bwin – the world's biggest online gaming platform

Professional cheats are rare in gambling, it is very difficult to cheat for a living and you only have to look at pickpockets to see the evidence of this. I would say that over 99% of all wallets and purses that are lost are found by someone who then keeps the money without handing it in. Although this is technically theft, the person who found it never set out to steal that purse or wallet. They merely took advantage of an opportunity when it arose.

They would also not take a purse or wallet if they knew who it belonged to. But now imagine a pickpocket who deliberately goes out to steal these items. This requires nerve and skill which is something that must be practiced. Because of this then it makes the numbers of pickpockets far smaller than the number of opportunists that exist.

This is lucky for us otherwise we would be a lot worse off financially during the course of our lives. The most common type of casino cheat is the very low in sophistication opportunist. This is the one who looks for things like trainee dealers who may make mistakes or who may be vulnerable to certain gamesmanship or ploys to get paid out when they shouldn’t.

One such ploy is on blackjack where some players try to make it as vague as possible if they want a card or not. Or if they have say 18 and the dealer goes onto the next box and that player pulls a 2 or a 3 then the player can argue that their box was overlooked without them even being asked if they wanted a card or not. Everyone knows that the player would have stood on 18 and even the player themselves but this is just one sort of opportunist cheating that is quite common in casinos.

During my time in gaming both before and after I worked in casinos then I have heard of numerous cheating attempts with most of them being blatant silly attempts that were doomed to failure and probably did. But one such case that I heard about but never found out if this actually came to fruition involved placing an invisible resin type substance into certain numbers of a roulette wheel.

This substance hardened like varnish but was clear to the naked eye. What this meant was that the substance could be applied to certain numbers without it being visible. But the peculiar characteristics of this substance were such that it recorded drastically different bounce to the other non applied numbers.

So if you applied it to the red numbers and not the black numbers then it would be perfectly possible that the ball would stand a far greater chance of coming to rest in one or the other due to the differences in bounce. The only problem was in how to apply this substance to a roulette wheel undetected. This would almost certainly need to be done from the inside from someone who not only worked there but who worked after hours or who had access to not only the casino but also the CCTV cameras as well.

There are several people who work inside all casinos who have this sort of function from general managers to managers to security staff and receptionists. So it is possible to have an inside job done on a casino. If you can overcome these two factors of getting the substance and then someone working on the inside then a casino would be very vulnerable to being hit in this way.

There has always been one huge Achilles Heel with casinos when it comes to security and this is to do with staff collusion and inside assists. In this aspect then it is no different to online poker sites and the now famous “super user” accounts. At the end of the day, staff at many live casinos feel under paid or actually are under paid. So they above anyone else have the incentive to cheat and collude with punters.

A few years ago I was privy to inside information at the time about a team of Chinese cheats in London who were operating using hidden CCTV cameras. These people were eventually caught but the word on the inside was that these people took far more money than was revealed or that the casinos were aware of.

I feel that this is where the casinos are vulnerable; there is always a problem with regards the casinos coming face to face with highly intelligent and creative people. Casinos have gone more and more high-tech over the past few years and I feel that this has sort of protected them from the old time cheats of a few years ago. However it has also left them vulnerable to a whole new army of high-tech cheats who will be attracted to casinos like moths to a light because of the money that is on offer.

As always the really sophisticated cheats are one step ahead and always will be and the casinos are always playing catch up to these people. Only when they have been taken for a large amount of money do they then adjust and learn the new techniques.

Come and play some great casino games at bwin

While casinos are not evil places, they often attract people looking to cheat. This is an unfortunate side effect but fortunately the number of people who cheat are well in the minority. In my experience the vast majority of cheats are nothing more than opportunists that take advantage of something if and when the time arises.

For instance, there is a world of difference between someone who finds a wallet and then keeps the money inside it without handing it in and someone like a pickpocket who actively goes out and steals one.

In one instance one person has the money by default and is still technically stealing while in the other, the individual has actively planned the act. In a similar way, it is like the act of murder and manslaughter. Both involve the taking of a human life but only one was deliberate.

It is the same with cheating inside casinos. I believe that at least 99% of any dishonest activity stems from opportunists. Maybe someone was paid a bet that they shouldn’t have been paid and said nothing but whatever the cause, very few players actively plan cheating moves in my opinion.

But that is taken from the total population of people who inhabit casinos and 1% of that population still accounts for an awful lot of people. The last casino that I worked at had around 22,000 members and 1% of that figure comes to 220.

While only around 5000 of that total were active core regulars, that is still 50 people who actively go out to look to cheat. So that is an awful lot of people and if those 50 people each cheat the casino out of £200 per week then that is an amazing £10,000 a week being lost to cheating.

If you go into any casino or play any form of gambling then a progressive betting system can work very well in the short term. As long as you do not use systems like the Martingale for instance which double up after every loss. The bankroll requirements are very severe and especially on casino games where the table minimum is well below the table maximum in terms of the number of potential double ups that you can make to get your money back.

But systems like the Reverse Labouchere for instance can use progression in an entirely different way. However it needs to be pointed out that in no way can a progression system turn you from a long term loser into a long term winner although on blackjack then it has the potential to do so if you are using good solid basic and card counting methods.

But even here, it is the card counting strategy that is providing the profit and not the progression system. In this environment then the progression system can serve a very good strategic purpose as it can allow the player to look like an everyday player when betting in this way. So even though the progression systems cannot and will not provide long term profits in their own right, everything has its place at some stage.

Even though we never used progression systems when we played blackjack, the strategic use of them as cover cannot be under estimated. But if you were to go into any casino for a day or an evening and use a progression system then your chances of success and walking out in front would be very good indeed as that isn’t an amount of time that is long enough for the house edge to take effect.

Just how far can you go with regards to cheating inside a casino using illusion and time misdirection? Personally I feel that a great magician could be the perfect person to cheat. I once had a demonstration from a highly trained magician and this is certainly a person who I would not want dealing my poker game for sure.

But time misdirection is the art of performing magic tricks by getting the target to look away from the move while you are doing something. The key with misdirection is that the subject must at no stage feel as if they are being manipulated into looking away. To give an obvious example, any misdirection that was so blatant like finger pointing would likely not work in a magic context simply because your subject is expecting you to do a trick and also to perform some sort of deception.

However in a gaming sense then the player to a certain extent has the advantage. The key to misdirection is to make the subject or subjects want to look somewhere else. I have heard of teams of professional cheats that used misdirection as their primary weapon, obviously these people didn’t reveal their true identities or the casinos in which they operated.

I feel that one of the primary targets for cheats are other punters. These people can be incredibly careless with their bets and money. But the key to extracting money from casinos is not to be too greedy. Past posters get caught because they try for too much too soon. Trying to get £25 on the number when the table maximum is only £25 is asking for trouble. CCTV camera’s will be inspected even if the move actually got past the gaming staff. But getting away with £1 on the number is a far easier proposition and those £35 pay outs at 35-1 really start to mount up over time.

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