursday last week, police said. Two casino workers who were arrested informed investigators of the suspect`s mobile phone number while identifying him through surveillance camera footage, but the suspect had fled.

Police also said, "Though an extradition treaty with China took effect in April 2002, we have yet to request Chinese cooperation with the investigation. We`re urging the suspect`s acquaintances to help him return."

The probe is expected to be prolonged due to the overseas flight of the suspect. Known to have been the middle man between scheming gamblers and casino workers, he is suspected of ordering the two staff members to move a card box with tiny video cameras installed to a baccarat table, promising them 10 percent of profits.

Police are also probing 21 players who were at the game tables when the card box was found a week ago. After questioning eight of them, investigators found that one player won 1.6 million won (1,421 U.S. dollars) but found no suspicious circumstances.

Two gamblers who said they saw a red light coming from a card box initially agreed to face police questioning, but did not show up as scheduled Wednesday. Police said they will ask them how they found the card box in addition to asking about other situations.

Despite news of the scandal, the casino was packed with customers Monday, with more than 6,000 going there weekdays and 8,000 weekends. Immediately after the casino opened at 10 a.m., most of the seats were taken except for certain machine games.

At the most popular baccarat and blackjack tables, people had to stand behind seats that were occupied. All of them seemed unaffected by the hidden camera scandal.

A man in his 50s who was waiting for a seat at a blackjack table said, "I don`t care because the cheating gamblers did no harm to other gamblers. You lose money as you play casino longer. Does this mean that gambling is a legal act of fraud?"

My take: Seems like a big to-do about a sophisticated high-tech baccarat cheat scam that garnered little money.

Have Online Poker Cheats Moved Over to Brick and Mortar Tables?

2012-03-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

As online poker sites continue to make advances against the flocks of online poker cheats cheating your pants off by way of collusion, bots, hand-trackers, etc, some of the cheats working the online field have indeed begun plying their skills at brick and mortar poker tables, both in live games and in tournaments. One question you might have about this is "Well, how to online poker cheats meet up with live partners to cheat the real poker world?...Or do they work alone?"

In the vast majority of cases they do not work alone. Poker cheating is always more effective with multi-players doing the cheating...I wouldn't say exponentially so, but certainly enough to make a big difference. Online poker cheats simply hook up with other willing online poker cheats via chatting, and when the time is right and to their liking, they meet in person and form their brick and mortar poker cheat teams.

The big disadvantage to them is that they will have to cheat in the open, but in virtually all collusion-cases of poker cheating, there is no risk of getting arrested and charged with a poker-cheating crime, and very little risk of even getting barred from a brick and mortar poker room.

The trend is that we will probably see a slow but steady increase in these "poker-cross" cheats, with more arrving to the brick and mortar tables when the online poker sites are most vigilant, and with more retreating back to their computers when online poker security is lax.

The Man Who Beat Atlantic City out of $15 Million!

2012-03-15T16:12:00.001-07:00

The $20 Million Blackjack Man

This is the REAL SIX-MILLION DOLLAR MAN!

Some call it cheating...I call it finagling!

Source: Atlantic Magazine

Don Johnson won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City’s Tropicana casino. Not long before that, he’d taken the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. Here’s how he did it.

Don Johnson finds it hard to remember the exact cards. Who could? At the height of his 12-hour blitz of the Tropicana casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, last April, he was playing a hand of blackjack nearly every minute.

Dozens of spectators pressed against the glass of the high-roller pit. Inside, playing at a green-felt table opposite a black-vested dealer, a burly middle-aged man in a red cap and black Oregon State hoodie was wagering $100,000 a hand. Word spreads when the betting is that big. Johnson was on an amazing streak. The towers of chips stacked in front of him formed a colorful miniature skyline. His winning run had been picked up by the casino’s watchful overhead cameras and drawn the close scrutiny of the pit bosses. In just one hand, he remembers, he won $800,000. In a three-hand sequence, he took $1.2 million.

The basics of blackjack are simple. Almost everyone knows them. You play against the house. Two cards are placed faceup before the player, and two more cards, one down, one up, before the dealer. A card’s suit doesn’t matter, only its numerical value—each face card is worth 10, and an ace can be either a one or an 11. The goal is to get to 21, or as close to it as possible without going over. Scanning the cards on the table before him, the player can either stand or keep taking cards in an effort to approach 21. Since the house’s hand has one card facedown, the player can’t know exactly what the hand is, which is what makes this a game.

As Johnson remembers it, the $800,000 hand started with him betting $100,000 and being dealt two eights. If a player is dealt two of a kind, he can choose to “split” the hand, which means he can play each of the cards as a separate hand and ask for two more cards, in effect doubling his bet. That’s what Johnson did. His next two cards, surprisingly, were also both eights, so he split each again. Getting four cards of the same number in a row doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Johnson says he was once dealt six consecutive aces at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. He was now playing four hands, each consisting of a single eight-card, with $400,000 in the balance.

He was neither nervous nor excited. Johnson plays a long game, so the ups and downs of individual hands, even big swings like this one, don’t matter that much to him. He is a veteran player. Little interferes with his concentration. He doesn’t get rattled. With him, it’s all about the math, and he knows it cold. Whenever the racily clad cocktail waitress wandered in with a fresh whiskey and Diet Coke, he took it from the tray.

The house’s hand showed an upturned five. Arrayed on the table before him were the four eights. He was allowed to double down—to double his bet—on any hand, so when he was dealt a three on the first of his hands, he doubled his bet on that one, to $200,000. When his second hand was dealt a two, he doubled down on that, too. When he was dealt a three and a two on the next two hands, he says, he doubled down on those, for a total wager of $800,000.

It was the dealer’s turn. He drew a 10, so the two cards he was showing totaled 15. Johnson called the game—in essence, betting that the dealer’s down card was a seven or higher, which would push his hand over 21. This was a good bet: since all face cards are worth 10, the deck holds more high cards than low. When the dealer turned over the house’s down card, it was a 10, busting him. Johnson won all four hands.

Johnson didn’t celebrate. He didn’t even pause. As another skyscraper of chips was pushed into his skyline, he signaled for the next hand. He was just getting started.

The headline in The Press of Atlantic City was enough to gladden the heart of anyone who has ever made a wager or rooted for the underdog:

BLACKJACK PLAYER TAKES TROPICANA
FOR NEARLY $6 MILLION,
SINGLE-HANDEDLY RUINS CASINO’S MONTH

But the story was even bigger than that. Johnson’s assault on the Tropicana was merely the latest in a series of blitzes he’d made on Atlantic City’s gambling establishments. In the four previous months, he’d taken $5 million from the Borgata casino and another $4 million from Caesars. Caesars had cut him off, he says, and then effectively banned him from its casinos worldwide.

Fifteen million dollars in winnings from three different casinos? Nobody gets that lucky. How did he do it?

The first and most obvious suspicion was card counting. Card counters seek to gain a strong advantage by keeping a mental tally of every card dealt, and then adjusting the wager according to the value of the cards that remain in the deck. (The tactic requires both great memory and superior math skills.) Made famous in books and movies, card counting is considered cheating, at least by casinos. In most states (but not New Jersey), known practitioners are banned. The wagering of card counters assumes a clearly recognizable pattern over time, and Johnson was being watched very carefully. The verdict: card counting was not Don Johnson’s game. He had beaten the casinos fair and square.

It hurt. Largely as a result of Johnson’s streak, the Trop’s table-game revenues for April 2011 were the second-lowest among the 11 casinos in Atlantic City. Mark Giannantonio, the president and CEO of the Trop, who had authorized the $100,000-a-hand limit for Johnson, was given the boot weeks later. Johnson’s winnings had administered a similar jolt to the Borgata and to Caesars. All of these gambling houses were already hurting, what with the spread of legalized gambling in surrounding states. By April, combined monthly gaming revenue had been declining on a year-over-year basis for 32 months.

For most people, though, the newspaper headline told a happy story. An ordinary guy in a red cap and black hoodie had struck it rich, had beaten the casinos black-and-blue. It seemed a fantasy come true, the very dream that draws suckers to the gaming tables.

But that’s not the whole story either.

Despite his pedestrian attire, Don Johnson is no average Joe. For one thing, he is an extraordinarily skilled blackjack player. Tony Rodio, who succeeded Giannantonio as the Trop’s CEO, says, “He plays perfect cards.” In every blackjack scenario, Johnson knows the right decision to make. But that’s true of plenty of good players. What gives Johnson his edge is his knowledge of the gaming industry. As good as he is at playing cards, he turns out to be even better at playing the casinos.

Hard times do not favor the house. The signs of a five-year slump are evident all over Atlantic City, in rundown façades, empty parking lots, and the faded glitz of its casinos’ garish interiors. Pennsylvania is likely to supplant New Jersey this year as the second-largest gaming state in the nation. The new Parx racetrack and casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, a gigantic gambling complex, is less than 80 miles away from the Atlantic City boardwalk. Revenue from Atlantic City’s 11 casinos fell from a high of $5.2 billion in 2006 to just $3.3 billion last year. The local gaming industry hopes the opening of a 12th casino, Revel, this spring may finally reverse that downward trend, but that’s unlikely.

“It doesn’t matter how many casinos there are,” Israel Posner, a gaming-industry expert at nearby Stockton College, told me. When you add gaming tables or slots at a fancy new venue like Revel, or like the Borgata, which opened in 2003, the novelty may initially draw crowds, but adding gaming supply without enlarging the number of customers ultimately hurts everyone.

When revenues slump, casinos must rely more heavily on their most prized customers, the high rollers who wager huge amounts—tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a hand. Hooking and reeling in these “whales,” as they are known in the industry, can become essential. High rollers are lured with free meals and drinks, free luxury suites, free rides on private jets, and … more. (There’s a reason most casino ads feature beautiful, scantily clad young women.) The marketers present casinos as glamorous playgrounds where workaday worries and things like morality, sobriety, and prudence are on holiday. When you’re rich, normal rules don’t apply! The idea, like the oldest of pickpocket tricks, is to distract the mark with such frolic that he doesn’t notice he’s losing far more than his free amenities actually cost. For what doth it profit a man to gain a $20,000 ride on a private jet if he drops $200,000 playing poker? The right “elite player” can lose enough in a weekend to balance a casino’s books for a month.

Of course, high rollers “are not all created equally,” says Rodio, the Tropicana’s CEO. (He was the only Atlantic City casino executive who agreed to talk to me about Johnson.) “When someone makes all the right decisions, the house advantage is relatively small; maybe we will win, on average, one or two hands more than him for every hundred decisions. There are other blackjack players, or craps players, who don’t use perfect strategy, and with them there is a big swing in the house advantage. So there is more competition among casinos for players who aren’t as skilled.”

For the casino, the art is in telling the skilled whales from the unskilled ones, then discouraging the former and seducing the latter. The industry pays close attention to high-level players; once a player earns a reputation for winning, the courtship ends. The last thing a skilled player wants is a big reputation. Some wear disguises when they play.

But even though he has been around the gambling industry for all of his 49 years, Johnson snuck up on Atlantic City. To look at him, over six feet tall and thickly built, you would never guess that he was once a jockey. He grew up tending his uncle’s racehorses in Salem, Oregon, and began riding them competitively at age 15. In his best years as a professional jockey, he was practically skeletal. He stood 6 foot 1 and weighed only 108 pounds. He worked with a physician to keep weight off, fighting his natural growth rate with thyroid medication that amped up his metabolism and subsisting on vitamin supplements. The regimen was so demanding that he eventually had to give it up. His body quickly assumed more normal proportions, and he went to work helping manage racetracks, a career that brought him to Philadelphia when he was about 30. He was hired to manage Philadelphia Park, the track that evolved into the Parx casino, in Bensalem, where he lives today. Johnson was in charge of day-to-day operations, including the betting operation. He started to learn a lot about gambling.

It was a growth industry. Today, according to the American Gaming Association, commercial casino gambling—not including Native American casinos or the hundreds of racetracks and government-sponsored lotteries—is a $34 billion business in America, with commercial casinos in 22 states, employing about 340,000 people. Pari-mutuel betting (on horse racing, dog racing, and jai alai) is now legal in 43 states, and online gaming netted more than $4 billion from U.S. bettors in 2010. Over the past 20 years, Johnson’s career has moved from managing racetracks to helping regulate this burgeoning industry. He has served as a state regulator in Oregon, Idaho, Texas, and Wyoming. About a decade ago, he founded a business that does computer-assisted wagering on horses. The software his company employs analyzes more data than an ordinary handicapper will see in a thousand lifetimes, and defines risk to a degree that was impossible just five years ago.

Johnson is not, as he puts it, “naive in math.”

He began playing cards seriously about 10 years ago, calculating his odds versus the house’s.

Compared with horse racing, the odds in blackjack are fairly straightforward to calculate. Many casinos sell laminated charts in their guest shops that reveal the optimal strategy for any situation the game presents. But these odds are calculated by simulating millions of hands, and as Johnson says, “I will never see 400 million hands.”

More useful, for his purposes, is running a smaller number of hands and paying attention to variation. The way averages work, the larger the sample, the narrower the range of variation. A session of, say, 600 hands will display wider swings, with steeper winning and losing streaks, than the standard casino charts. That insight becomes important when the betting terms and special ground rules for the game are set—and Don Johnson’s skill at establishing these terms is what sets him apart from your average casino visitor.

Johnson is very good at gambling, mainly because he’s less willing to gamble than most. He does not just walk into a casino and start playing, which is what roughly 99 percent of customers do. This is, in his words, tantamount to “blindly throwing away money.” The rules of the game are set to give the house a significant advantage. That doesn’t mean you can’t win playing by the standard house rules; people do win on occasion. But the vast majority of players lose, and the longer they play, the more they lose.

Sophisticated gamblers won’t play by the standard rules. They negotiate. Because the casino values high rollers more than the average customer, it is willing to lessen its edge for them. It does this primarily by offering discounts, or “loss rebates.” When a casino offers a discount of, say, 10 percent, that means if the player loses $100,000 at the blackjack table, he has to pay only $90,000. Beyond the usual high-roller perks, the casino might also sweeten the deal by staking the player a significant amount up front, offering thousands of dollars in free chips, just to get the ball rolling. But even in that scenario, Johnson won’t play. By his reckoning, a few thousand in free chips plus a standard 10 percent discount just means that the casino is going to end up with slightly less of the player’s money after a few hours of play. The player still loses.

But two years ago, Johnson says, the casinos started getting desperate. With their table-game revenues tanking and the number of whales diminishing, casino marketers began to compete more aggressively for the big spenders. After all, one high roller who has a bad night can determine whether a casino’s table games finish a month in the red or in the black. Inside the casinos, this heightened the natural tension between the marketers, who are always pushing to sweeten the discounts, and the gaming managers, who want to maximize the house’s statistical edge. But month after month of declining revenues strengthened the marketers’ position. By late 2010, the discounts at some of the strapped Atlantic City casinos began creeping upward, as high as 20 percent.

“The casinos started accepting more risk, looking for a possible larger return,” says Posner, the gaming-industry expert. “They tended to start swinging for the fences.”

Johnson noticed.

“They began offering deals that nobody’s ever seen in New Jersey history,” he told me. “I’d never heard of anything like it in the world, not even for a player like [the late Australian media tycoon] Kerry Packer, who came in with a $20 million bank and was worth billions and billions.”

When casinos started getting desperate, Johnson was perfectly poised to take advantage of them. He had the money to wager big, he had the skill to win, and he did not have enough of a reputation for the casinos to be wary of him. He was also, as the Trop’s Tony Rodio puts it, “a cheap date.” He wasn’t interested in the high-end perks; he was interested in maximizing his odds of winning. For Johnson, the game began before he ever set foot in the casino.

Atlantic City did know who Johnson was. The casinos’ own research told them he was a skilled player capable of betting large amounts. But he was not considered good enough to discourage or avoid.

In fact, in late 2010, he says, they called him.

Johnson had not played a game at the Borgata in more than a year. He had been trying to figure out its blackjack game for years but had never been able to win big. At one point, he accepted a “lifetime discount,” but when he had a winning trip he effectively lost the benefit of the discount. The way any discount works, you have to lose a certain amount to capitalize on it. If you had a lifetime discount of, say, 20 percent on $500,000, you would have to lose whatever money you’d made on previous trips plus another $500,000 before the discount kicked in. When this happened to Johnson, he knew the ground rules had skewed against him. So it was no longer worth his while to play there.

He explained this when the Borgata tried to entice him back.

“Well, what if we change that?” he recalls a casino executive saying. “What if we put you on a trip-to-trip discount basis?”

Johnson started negotiating.

Once the Borgata closed the deal, he says, Caesars and the Trop, competing for Johnson’s business, offered similar terms. That’s what enabled him to systematically beat them, one by one.

In theory, this shouldn’t happen. The casinos use computer models that calculate the odds down to the last penny so they can craft terms to entice high rollers without forfeiting the house advantage. “We have a very elaborate model,” Rodio says. “Once a customer comes in, regardless of the game they may play, we plug them into the model so that we know what the house advantage is, based upon the game that they are playing and the way they play the game. And then from that, we can make a determination of what is the appropriate [discount] we can make for the person, based on their skill level. I can’t speak for how other properties do it, but that is how we do it.”

So how did all these casinos end up giving Johnson what he himself describes as a “huge edge”? “I just think somebody missed the math when they did the numbers on it,” he told an interviewer.

Johnson did not miss the math. For example, at the Trop, he was willing to play with a 20 percent discount after his losses hit $500,000, but only if the casino structured the rules of the game to shave away some of the house advantage. Johnson could calculate exactly how much of an advantage he would gain with each small adjustment in the rules of play. He won’t say what all the adjustments were in the final e-mailed agreement with the Trop, but they included playing with a hand-shuffled six-deck shoe; the right to split and double down on up to four hands at once; and a “soft 17” (the player can draw another card on a hand totaling six plus an ace, counting the ace as either a one or an 11, while the dealer must stand, counting the ace as an 11). When Johnson and the Trop finally agreed, he had whittled the house edge down to one-fourth of 1 percent, by his figuring. In effect, he was playing a 50-50 game against the house, and with the discount, he was risking only 80 cents of every dollar he played. He had to pony up $1 million of his own money to start, but, as he would say later: “You’d never lose the million. If you got to [$500,000 in losses], you would stop and take your 20 percent discount. You’d owe them only $400,000.”

In a 50-50 game, you’re taking basically the same risk as the house, but if you get lucky and start out winning, you have little incentive to stop.

So when Johnson got far enough ahead in his winning sprees, he reasoned that he might as well keep playing. “I was already ahead of the property,” he says. “So my philosophy at that point was that I can afford to take an additional risk here, because I’m battling with their money, using their discount against them.”

According to Johnson, the Trop pulled the deal after he won a total of $5.8 million, the Borgata cut him off at $5 million, and the dealer at Caesars refused to fill the chip tray once his earnings topped $4 million.

“I was ready to play on,” Johnson said. “And I looked around, and I said, ‘Are you going to do a fill?’ I’ve got every chip in the tray. I think I even had the $100 chips. ‘Are you guys going to do a fill?’ And they just said, ‘No, we’re out.’”

He says he learned later that someone at the casino had called the manager, who was in London, and told him that Don Johnson was ahead of them “by four.”

“Four hundred thousand?” the manager asked.

“No, 4 million.”

So Caesars, too, pulled the plug. When Johnson insisted that he wanted to keep playing, he says, the pit boss pointed out of the high-roller pit to the general betting floor, where the game was governed by normal house rules.

“You can go out there and play,” he said.

Johnson went upstairs and fell asleep.

These winning streaks have made Johnson one of the best-known gamblers in the world. He was shocked when his story made the front page of The Press of Atlantic City. Donald Wittkowski, a reporter at the newspaper, landed the story when the casinos filed their monthly revenue reports.

“I guess for the first time in 30 years, a group of casinos actually had a huge setback on account of one player,” Johnson told me. “Somebody connected all the dots and said it must be one guy.”

The Trop has embraced Johnson, inviting him back to host a tournament—but its management isn’t about to offer him the same terms again. (Even so—playing by the same rules he had negotiated earlier, according to Johnson, but without a discount—he managed to win another $2 million from the Tropicana in October.)

“Most properties in Atlantic City at this point won’t even deal to him,” Rodio says. “The Tropicana will continue to deal to him, we will continue to give aggressive limits, take care of his rooms and his accounts when he is here. But because he is so far in front of us, we have modified his discounts.”

Johnson says his life hasn’t really changed all that much. He hasn’t bought himself anything big, and still lives in the same house in Bensalem. But in the past year, he has hung out with Jon Bon Jovi and Charlie Sheen, sprayed the world’s most expensive bottle of champagne on a crowd of clubgoers in London, and hosted a Las Vegas birthday bash for Pamela Anderson. He is enjoying his fame in gambling circles, and has gotten used to flying around the world on comped jets. Everybody wants to play against the most famous blackjack player in the world.

But from now on, the casinos will make sure the odds remain comfortably stacked against him.

Blackjack Card-Counting Christians...Please!!

2012-03-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

I didn't go to church to find this but did pray that it isn't so!

Bryan Storkel’s Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians focuses on the Church Team, an organized crew of predominantly Christian blackjack card counters. Ben Crawford and Colin Jones’s crew are bankrolled by independent investors, and they head out into the casinos to turn a profit through their card counting skills.

As the documentary unfolds, we get a good luck at the ups-and-downs of card counting, as the crew faces streaks of both good and bad endeavors. At the same time, casinos aware of these “advantage” players are ever-vigilant, “backing off” players from the blackjack table, and sometimes the casinos; if the casino refuses to allow them to play, their card counting skills become far less effective. And considering the card counting technique can require hours spent at a table losing before the deck turns and the player can start winning, a proper “back off” can out-cheat the cheaters.

Additionally, just because the crew is known as the Church Team, and many share the same Christian beliefs, the same problems that occur in any group, and any group involved with the pursuit of cash, rears their ugly heads. Are all the players doing the work correctly? Is anyone stealing from the group? Do personalities gel?

If you’re looking for a documentary about a bunch of devout Christians who entirely justify their card counting behavior via their religion, you’re going to be disappointed. While the Christian aspect is an important one (it is in the title after all), this is more about a group of card counters who just so happen to be Christian too. Substitute the “Christians” in the title with “golfers” or “spelunkers” (or other types of people) and you’ll get an idea of what I mean; it’s a common trait of this particular crew, but it is not the defining characteristic of this film. This isn’t a case of a bunch of Christians seeking card counters, but card counters who realized that they share the same faith, so why not group together?

And you’re probably not going to watch this and suddenly understand card counting and go out and make thousands upon thousands of dollars. While it makes the technique somewhat more understandable (and takes it out of the realm of otherworldly and superhuman to something you can learn if you dedicate time and money to it), you’re going to need to do much more outside research and practice. Plus, after seeing how much goes into it, is it really worth it at all?

Between the casinos backing off players to the sheer amount of time and money flow required to make a huge payoff, it’s like cheating… as a job. I mean, as far as get rich quick schemes go, card counting is more like a longtime study group that may or may not pay off huge dividends. Given enough time, and the right moves, sure, you run a probable chance of coming out on top… but everything has to be done just right. Meanwhile, if it even looks like you might have an advantage, all it takes is a casino employee with a hunch that you may be a card counter to disrupt your dreams.

Holy Rollers looks slick for a documentary, and despite utilizing the talking heads-style approach, it does so with an eye for interesting composition; Ben’s interview segments are set up primarily with him sitting at a table covered with children’s toys while he smokes a cigar, for example. The editing flows well, and the film remains entertaining throughout, even when the crew hits its rough patches.

While there are definitely informative aspects to this film, Holy Rollers is mainly the journey of the Church Team, warts and all. It’s an entertaining film that presents everything as upfront and objective as one can, and while some of the more dramatic aspects of the story beg for a bit more information or investigation, you can understand if those involved didn’t want to directly address certain things. So an ambiguity remains, but that works with the film because the entire affair is questionable; is cheating, regardless of the justification, or where the money eventually ends up, the most Christian of activities? You could argue in circles if you wanted to, and the best part of this documentary is its ability to keep things that open, without turning into propaganda for the Church Team.

My take: Jesus Christ! The count was "plus heaven!"

Cheating Casino Keno Via Paint on the Keno Balls??

2012-02-28T14:17:00.000-08:00

Well, the last time I heard anything about major keno cheat scams was the one engineered in Atlantic City by disgraced and ex-con former Nevada Gaming Control Board employee Ron Harris, who rigged the Random Number Generators to produce keno jackpots for his accomplices. Now we are hearing about a keno scam that might be using extra or lesser paint on some of the keno balls to make them more or less likely to get sucked up through the vacuum tube into the winner's tray.

Article:

"It is not often discussed these days in an era of RNGs (random number generators) and automated ball selection devices, but back in the day there used to be theories advanced that the way keno balls were painted might have some effect on the outcome of the selection, either unintentional or intentional (cheating.)

The idea of unintentional effect comes from the fact there is, of course, a different amount of paint on each ball, at least it appears that the number "1" for instance might have maybe 1/3 the amount of paint as the number "80." Since paint is not weightless, what’s colored on ball number 80 will necessarily weigh three times as much as the ball marked 1.

Assuming, of course, the depth of the paint layer is constant, etc.

Now, a heavier ball tends to get selected more, at least that is the theory. The theory (I call it a theory because it is plausible but never to my knowledge proven) is that heavy balls sink to the bottom in a mechanical cage and the ball selector is at the bottom of the mechanical cage.

Similarly, in a blower the theory is the heavy ball sinks to the bottom, where the jet of air blasts it straight up the tube.

So if you subscribe to this theory (I don’t) you would play numbers with a lot of paint on them and avoid those digits with less color. This theory was obviously difficult to test back in the day, but now anyone with access to enough actual game draws can do a statistical analysis of the occurrence of 1-9 vs. 10-80.

If the statistical analysis of real life occurrences indicates the weight of the paint makes any difference, you will find it there.

The real scientific question is, "Is the effect of differences in paint weight significant?" I say probably not. I think the differences in weight from ball to ball are probably just as great from imperfections in material and production process as they are from paint.

This is just my opinion though. It would be interesting if someone with a very sensitive scale could weigh a set of balls and we could actually see some results.

So the unintentional effect of paint is ruled out but there is also concern with the use of paint to tamper intentionally with the game’s results. In other words, the use of paint as a cheating device."

Drew McIlvain and Seth Palansky Speak on Major Poker Cheat Chip-Dumping Incidents at Harrah's Tunica World Series of Poker Event!

2012-02-18T07:32:00.000-08:00

Chip-Dump Poker Cheats?

Source: Poker News
During the last level of play on Day 1a of the World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event at Harrah's Tunica, the PokerNews Live Reporting Team was told that Drew McIlvain was disqualified for collusion. In the days following the event, a thread was started on TwoPlusTwo, and Mcilvain himself posted an explanation.

We reached out to McIlvain to get the full story, and we also spoke with Seth Palansky, the Vice President of Corporate Communications at Caesars Entertainment, to learn more about the hand in question, and the appeals process.

Can you first explain what happened?

Drew McIlvain: I’m sitting at Table 26, Seat 9, and I’m doing decent. I’m picking good spots, and my opponents are basically just giving me their chips. I’m literally running them over. A friend of mine comes to the table, and he re-raises the guy to my right — we’ll call him Terry — and Terry re-raises my friend Andrew. Andrew raises all-in, Terry calls. Terry has pocket kings, Andrew has pocket aces, there’s a king on the flop and Andrew is eliminated. Terry is excited.

In another hand, I have pocket nines and make it 2,200. There’s a guy in Seat 4 who calls and the flop comes king-king-seven. I check, he bets 2,200, and I call. The turn is a nine — it brings a third club — I check, gets bet 7,000, and I call. The river is the , I lead for 7,000, he quickly goes all-in, and I call. He has pocket aces, and I win.

Then, Terry tells me that I played the hand very well and he was very surprised that that’s what I had, and I think that I heard him say that I was a good player — or maybe that it was a good play. One of the two.

There’s a hand that — I wasn’t watching much of it — but Terry has on a queen-high board, and I think there’s a nine on the flop. The turn is nothing, and a bigger fellow goes all-in on Terry. Terry calls. The guy had and the river was a jack to give him a straight. So Terry is down to right around 15,000, and within the next five hands — while I’m standing and stretching — Terry comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder. I turned, and verbatim his words are, “Next time I’m in the small blind, and you’re in the big blind, I’m going to go all-in, and you call.”

So this wasn’t during a break?

DM: No, there we’re probably 25 minutes left in the day. So he says what he said, and I say like “OK, whatever.” And I’m thinking to myself, 'what the f**k?' A) Why would he want to get rid of his chips? B) Why is he choosing me? and C) Is he telling the truth? Is he bluffing?

I’d like to definitely make it clear that had I known that if someone had told me that they would be giving me their chips, that I needed to go to the floor and make it clear that that was the case, I would’ve done that. Nevertheless, I didn’t know, and I didn’t do that. But how do you believe him? How do you assume that a short stack is going to donate you their chips?

So then we talk again, and he’s like, “How should I do it?” And I’m like, “Man, I don’t know.” And he mentioned something about raise, re-raise, and as soon as he said that I walked back to the table and he was still talking. That’s where I would assume a few people could have heard him say something, because I’m walking back to the table and he’s still talking.

At that point, why didn’t you go to the floor?

DM: I guess because I just didn’t know that he was serious. I still believe, in my eyes, that he just wants a cheap double-up. I’m still confused about why I’m the one he wants to give his stack to. Honestly, I just didn’t know that that would’ve been the proper ruling. I just didn’t know that I needed to make the floor aware that this guy was now convinced that he was going to give me his chips.

So the guy’s game plan was to give them to me when I was in the big blind and he was in the small blind. Well, that never was an option because under the gun I have pocket eights, I make it 3,000, it folds all the way to him, he makes it 6,000, I go all-in, and he calls with . The flop is . The turn is a — giving him a straight draw — and he bricks. He busts out, shakes my hand, tells me good luck, and he quickly — I mean I’m getting the chips and someone at the table comments about how fast he’s leaving — and I turn to look and I see his wife either has him by the arm and is pulling him, or he’s trying to catch up with her. One of the two, but he was in a hurry to get out of there.

What happened then? Did the floor come up to you? Did someone at the table call the floor?

DM: Bill Bruce immediately taps me on the shoulder and says, “Why don’t you come with me for a second.” So know I’m thinking, “Great, did he really set me up? What the f**k just happened?”

He says, “That hand looked awfully suspicious” — he may have mentioned colluding — then he asks, “What just happened there?” I explained to him the hand, and he asked if we talked before the hand. I said we did. I explained to Bill how everything happened, and he started to walk away. I asked him what’s going on, and he told me I was on a penalty. I asked him for how long, and he said potentially for the rest of the tournament.

At this point, I’m thinking, “Great. I just told Bill the truth, and now somehow I’m going to get f**ked.”

The security guard, or someone from Mississippi Gaming, comes in and they tell me to follow them. I assume that we’re going to look at the footage and listen to the audio of me and Terry’s conversation, that [in] no way, shape, or form, says that I’m helping him synchronize this or like I’m paying him under the table. I'm hoping — I’m praying actually — that they’ve got the audio, and if someone can convince [me] that I cheated with this guy, then I’m a terrible person.

When I get back there the first thing the guard does is make a phone call and say, “Andrew McIlvain is disqualified from the main event.”

I don’t know if someone told him that I was disqualified, or if he made the judgment, but I knew nothing about what happened.

Were you escorted off of the property at that point?

DM: Well, when the guard left the room, I told him this was a misunderstanding, and that I did not cheat and I did not collude. He leaves for like 30 minutes, and I literally have my head buried in my hands praying to Christ — I don’t go to church, I pray more than the people who did. I just didn’t understand. I was so confused. I was in shock.

As soon as the guard returned, he asked me about the conversation I had with Terry. And again I explained to him Terry’s game plan, and that he was going to donate his chips to me because I’m assuming he was so impressed by my nines play and — I didn’t mention this to you — but in the first conversation he told me it doesn’t make sense for me [Terry] to get another room for another night to come back so short-stacked.

Never did I say no, but never did I fully agree that this was going on or I couldn’t wait to get his chips.

The security guard told me I had been caught cheating, and he had paperwork for me to sign. He read a little bit of it, then I started reading the rest, and he asked me why wasn’t signing it. I told him I was reading it — truthfully I don’t even remember what the paperwork said — and I signed it, and they 86’d me from the property.

Can you return to the property?

DM: I cannot. I’ve been calling Harrah’s, and I’ve been emailing Harrah’s. I’m just trying to figure out what kind of evidence they have that I didn’t know about. I’ve also contacted Mississippi Gaming just to get a little information about whether or not I’m completely banned from the entire state of Mississippi or what. Most importantly, I’d like to hear the audio of me agreeing with this guy that we’re going to be chip dumping.

I’ve heard reports that my table was interviewed, and at first I wondered how my table could turn on me? How could they say they heard something if they didn’t? Why would they want me gone? And then I thought to myself, “I’m running them over. Why would they want me to stay?”

Not all poker players are good people. Probably a lot of the people that play poker are terrible people, so they would quickly want me gone as fast as possible. I’m not saying that I’m a great person, but if there were somebody at the table, and there was a potential collusion going on, I would be like, “Get him the f**k out of here, I’m not playing with him.”

Would you say that the way you play could be seen as confrontational?

DM: Absolutely. It has a lot to do with my personality — I’m very outgoing. Truthfully, there’s been times where I’ve said things that I know I shouldn’t have said. I have a few African-American friends, and from time-to-time and I’ll say like, “Hey n***a.” I know I shouldn’t say that around some people, but I guess it’s just natural for me to say things. But yes, I definitely like to be in the conversation, and I like to be heard. Maybe that’s why I won a ring. I had quite a few chips going into the mishap, if you will.

You played in a number of events in Tunica. Did you receive any penalties before this incident?

DM: Yes, there was one. I can kind of give you rough around the edges. I went up to a table where a friend was sitting behind a few girls, and ultimately I was asking him if any of the dealers had dealt him a really crappy hand and he lost a lot of chips. But, what I really said was, “has anyone blanked your sister.”

So Kevin [a floorman] comes up to me and tells me that he heard this, and I told him that was 45 minutes ago. I ended up blinding out of the satellite I was in. I should’ve got a penalty then, as opposed to 45 minutes later.

Are you in the middle of an appeals process right now?

DM: To tell you the truth, I don’t know. No one will respond. Yes, there will be an appeal. It’s literally a nightmare that I walked into. I don’t know if it was God’s way of punishing me or what is was, but I got absolutely n*****ed.

Is there anything you would like to add?

DM: The real questions that I have are: If there was such a big possibility that this was going to happen before it did, why didn’t somebody stop Terry? Why am I the only one that’s being investigated? Maybe Terry has been talked to, and maybe Terry has leaked some false information, but I don’t know.

I’m truly disappointed in the way things went down. This is not what I expected coming into trying to make this a career. It’s the sickest beat I’ve ever taken. If you think getting aces beat by kings is bad, try getting disqualified from the main event for colluding with someone that you don’t even know.

PokerNews also sat down with Vice President of Corporate Communications at Caesars Entertainment, Seth Palansky to discuss due process in instances like this and the appeals process.

The PokerNews Live Reporting Team in Tunica wasn’t provided very many details regarding the hand in question. Can you tell us anything more than, “he was disqualified?”

Seth Palansky: After a review by the security team, he was escorted from the property. There were only 20 minutes left in the day at the time the incident occurred, and therefore the tournament staff was still gathering information when security looked into it.

The evidence included both video and audio. He bagged his chips for the night, but obviously didn’t come back to use them. Technically was he disqualified? He was banned from the property, and therefore couldn’t come back to play his chips. Ultimately, all of the evidence showed that in no way would he have continued in the event anyway.

What happens with the unknown player who “dumped” his chips?

SP: Last I heard, they have his information and they are reaching out to him. He faces discipline, as well.

What happens in these situations beyond the hand in question? Is there any further investigation?

SP: In most cases, there’s surveillance and the corroborating evidence is overwhelming. If we’re going to go through the process, not allow a player to continue playing, and escort them from the property, it’s because it’s very cut and dry that an offense was committed.

My understanding is that Tunica has banned him from the property, and at that point there’s a denotation in his records and it is investigated and discussed further to see whether or not that ban extends company-wide. It’s still in that process now.

Is there any kind of appeals process?

SP: Sure. Anyone is welcome to plead their case, and this gentleman in question did admit some things during his interview process that affected the result in this case. Ultimately, in cases that involved alleged cheating or collusion in our poker events, you can say all you want, but the video doesn’t lie.

We care more about the integrity of the tournament and ensuring that our players don’t have to worry about that entering an event. At the end of the day, it’s hard for an individual to get re-instated when they’ve committed an act that is in violation of our rules, but we do accept a review and go through the process to see if it makes sense to lift the ban.

According to Drew, the “dumper” came to him and told him what was going to happen. What would have been done if Drew then relayed that information to the floor?

SP: It’s hard to hypothetically determine that, but obviously it’s against the rules to collude, so his proper course of action is to notify the tournament staff that someone has attempted to collude with him.

The definition of collude in the dictionary that I have in my hands, is two words: conspire together. He admits to having more than one conversation with the gentleman about it. Clearly by conversation number two, he had the ability to tell the guy, “I’m not interested, let’s play poker.”

At the end of the day, an act took place that was collusion, and any party involved in colluding is not tolerated in our events.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

SP: In general, for readers to understand, this happens from time to time. No one is suggesting that anyone entered the tournament with a scheme to chip-dump, collude, or cheat. You don’t have to be the instigator to find yourself in a situation that affects your standing in an event or at our properties. It’s not about intent.

I want to caution people: surveillance is so good these days, and these cameras are so well-equipped. There’s audio, and everything is being recorded and can be reviewed. It’s not the old days where everything is on VHS. It’s all digitally recorded, easy to file, and easy to find. It’s just not wise to put yourself in a situation where you gain chips dishonorably.

We have to ensure that this doesn’t occur — whether it’s intentional or not is not the bar.

Cute Little Chicago Casino Blackjack Cheat Trick

2012-02-17T10:25:00.001-08:00

The following happened at a Chicago Casino:

Source: Chicago Sun Times

Even with a dealer, a floor supervisor and a pit supervisor, and even with electronic surveillance, sometimes things happen on table games that shouldn’t.

Payout mistakes are made, and usually caught. A player is mistakenly given a card he doesn’t want, and that gets corrected, too.

But a reader relayed to me something he’d seen at a blackjack table that no casino wants to happen. I’ve been playing for a quarter century, and I’ve never seen this:

“I saw something odd happen, and was wondering if you’d ever seen this,” he wrote. “The player to my right had an 11, and the dealer had a 5. The player said, ‘Double for less,’ only the stack he pushed out was bigger than his bet. He put it right next to his bet, and the dealer didn’t seem to notice. To be honest, she’d been acting pretty bored all along, moaning about when her break was coming, and I don’t think she was noticing much of anything. When he said he was doubling for less, I guess she was expecting to see two different stacks, and it never dawned on her that the bigger stack came last.

He won the hand, and the dealer paid him on both the original bet and the double for ‘less.’ He left a few hands later. I guess the casino would have been pretty upset had they caught it, huh?”

They’d have been upset all right. Adding something extra to a double-down bet is cheating just as surely as past posting in roulette — putting down a wager after the winning number is known — or trying to add chips to your main blackjack bet after seeing your cards. Casino personnel from the dealer to the surveillance room are trained to look for scams like that.

Had the dealer been alert, she’d probably just have told him that was too much, to adjust his bet. And had security caught the move, maybe all they’d have done is demand he return the overage. Maybe they’d have gone further, especially if they’d spotted a pattern. He could have been barred from the casino, blacklisted, even arrested on felony charges.

The potential consequences are far greater than the gain. Don’t even try.

My take: Well, it's easy to say "Never try cheating a casino in any case," but in some casinos with sleepy and experienced dealers...well?

Gaming Tech Giant IGT Fined Nearly $400K in Online Poker Cheating Scandals

2012-02-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

Source: Gaming Today

The Missouri Gaming Commission has announced a settlement with International Game Technology in which the Nevada-based gaming machine manufacturer agreed to pay a fine of $375,000 for not telling regulatory officials about a federal subpoena and other law enforcement actions related to its electronic bingo games in Alabama.

Officials said the information failures deal with the company’s receipt of a federal subpoena in June 2008 requesting documents related to IGT’s business dealing with VictoryLand and the Jefferson County (Ala.) Racing Association. It also cites a January 2009 letter IGT received from Alabama Gov. Bob Riley notifying it of a new task force targeting illegal gambling.

The Commission agreed that IGT did inform Missouri’s agency of a June 29, 2010, seizure of electronic gambling machines from the Greenetrack gambling center, but the Missouri settlement document says IGT did not promptly tell the agency of the seizure of a single machine from the same site several weeks earlier nor of resulting litigation.

The settlement also cites a failure to promptly notify the Missouri Gaming Commission of an attempted raid at the VictoryLand gambling site in January 2010 that resulted in litigation.

Missouri’s gaming regulations require gambling companies to inform the state regulatory agency of any subpoenas, and investigations of substantial changes to the information previously submitted as part of its licensure.

My take: The fine should have been at least a few million...They let the bastards off cheap!

Pair of Poker Card-Swapping Cheats Go Down in Pennsylvania Casino

2012-02-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

Source: Lehigh Valley Live

Two people were arrested Friday at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem after police say they were caught cheating at poker.

Pennsylvania State Police based at the Gaming Enforcement Office inside the casino say Jose L. Rodriguez, 46, of Hialeah, Fla., and Sandro Alonso, 38, of Guttenberg, N.J., were seen swapping cards with each other while playing Texas Hold 'Em Poker.

Alonso told authorities he and Rodriguez also have cheated at Texas Hold 'Em before at Sands and also at Mohegan Sun in Luzerne County, according to court records. Alonso said he started cheating at cards a couple of months ago to earn extra money, records say.

Both men were charged with four counts of cheating, attempted theft by deception and conspiracy to commit theft by deception, according to a news release.

Rodriguez also allegedly had four counterfeit American Express credit cards and was also charged with four counts each of access device fraud, forgery and tampering with records or identification.

Both men were arraigned and committed to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $25,000 bail.

My take: $25,000 is a high bail for a casino or poker cheating crime. I guess they're taking it seriously in Pennsylvania...even with amateur poker cheats.

Canadian Casino Dealer Using False-Shuffle Cheat Scam in Blackjack and Baccarat Faces Prison Time---IF He Doesn't Come Up With Restitution Cash

2012-01-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

Source: starphoenix.com

If Christopher Stone-Spyglass doesn't come up with a chunk of cash by mid-April, he may have to spend some time behind bars for helping more than six card players cheat the Gold Eagle Casino in 2008 and 2009.

At a hearing in provincial court Wednesday, Judge Violet Meekma told the former blackjack and poker dealer she's unlikely to give him a conditional sentence for his central role in the months long scam unless he makes a significant, upfront restitution payment to the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority (SIGA), which owns the casino.

Five of the six gamblers who were charged last year alongside Stone-Spyglass following lengthy investigations by SIGA and the RCMP have already pleaded guilty to theft or cheating at play. All of them paid restitution and avoided incarceration with conditional sentences or probation. One player is still before the courts.

Stone-Spyglass started giving unfair advantages to various players - not all of whom have been identified - within a few months after SIGA hired and trained him as a dealer in 2008, Crown prosecutor Mitch Piche told Meekma.

The dealer used several methods, such as falsely shuffling cards and dealing them in a set order so that "wins were virtually guaranteed," Piche said.

He also flashed cards at blackjack players, eliminating the element of chance to their benefit, and allowed them to withdraw money from the table after placing bets if the cards were not in their favour, court heard.

The players simply took advantage of Stone-Spyglass's activities, and are seen as less culpable than him, Piche said.

The only way the dealer personally profited was when he repeatedly passed $100 chips to a player by concealing them under $5 chips - a direct method of theft that cost the casino $6,000. Stone-Spyglass pocketed half of that money, but otherwise he "appears not to have been motivated by personal remuneration in any way," Piche said.

The casino lost about $20,000 as a result of the scheme, which lasted until January, 2009 and was caught on tape by surveillance cameras, he said.

Piche told Meekma the Crown takes no position on whether or not Stone-Spyglass should be incarcerated or receive a conditional sentence for stealing from his employer.

If he's sent to jail, a 12-month term would be appropriate, but if he's allowed to serve his time in the community it should be 18 months with a curfew, Piche argued, adding Stone-Spyglass should also be ordered to repay $12,600 in monthly instalments.

Defence lawyer Randy Kirkham said Stone-Spyglass supports a wife and three children. He has a steady employment record, but was recently laid off from a job and is now waiting to start work in Fort McMurray, Alberta, which leaves him temporarily cash-strapped, Kirkham said. He expects a sizable income tax refund this year and may also be able to get a loan for an upfront payment before he returns to court for Meekma's sentencing decision in April, court heard.

Kirkham noted his client cooperated fully with SIGA and RCMP investigators from the start of their investigations and gave them all the information they needed. "Personal and family issues" made Stone-Spyglass want to stop working as a dealer for the casino in the fall of 2008, and he sought career counselling from SIGA's human resources department, but was ordered to continue in the job, Kirkham said, telling Meekma the cheating activity was a "foolhardy way of trying to get himself terminated."

My take: The real danger here is that the desperate dealer might resort to more casino cheating scams to obtain the cash needed to avoid prison time in connection with this casino-cheat scam.

New RICO Complaint Filed Against UltimateBet.com

2012-01-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

Source: courthousenews.com

High-stakes poker players claim that UltimateBet stole $20 million from "crooked" online poker games by exploiting security flaws that allowed others - or the website and its operators themselves - to see players' hole cards.
In the federal RICO complaint, eight named plaintiffs claim they lost $2 million in the rigged games. Lead plaintiff Daniel Ashman says the cheating scandal has "been the subject of intense public interest and scrutiny."
Named as defendants are the online poker and gambling website operator, 6356095 Canada Inc. aka Excapsa Software, and 10 John Does.
The complaint states: "UltimateBet (aka Ultimatebet.com) is an online poker and gambling website that has and continues to serve players in the United States. 6356095 Canada, Inc. (formerly Excapsa Software, Inc. or 'Excapsa') and Does 1-10 are holding companies, licensing entities, marketing companies, software firms, and individuals organized in or residing in jurisdictions throughout the world that developed software for and/or operated UltimateBet by and through which owners of Excapsa sought to direct and shield its illegal and fraudulent activities from courts, police, and tax authorities. Individual Doe defendants are owners, operators, officers, employees, and/or agents of Excapsa. While UltimateBet is not itself a legal entity, it is the vehicle through which defendants operated various conspiracies to defraud plaintiffs and the broader public.
"Since at least June 2003 and until at least January 2008 Excapsa/UltimateBet did conspire to and did direct, effect, and permit the theft of over $2 million held in plaintiffs' online poker accounts at UltimateBet.com. Specifically, by creating and making use of an intentional a security flaw in the UltimateBet.com software, and with the assistance of owners, agents, and employees of Excapsa and its various subsidiaries that operated UltimateBet, defendants either allowed others to or did directly view plaintiffs 'hole cards' during high-stakes poker matches run at UltimateBet.com.
"With the assistance of owners, operators, officers, employees, and/or agents of Excapsa and its subsidiaries, the cheaters were further able to change their online identities to avoid detection and to improperly funnel their illicit proceeds through various UltimateBet accounts in a manner that would have been impossible without insider assistance. Through these activities, defendants stole or caused to be stolen at least 20 million dollars from plaintiffs and other high-stakes poker players at games run by UltimateBet."
The named plaintiffs come from five U.S. states, one Canadian province, and Peru. "At this time, plaintiffs suspect but do not know the identities of Does 1-10," the complaint states. "Evidence, some of which is discussed below, has arisen that some of the founders and management of UltimateBet and Excapsa, including Greg Pierson, Jon Karl, Jack Bates, Russ Hamilton, and others who formerly operated (and may continue to be involved in the operation of) UltimateBet were likely aware of or involved the conspiracy to cheat players. However, because the identities and activities of UltimateBet and those who have profited from its operations has been intentionally shielded though numerous agents, subsidiaries, and foreign corporations, it will be necessary to conduct significant discovery before a complete list of defendants can be identified. After such discovery, plaintiffs will seek to amend the complaint to add additional defendants."
In "the UltimateBet.com online poker cheating scandal," the complaint continues, "plaintiffs and other high-stakes online poker players were cheated out of millions of dollars in crooked online poker games where their opponents (employees, agents, owners, and/or officers of Excapsa/UltimateBet) had illicit access to players 'hole' cards. Plaintiffs unknowingly played games of high-stakes poker with their cards essentially face-up. The facts underlying the case have already been the subject of intense public interest and media scrutiny, including a feature story on 60 Minutes, an investigative series by the Washington Post, a feature article by MSNBC, and hundreds of articles and news reports across the Internet."
The plaintiffs say that UltimateBet has a "history, ownership, and business structure" that is "cloaked in layers of obscurity as a result of intentional efforts by the individuals profiting from the enterprise to avoid scrutiny. This is hardly surprising as the prospect of criminal prosecution under the Wire Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1084, the Illegal Gambling Business Act, 18 USC 1955, RICO, 18 U.S.C. § 1961, et seq., and similar statutes has haunted operators of Internet gambling sites from their inception. In 2011, a Grand Jury in the Southern District of New York returned an indictment against the current owners of UltimateBet (Scott Tom and Brent Backley) and owners of other online poker rooms for violation of these and other federal statutes.
"At the same time, Excapsa Services Inc. has suffered no harm, either due to the nature of its operations (often conducted through various and sundry foreign subsidiaries) or the cheating that took place while it owned and operated UltimateBet. Instead, since 2006, when it 'sold' UltimateBet (via the sale of various operating subsidiaries) to Tokwiro Enterprises in what appears to be a related-party transaction, Excapsa has been involved in liquidation proceedings in Toronto, Canada. As part of these proceedings, the assets (mainly cash from operations and from the sale) are being disbursed in an orderly manner to Excapsa's shareholders, which include individuals who knew of and participated in the high stakes poker cheating."
The complaint claims that "a related cheating scandal that took place at UltimateBet's sister site Absolute Poker. UltimateBet and Absolute Poker are now operated by the same holding company, Tokwiro Enterprises, allegedly a Mohawk sole proprietorship owned by the Joseph Norton, the former Grand Chief of the Kahnawake Tribe, which operates the KGC [Kahnawake Gaming Commission]."
The complaint cites a transcript from the "60 Minutes" report, broadcast in November 2008, which states: "The virtual poker games are actually run on computers servers from a Canadian Indian reservation outside of Montreal. It's all licensed by the sovereign tribe of the Mohawk nation, which has no experience in casino gambling and doesn't have to answer to Canadian authorities.
"The [current] grand chief is Mike Delisle.
"Chief Delisle says Internet gambling is illegal in Canada, but tells ['60 Minutes' reporter Steve] Kroft, 'We're not Canadians. We're a member of the Haudenosaunee Five Nation Confederacy. And we're Mohawk Kahnawake people. We're not
Canadian.'
"And that legal distinction has allowed the Kahnawakes to rake in millions of dollars a year by licensing Internet gaming sites and housing their computer servers on the reservation. They now register and service more than 60 percent of the world's Internet gaming activity from a highly protected and nondescript building that used to be a mattress factory."
The plaintiffs continues, in their 42-page complaint: "KGC, the regulatory body to which UltimateBet claims to answer, is part of a self-proclaimed sovereign entity located on a few square miles just across the St. Lawrence River from metropolitan Montreal. The Canadian government has had a history of tense, even violent, relations with the Kahnawake Tribe, who are notorious for cigarette and gun smuggling. The Canadian Government considers the licensing and regulatory activities of the KGC to be illegal." (Footnotes omitted.)
The plaintiffs say that they uncovered the cheating by sharing information at the online poker forum, twoplustwo.com.
In the complaint, they claim they identified a player who they suspected was a "superuser" who could see their cards, and other unknown players they suspected of cheating.
"Members of the twoplustwo.com forums discovered, among other things, that certain accounts with highly improbable win rates often logged on to UltimateBet right after a similarly suspicious account had logged off. Also, many of the suspicious players simply disappeared, never to return, after booking huge wins at high-stakes games, an extremely unusual pattern of activity. Finally, the high-stakes online poker community is relatively small and many high-stakes players know one another from their hundreds of hours of play together, from discussing poker strategy online, and from meeting at live events, such as the annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. However, no one had an information about the real world players behind the suspect UltimateBet accounts," the complaint states.
The players say that Tokwiro admitted, in a May 29, 2009 press release, that six player accounts had been cheating, listed 18 account names that "participated in this scheme," and offered refunds.
The complaint states: "UltimateBet has admitted that at least six accounts (presumably six separate individuals), some or all of which belonged to employees and/or owners of Excapsa Software, Inc., used a software vulnerability to steal millions of dollars from players on its site. However, UltimateBet did not then and to this day has not released the names of any individual other than Russ Hamilton, a former World Series of Poker Winner, early manager/employee of UltimateBet, and shareholder of Excapsa, on who UltimateBet has sought to pin the exclusive blame.
"However, given the nature of the security breach (which is essentially built in to the underlying software) and UltimateBet's willingness to protect the identities of the cheaters, it is likely that the cheaters were high-level members of UltimateBet's management and/or software engineering team, and/or its founders and original programmers, as only such individuals could create and exploit the software loophole, frequently change the names of cheating accounts to avoid suspicion, and bypass security measures designed to prevent the cash out of illegitimate winnings. Statements from insiders at UltimateBet have corroborated these suspicions."
The plaintiffs add that the refunds UltimateBet offered also have been shrouded in secrecy: "While UltimateBet has provided 'refunds' to certain players, it has largely kept its methodology for doing so secret. Moreover, it has refused to publicly release or even send affected players hand histories from the compromised games, so that they might determine the accuracy of the refunds; it has refused to provide a full account of its investigation, so that players can examine whether the list of fraudulent accounts is complete; it has not addressed the role of cheating accounts in other poker games, such as high-stakes tournaments or high-stakes limit (as opposed to no-limit) games; and it has refused to compensate players for lost interest, lost profits, emotional distress, or any other form of damages. In short, UltimateBet has acted as its own investigator, judge, and jury in this matter and has stifled any public scrutiny of its 'investigation.' ... Cheated players are bringing this action because they believe that only a public and impartial tribunal can accurately determine the full scope of the cheating and the identities of the individuals behind it."
Finally, the plaintiffs say: "Under federal and state law, the affected players have a right to learn the truth of who cheated them, how they were cheated, and to receive appropriate redress for their injuries. UltimateBet should not be allowed to control the investigation into its fraudulent activities and to set the terms of any penalty unilaterally."
The players seek an injunction and damages for RICO conspiracy, conversion, interference with prospective economic advantage, intentional infliction of emotional distress, unfair business practices, fraud and negligence.
They are represented by Alan Engle with Meador & Engle, of Anaheim Hills.

My Take: I don't think this huge online poker cheating cheat scam will ever go away...and it shouldn't, just to serve as a reminder of what can happen in the nefarious world of online poker and online gambling in general.

Cheat Casinos in Cambodia...Risk Getting Your Fingers Cut Off!!!

2012-01-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

Source: blackjackchamp.com

Cambodia casinos have taken a tough stance on dead beat players who fail to repay loans or gangs of cheaters who plagues the casinos throughout the world.
According to casino gambling news, Ms. Vo Thi Biet of got the shock of her life after finding a chopped of finger after signing for an express delivery parcel at her home in Vietnam.

What nearly made the elderly lady give up the ghost was that the finger belonged to her 23 year old son – who went with friends on a gambling trip to neighboring Cambodia a few days earlier. The package contained a note urging the mother to pay US $3,500 that her son borrowed and lost at a Cambodia casino and attempted to sneak out of the country without first covering his debt.

”They said my son’s friends left him as collateral with the loan shark and that my son escaped and was punished. His friends left him and never returned and there is no one but me to repay for his baccarat and blackjack card games loses at a Cambodia casino,” explained the distraught mother.

Luckily for her dummy of a son, his mother decided that he was worth saving. Just a few days later, Ms. Biet gave a thick wad of currency to a local agent of the Cambodia casino loan shark and soon her son, her wayward son was safely at home. The son claimed that he was captured with several others who escaped from the loan shark and everyone either lost a finger or an ear.

Cheater Feels the Pain at a Cambodian Casino
The chopped off finger and tales of mutilation and torture involving a Cambodian casino are not as rare as one may think. A few months earlier, a female Thai national, Mrs. C., was found dead at a border Cambodian casino.

A cleaning girl discovered the Thai national’s body inside her casino suite covered in thin razor cuts and cigarette burn marks strapped to a chair with fishing line and a plastic bag tightly wrapped around her head. Evidence of prolonged torture was unmistakable.

Police indicate that at least 3 million Thai Bhatt ($200,000 US) that the woman won during the previous days was missing. This is when the case took a strange twist when the dead woman’s Thai passport was determined to be a forgery.

Local police indicated that they were shown casino security tapes where the dead woman was seen wearing an electronic cheating device to win close to a quarter million US dollars at the Cambodia casino with the help of a local Cambodian blackjack dealer.

When police arrived at the blackjack dealer home, they were informed by neighbors that on the night of the murder they heard multiple motorbikes and cars enter and leave the residence throughout the night and in the morning their neighbor was gone.

Police were unable to interview or locate the blackjack dealer boyfriend, finding his home deserted with only a note to indicate that the man was distraught and planed to jump in a nearby lake to end his life. Authorities ruled both deaths as aggravated suicides.

Cambodia Casino Accepts Children as Collateral
Another recent event involved the 13-year-old daughter of a deranged gambler who apparently left the girl as a form of collateral at a Cambodia casino to cover his nearly US $5,000 debt. The grandparents of the girl received a call from a Cambodian casino loan shark threatening to sell their granddaughter to a Thai pimp to work the many whorehouses of Bangkok unless the gambling debts were paid.

The family had no option but to pay back the debt with interest. The father of the 13 year old girl hasn’t been found.

According to casino insiders, the recent incidents at Cambodian casinos were calculated acts aimed specifically at foreign gangs of professional casino hustlers and cheats who plague gambling destination throughout the world. Statistics show that tourists have little to worry about gambling at Cambodia casinos and millions flock each year to see the sights and enjoy themselves without problems.

However, those who enter a Cambodian casinos with the intent to cheat or escape loan repayment may find themselves in a world of problems to say the least. There is no need to be concerned, since there is always a foreign based online casino in Cambodia instead.

My take: If you gotta go to Cambodia, that's bad enough...if you gotta go to Cambodia to cheat casinos, that's even worse!!

Dirty Dozen Cheats Nabbed in Panaji Casino!

2012-01-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

Where is Panaji?

What the heck do I know, but I will guess it is some island off the coast of India???

In any case, the cops there busted a cheat gang consisting of twelve people, two of whom are women. Now get this!!!...Their total take was 39.19 lakh LOL at least twice!

What the heck is lakh?

Well, I guess it's some kind of currency unit.

How much is 39.19 lakh in US dollars, British Pounds or Euros?

Beats me, but I doubt it's much! LOL

This was a credit card fraud where the Dirty Dozen swapped fraudulent credit cards to obtain gambling chips that they cashed out. It happened at a casino called the Casino Pride.

My take: Heck, I don't even know why I am writing about this, but I think I wrote about a casino cheat or poker cheat scam in Panaji before (I am not sure, how could I be?), and if I do remember right, it was another rinky-dink cheat scam for about the same amount of lakh...It did give me a good laugh, however.

Poker Cheat Nabbed in Pennsylvania Casino!

2012-01-17T13:53:00.000-08:00

Source: Lehigh Valley Live

A 46-year-old Phillipsburg man cheated at least 15 times in December during three trips to the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, Pennsylvania State Police report.

Paul E. Catanio, of the 300 block of Thomas Street, profited $540 from sleight of hand tricks, police said. Catanio often doubled his initial bet after being dealt cards, a violation of game rules, according to court papers.

The move worked 13 of the 15 times he tried it, police said. On his last trip to the casino, Dec. 11, police and casino personnel confronted him after suspecting him of cheating, and he agreed to pay $40 restitution, police said. He was also ejected from the casino, according to court papers.

Casino personnel reviewed Catanio's December visits and found additional instances of cheating, police said, and concluded Catanio profited $500 during those visits. Police said Catanio played poker at the casino more than 30 times since August, but the casino only keeps a seven-day log of video records. Catanio was charged with prohibited acts and theft by deception. He was released on $20,000 unsecured bail.

Allison's World Game Protection Conference Continues Charade of Worthlessness in 2012

2012-01-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

Mr. Smooth

Willy Allison has outdone himself this year with his 2012 World Game Protection Conference line-up of speakers. He's got the number of them way up from last year, but unfortunately this 2012 roster is filled with speakers who have little or nothing to do with modern game protection. The list is again filled with computer software specialists, bank security experts and magicians (THIS IS THE BIGGEST JOKE as if SAL PIACENTE wasn't enough of a magician to satisfy this un-needed prerequisite to speak at the WGPC), and Piacente is not much more than a magician.

Add to this criminalogists, businessmen of the year and sales directors, and you get to see the picture of what I'm talking about. True, there are the few so-called "game protection" specialists, but they're none other than Bill Zender (who should be nicknamed the "e-mail bomber" for his relentless unsolicted e-mail bombardments hyping his baccarat-cheating seminars), Sal "THE HITMAN" (why the heck would a so-called game protection consultant call himself "THE HITMAN"?), and, of course, master magician George Joseph. Zender will do his hyped-up baccarat-cheating presentation, hoping to make casino executives think baccarat cheat-scams are as prevalent in casinos as cards and chips, and that they need to hire him immediately to come to their casinos and wise them up. Zender, in his 3-times-per-month emails to everyone in his "contacts box," has exaggerated this baccarat cheating-plague to the point where it fraudulent information. Anyone who does not believe me about Zender can contact me for specific proof of his miswritings and misinformation.

Piacente, on the other hand, will delight the conference-goers with his magic card tricks in off-conference-hour bar gatherings, and use that non-game-protection-related performance to make everyone think he is "Mr. Game Protection." BAck in 2007 when I was the WGPC keynote speaker (the last one who had anything to do with game protection, I might add), Piacente gave a lecture on casino-cheating with cellphones and other high-tech devices. I wonder if Piacente crammed the info he gave out like a college kid cramming for a mid-term exam.

Allison uses repetitive speakers to cover the items he wants covered, even though these speakers really no nothing or very little about the topics they are presenting.

I have been trying to convince repeat WGPC conference-goers and first-timers that Allison's so-called game protection conference is all smoke and mirrors designed solely to put a big pie of money in Allison's pocket, and to get more casinos to hire Zender, Piacente and Joseph to come to their properties and give seminars, all of which have no real effect on better-equipping casinos against cheats and advantage players,let alone raising casinos' bottom line.

In short, and I don't want to sound crude here, if you are attending your first World Game Protection Conference this February 29, I hope you get what I mean about the smoke and mirrors.

If you are a repeat attendee, you are a sucker!

Two Women Video Gaming Cheats Busted in Louisiana!

2012-01-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

Baudoin

Stewart

Source: KATC.com

Two Lake Charles women are accused of cheating at least eight video poker casinos out of thousands of dollars. State police say 33-year-old Jennifer Stewart and 33-year-old Alisha Baudoin redeemed counterfeit tickets at businesses in Calcasieu Parish.

The women are charged with theft and monetary instrument abuse. Early last week, troopers assigned to the Gaming Enforcement Section of the Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations were notified that two unknown people were cashing in counterfeit gaming tickets. Troopers say they identified Baudoin and Stewart and obtained warrants for their arrests. "Stewart has an extensive criminal history including previous arrests for fraud, monetary instrument abuse, identify theft, and drug related offenses," Sgt. James Anderson said.
Stewerat's bond is set at $100,000, and bond for Baudion is $35,000. Additional charges and arrests are likely.

Does Facial Recognition Software REALLY Pick Casino and Poker Cheats out of a Crowd?

2012-01-04T15:08:00.000-08:00

Hypothetical Situation:

Yours truly, Richard Marcus, EX-casino cheat extraordinaire, decides to take a stroll through Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas, which just happens to be my favorite casino of all-time where I made bundles of cash through a variety of casino-cheat moves.

As I am walking through the blackjack and roulette pit, I am suddenly accosted by two young and burly security guards who whisk me right off the casino floor and into the back room (security office). I am handcuffed to a chair, all the while screaming that I didn't do ANYTHING! Then I ask the head of casino surveillance, who rushed down from the eye-in-the-sky (the surveillance room with all the screen hosting images from the bubbled-up cameras covering the casino ceiling) to greet me.

I say, "How the hell did you recognize me? I haven't walked through here in fifteen years!" I have long since retired."

He says, "But you've heard of facial recognition technology, haven't you?

I nod, and he says, "IT recognized you."

Do I believe this?...that some gizmo software program can pick me out of a thousand-strong throng in a jam-packed casino?...that, according to some casino security experts, this facial-rec technology is so advanced that it could have ID'd me even if I'd had plastic surgery to purposely change my facial appearance?

In a short word, NO! I do not believe this. I believe that someone already believing he saw me can get an agreeing nod from the software. But this stuff about recognizing Richard Marcus in the blind...NO WAY, JOSE!