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 casinoversion 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 pokerbut 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.
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.
It has taken a while but I have finally watched the mover “21” with Kevin Spacey. I think as with all movies that surround technical fields like sports and games, there are going to be numerous things that are not accurate. Today’s video shows the preview for the movie and has been selected by me because it sort of fits in with what I have been saying about blackjack.
At the end of the day, anything that has been written, spoken or filmed about the game of blackjack rightfully takes its place in the blackjack world whether people agree with it or not. It is inevitable that Hollywood will do their stuff and change what the MIT team did just for dramatic effect.
So we have a situation where reality and fantasy merge. Even when I wrote my book “Princes of Darkness: The World of High-stakes blackjack”, it was difficult to get across the reality of it and I was the one who was writing the book. In fact I have to confess that I slightly inflated and dressed up certain things in a minor way and I think that is kind of inevitable during the process.
I remember a few years ago watching Rounders with Matt Damon and even though that is probably the best film on poker ever made due to its accuracy, I found it very clichéd and done in a way that still didn’t depict true reality. Watching the movie “21” will not reveal how to run a successful blackjack team although it will reveal useful tips if you zoom in on them.
But things like using two big players on the same table isn’t needed for instance as this just brings too much heat down and tipping is not something that a professional blackjack player does on any great scale simply because the edge is so small. By all means watch the movie if you have never watched it before but do remember that you are watching Hollywood at work here.
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.
