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Years ago when I was a casino gaming inspector (someone who supervises the gaming tables), you could always tell which punters were going to make a move. Or at least you could if you had enough experience and imagination. Because to cheat well then you have to have imagination and creativity. Timing and psychology along with misdirection are the hallmark of a highly skilled cheat.

Amateur cheats get caught and this is what an awful lot of people see when they see cheating. So when you see things like this then it is easy to believe that cheating is difficult……it is if you are not skilled in it but relatively easy otherwise. The real skill comes down to timing but that can be said of an awful lot of disciplines.

Timing is key in martial arts and combat sports, key to overtaking in Formula 1, key to a great Golf swing and also key to cheating. Expert cheats create time by using misdirection as a tool to deflect your thought patterns and vision. The above average cheat doesn’t have the skill of a Derren Brown but most of the time they don’t need to have as sloppy staff basically do their work for them.

If I so desired, I could go into any casino in the UK and take money. Even though I have never practiced it and never would……I still know how to do it after many years in casino gambling. I know what staff look for and what details get past them. To cheat well inside a casino then you have to think like a member of staff.

If anybody was paying too much attention to the gaming inspector then this was always a potential warning sign to us. It is different if they are making conversation but someone looking at you is not a natural reaction when there is so much more going off on the roulette table and in the wheel.

see you soon

Carl

Several hundred years ago, the Caribbean was the centre for piracy on the high seas when people like Blackbeard was feared all around that area. The word “Caribbean” also applies to the casino version of poker as well where the players get dealt five cards that have to beat those of the dealer.

I explained a little about how this game worked yesterday but there are numerous poker cheating moves that are available on this game in live play. Of course if you read any poker material on cheating then a fair number of the moves would involve the dealer.

In the case of CSP then this does not apply obviously as the dealer is working for the casino and despite the thoughts of some, casinos do not cheat. They have no reason to in the overwhelming number of cases so lets put that particular view to bed right now and move on.

But……one such move that is cheating and that is for players to inform other players of their cards. This would certainly not be allowed in real poker but I have worked in several casinos where the players were allowed to blatantly look at each others cards.

Let us say that a table full of CSP players discussed their hands or had a series of hidden signals to determine certain cards. Each player gets dealt five cards and in those thirty five cards that were dealt to the players, all four kings were out and three of the aces.

The dealer had an ace showing, now not only do the players know that the dealer cannot make a qualifying A-K hand to beat their non-pair hands, they also know that the dealer cannot make a pair of aces. This then means that to qualify then they must make a pair out of their remaining unseen four cards and not five.

This is far more difficult to do so in this instance the players could play whatever hands they had. This is one form of cheating but I will be expanding on other forms in later posts.

See you soon

Carl

Back when I worked in gaming, one of the weakest spots or the most vulnerable when it came to cheating was Casino Stud Poker or to call it by its other name…..Caribbean Stud Poker.

In this game the players are dealt five cards and so is the dealer. You have already placed what is called an “ante”. If you have placed say $5 on the ante box and you look at your hand, you then have to decide if you want to play the hand or not.

If you do then you must place double the ante on the “bet” box behind it and so you would have to place $10 in this example. If you don’t want to play the hand then you must concede the $5 ante and lose it.

The kicker behind this is in the odds that you get paid for the hands that you make. But in a real live casino setting, there are several players sitting within a very close proximity to each other.

This presents the casino with several security issues and the main one is in not letting players have the opportunity to take cards out of play. This is easily checked simply by the dealer checking the number of cards that are remaining.

But there are far weightier problems as well and I have seen players actually place stronger hands on the boxes of players to their left or right who had bet more money. This can be difficult to spot when done quickly and using mis-direction.

Also card marking has been a problem as well in recent years although casinos tend to try to combat this problem by checking the cards every hour. This though presents the problem of them having to wait a full hour before the pit boss or manager can inspect the cards.

In my opinion though, many of the card marking techniques that are in operation today would get by an average pit boss and I will be looking at some of these in further posts.

See you soon

Carl

There are a large number of cheating moves on roulette, in fact the game itself and the entire design of the table and the dealer training procedures are ripe for cheating. I also want to say that starting next month, I will be turning my blog into a video blog as well using videos of all things gaming to spice up the blog. I am going to start with roulette because this is the game that I find the most fascinating.

I am also going to be taking trips down memory lane as well and looking at our roulette ancestors and how they beat the wheel. But there is one such move on roulette that is very difficult to spot when done well. I will see if I can get a video of this because it is very difficult to put into words. It involves placing chips onto numbers that are staggered in such a way as to make the bottom chip invisible to the dealer.

The next step is to hope that the dealer does not straighten up the chips, anyway I don’t want to spoil the surprise for if I find the video but it is a great move. But it is also a move that needs to be practiced and executed well because it has to escape detection from the eye in the sky.

In fact this is the primary objective now when designing cheating moves, they must be designed in such a way so that they are invisible to the cameras. What this also means is that the move must be designed so that if the move fails then no suspicion must fall on the player that he has tried to cheat at all. This is key and it falls within the boundaries of confidence tricksters. The cons that they pull off are real works of art and leave the mark believing in their own mind that they were merely unfortunate and not duped.

This is how the best cheats operate on roulette. The are well know to the casinos, the staff know them, like them and even enjoy conversing with them. It is the same with the management but these people use their popularity as a weapon. In many cases, they will even get preferential payouts in borderline situations simply because the staff like them, situations that they themselves have cultivated I might add.

Look out for the new video blog next month…..will be worth watching.

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

I watched a YouTube video the other day taken from the program “The Real Hustle” in which they performed some famous old blackjack cheating moves. What made me chuckle about the video was that it was clearly a made up situation. They were inside an English casino using coloured roulette chips on a blackjack table.

Also the moves were done based on the American blackjack version where the player gets to hold the cards. This isn’t the case in England where the player simply cannot touch the cards at all once they have been dealt. Still, they do make for entertaining programs. There are still numerous cheating moves available though despite the fact that the players cannot touch the cards.

This may surprise a few readers but over the past twenty years, ten of which were actually working in that job then you become aware of many different types of cheating move. Certain moves become possible based on the configuration of the dealer and the inspector. Quite often they will have a second game to watch. In some casinos that game may even be Casino Stud Poker so the inspectors attention will always be more focused on that table over the other blackjack table.

This is rightly so because just as in the program itself, this is a game where the players do get to hold the cards so many more cheating moves become possible based on that alone. But the reason why many cheats get caught is simply because of three things. Firstly then do not understand the psychology of the casino personnel that they are going up against.

Secondly they bet too big and in a way that brings attention up to a much higher level on behalf of the staff and management. Lastly, the cheats perform the moves at the wrong times and in the wrong locations. But it is this fatal lack of understanding with regards to casino staff psychology that gets them caught….and you thought that I only knew how to deal the games and play blackjack did you

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

It isn’t just roulette where cheating takes place inside a casino, it is on all games. Blackjack is certainly no different and there are many cheating moves available even though in the UK, the players cannot physically touch the cards. In many situations, the lethargy and the indifference of gaming staff make many moves possible.

The way that the dealer deals the game opens up many moves. One such move is to spot the next card out of the shoe on the next round of play. Quite often this is accidentally revealed by certain dealers who apply too much pressure to the centre of the card.

Fast dealers tend to do this or male dealers who are far too rough with the cards. It is difficult to see certain types of cards because of the white surfaces but picture cards can be visible sometimes. But taking advantage of this move is not cheating in any way shape or form. It is no different to a poker player who accidentally reveals his hand to a fellow player.

The player who has glimpsed those cards certainly has no duty to inform the player that they are revealing their cards. It is exactly the same with blackjack. Also, this is something that the inspector cannot spot from their position so they cannot inform the dealer to correct it anyway.

Plus,at the end of the day….inspectors are nothing more than promoted dealers so they suffer from the same indifference and lethargy that the dealers do. Plus they are elevated and looking down on the table either from an elevated chair or from a standing position so they simply cannot see this. In fact the punters cannot see this either except one of them…..the player who is active on first base or first box.

Most dealers do not expose cards in this way but if you find one that does then you can create very profitable opportunities here. When you factor in that the knowledge that when your first card will be a ten value card then the edge to the player of around 13%

Now that’s why these moves can be so damn good,

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson – author of Princes of Darkness : The World of Highstakes Blackjack

Casino’s attract cheats and thieves, this is a fact. If you were to assess and then learn how a pick pocket operates for example then you would be amazed to see that a busy casino affords them all of the necessary advantages. There are people with money for a start, then there are people in large numbers and in close proximity, people who are aroused and focused on something else, we also have ease of access and get away.

The only draw back for these guys is that everything is on CCTV and if they get caught or seen then the casino can often know their name. But thats just it, how hard would it be to join a casino as a member using a fake name? If a punter loses thier wallet or purse then the natural thought would be that they had lost it or left it somewhere, nobody suspects that it has been lifted……when a purse or a wallet is “secure” inside your pocket or inside pocket or handbag then the thought of having it lifted never occurs to anyone.

So the CCTV isn’t checked and all that gets done about it is that the management tell the victim that they will keep an eye out and it may also be announced over the tannoy that someone has lost a purse or wallet. But the victim immediately in their own mind writes this off as no one expects the majority of people to hand stuff of that nature in.

In the overwhelming number of cases, the victim is left thinking that they have lost the purse or wallet and not that it has been taken from them. I once had a demonstration given to me by a professional pickpocket and I couldn’t even detect that he had taken my wallet. Apparently it is thin people who are targeted with regards to lifting wallets from back pockets as there is little resistence between the wallet and the backside.

It was a serious education into this dark art and something that I will never forget. He also told me how many pick pockets work nights for the simple reason being that the pubs and clubs are even more crowded and when people have had a few drinks, they are easy prey.

So beware the next time you set foot inside a casino because these people are out there lurking and they are very good at what they do and you can take that from me.

Sleep tight

Carl “The Dean” Sampson