The best story you have heard..or know about casino cons.
John Kerr
Either way....the player or the casino.
The one I like best..is the group of college students in Reno that
carried charts, and calculators to the roulette wheel in Harolds Club.
They did this night after night without making bet. Then one day they
started to bet...after about a week, they took the club for over a
hundred grand (back then, that was big time!).
Everyone thought the college boys had figured out the way to beat
"random". Everyone but the casino.....they finaly figured out the
"deal". The roulette dealer was the boyfriend of one of the college
boys, and she had used a device disigned by her boyfrend, that she could
pull one of the "frets" between the numbers up, just a fraction of an
inch. The "boys" bet in the section surrounding the "raised" fret.
Harolds was a family owned casino...and they were very nice people,
noone ended up as cactus fertilizer.....but I wouldn't have advised them
to try that at another casino In town back then! :)
Don't sell the casino short...they ain't in the buiness of "giving"
money away :)>
Mr. V
Mid-1975, recently out of college, between jobs and girlfriends, a few
grand to the good, I decided to take a few months off and drive around
the country, see the sights, mooching off of strategically sited
friends and family as I travelled.
Stayed a week at the Grand Canyon, and while hiking there met a few
guys, we partied, listened to The Dead, hiked, decided to convoy
together to see Vegas for the first time.
Enroute, we stopped to visit Hoover Dam; parked our vehicles in
designated curbside spaces on top of the dam, and took the dam tour.
Dinner time arrived, and being young and poor, we cooked our Dinty
Moore on a sterno stove, and used our jugged water to wash the cook
pot, plates and utensils, leaving the waste water to drain away
curbside.
At that moment a dam cop arrives, checks us over (my buddies had long
hair, scruffy etc.), then decides to f**k with us.
He says he'll arrest us if we don't take the shirts off of our backs
and use it to mop up the waste water, curbside.
Now, there was nothing unusual about the waste water, we'd eaten all
the stew, so no chunks etc., just water.
Sooooo, rather than go to jail (or have the Man search our vehicles!)
we did what he said, sopping it up with our shirts.
Welcome to f**king Nevada!
roll dem bones
QuiGon
a friend of mine (who is a floor manager at Foxwoods) tells is of a
blackjack con job going on there.... It involved the dealer, a player and
two runners - all 4 of whom were Thai (not that I am sure that matters in
this story). When the dealer would deal his down card, he would pinch the
edge just enough so that one of the runners could see it and signal to the
player what it was. Needless to say, this gives the player a tremendous
advantage. As the player kept winning, he would hand his chips off to one
of the other runners (so as not to arouse suspicion).
Supposedly they eventually got caught when the player hit on an 18... That
raised some suspicions, which drew some attention from security, etc, etc...
The Midnight Skulker
and the investment they will make up front to cheat the casino. The
player had a miniature camera built into his ring. As the cards were
shuffled at the blackjack table the camera, put at table top level,
would transmit the faces of the cards to a truck in the parking lot.
The truck was equipped with video tape recorders so that the data from
the final shuffle could be played back in slow motion and the order of
the cards in the deck determined. The player could then be told via a
receiver in his glasses frame what card he would get if he took a hit.
I suppose, before a round started, he could also be told what kind of
hand he was about to get so he could bet accordingly, but I can't
remember if the report I read about this scam mentioned that aspect of
it.
1 2
| The Midnight Skulker
9 * 3 aka Van Lewis
aka cvl...@earthlink.net
6
Gregg Cattanach
A Dealer flashing his hole card (intentionally) to a confederate playing at
the table is one of the simplest cheats when you have a crooked dealer
willing to cheat his casino. Hitting 17s or above is REALLY stupid, though.
They should have just be willing to lose those hands.
--
Gregg C.
Gregg Cattanach
There are a couple good stories about computerized shuffle tracking where
they recorded the order of the cards going into the discard shoe and
information about the shuffle. These guys were using computers on their
body with inputs in their shoes to record the discard order. They could
gain a big advantage with the correct cut. Check it out at:
http://blackjackforumonline.com/
--
Gregg C.
Mr. V
http://www.gamingfloor.biz/forum/showthread.php?t=922&page=1&highlight=ritz
roll dem bones
Harvey J Cohen
news:1111677635.2...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
.. An interesting story. The technique is generically known as wheel
clocking. It is illegal in virtually all US jurisdictions, as most
US jurisdictions make the use of "electro-mechanical devices for the
purposes of determining the outcome of a licensed game" a serious
felony. Whether the UK has similar laws is unknown. If not, then
these two Serbs and the Hungarian female have not committed a crime.
--
Harvey J Cohen, Ph. D
"The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make
sense." - Tom Clancy
Mr. V
not criminalize their activity; charges were dropped and I believe
their confiscated winnings were (or will be) returned.
I further understand the British lawmakers will soon act to close this
gaping loophole.
roll dem bones
Mason
> A Dealer flashing his hole card (intentionally) to a confederate playing at
> the table is one of the simplest cheats when you have a crooked dealer
> willing to cheat his casino.
Or demonstrating sloppy dealing technique. Illustrated in the movie "Casino" as
I recall.
--
Onward thru the fog,
Mason
Nigel
An identical story did the rounds last Autumn and the casino denied it.
The two newspapers which have articles on the story are not exactly
top-drawer. I think it would be sensible to regard this as an "urban
myth" unless you can find corroboration by a reliable source.
Evil Nigel
QuiGon
news:vDz0e.18063$6g.1...@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com...
>
> A Dealer flashing his hole card (intentionally) to a confederate playing
> at
> the table is one of the simplest cheats when you have a crooked dealer
> willing to cheat his casino. Hitting 17s or above is REALLY stupid,
> though.
> They should have just be willing to lose those hands.
I agree... so I wonder how much of the story is true and how much is
legend...
QuiGon
news:4242ec84$0$15983$ed26...@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
>
> An identical story did the rounds last Autumn and the casino denied it.
I would think there's a very easy way to determine if the story is true or
not. If the casino still allows people to place their bets while after ball
has started rolling then if I were a gambling man, I would bet my bottom
dollar that the story just ain't true.
Gregg Cattanach
If you think no dealer ever flashes the hole card inadvertently, or that no
dealer has every cheated his casino by doing this with a confederate player,
then you don't know much about the skill level of many dealers or of some
people's greed.
As to whether THIS particular story is true, (the Thai players, etc.), who
knows.
--
Gregg C.
QuiGon
>>
>> I agree... so I wonder how much of the story is true and how much is
>> legend...
>
> If you think no dealer ever flashes the hole card inadvertently, or that
> no
> dealer has every cheated his casino by doing this with a confederate
> player,
> then you don't know much about the skill level of many dealers or of some
> people's greed.
How in the world did you come to that conclusion based on what I said...? I
relayed an amusing anecdote of cheating at Foxwoods and then said maybe it's
true, maybe it isn't. But you somehow deduce that I believe no dealer has
ever cheated any casino anywhere.
I am well aware that cheating (by both dealers and players) goes on at
casinos all the time in a wide variety of ways. I spent a year working at
Foxwoods as a dealer so I am well aware of the nature of the beast.
Don Mac Phee
> QuiGon wrote:
>> This may be just a local "urban legend" or it may be true... but
>> one story a friend of mine (who is a floor manager at Foxwoods) tells
>> is of a blackjack con job going on there.... It involved the dealer,
>> a player and two runners - all 4 of whom were Thai (not that I am
>> sure that matters in this story). When the dealer would deal his
>> down card, he would pinch the edge just enough so that one of the
>> runners could see it and signal to the player what it was. Needless
>> to say, this gives the player a tremendous advantage. As the player
>> kept winning, he would hand his chips off to one of the other runners
>> (so as not to arouse suspicion).
The list of cons at a casino can be quite long.... Fortunately, so is the
list of those caught. The most beautiful scams in the world always fall
prey to a simple premise: "Hey! I got away with it.... I wonder if I can do
it again..." No con can resist trying again.
>> Supposedly they eventually got caught when the player hit on an 18...
>> That raised some suspicions, which drew some attention from security,
>> etc, etc...
They probably got caught when they started stuffing chips. After that it's
just a matter of waiting until you find the extent of the rot, and cut it
all out.
I know I've lain in wait in plenum ceilings and in darkened idling cars to
spot theiving employees and I have the patience of a saint. The casino many
more employees addressing those same kinds of problems (Surveillance, Table
Games supervisiors, Gaming Commission, Security, etc...) Someone eventually
notices something out of the ordinary. It breaks up the dull day. (Yeah,
yeah... The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older.)
QuiGon
news:I3I0e.66629$7z6.65728@lakeread04...
>
> The list of cons at a casino can be quite long.... Fortunately, so is the
> list of those caught. The most beautiful scams in the world always fall
> prey to a simple premise: "Hey! I got away with it.... I wonder if I can
> do it again..." No con can resist trying again.
That *exactly* echoes what I believe :-) People would be much less likely
to be caught if they weren't so greedy and didn't go from small,
un-noticable sums to large, eye-popping sums.
Mr. V
Here's a link, an Australian paper quotes the London Sunday Times.
Lots of other sources out there, if you aren't too lame to look.
Sheesh.
Yeah, it never happened...
roll dem bones
Gregg Cattanach
> "Gregg Cattanach" <gcattana...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
> news:IuF0e.24587$hU7....@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...
>>>
>>> I agree... so I wonder how much of the story is true and how much is
>>> legend...
>>
>> If you think no dealer ever flashes the hole card inadvertently, or
>> that no
>> dealer has every cheated his casino by doing this with a confederate
>> player,
>> then you don't know much about the skill level of many dealers or of
>> some people's greed.
>
> How in the world did you come to that conclusion based on what I
> said...? I
I misunderstood your post. It sounded like you thought the whole idea was
an urban legend.
--
Gregg C.
Mr. V
roll dem bones
Nigel
Forgive my scepticism, but if the same sting happened in the autumn too
it should have been mentioned in the company accounts and it wasn't.
The first cry of wolf turned out to be an urban legend.
I believe the Ritz Casino is operated under licence by London Casinos -
they recently published their half-year report so we'll have to wait
nearly 6 months to find out.
Evil Nigel