Archive for June, 2009
Casino – Cheating Two-way Street Part2
June 8th, 2009 | 
Author: Yes, it appeared that some blackjack dealers knew when the catwalks were unmonitored. I was once at the Desert Inn playing open blackjack. The dealer was a whizz—man, was he fast! The cards were skillfully snapped off the top of the decks (it was a hand-held two-deck game.) The cards and his hands went faster and faster. Not a rapid calculator, I had the feeling that the five or six little cards I was dealt totaled more than 21, but he paid me and swiftly swept the cards away. Now I was alerted, and damned if the next string of small cards he put in front of me didn't total 22, and yet I was paid again!
Maybe I did the wrong thing, but for one of only two times in my life I tipped the dealer before leaving the table. I threw the bastard a bone because it goes against my nature to get something for nothing. But it was most uncomfortable for me to be the unwitting "winner," boxed into being an accomplice!
A big-time baccarat scam was perpetrated on the Atlantic City casinos a few years back. A planeload of whales from Hong Kong descended on the town and in a series of lightning moves shot from casino-to-casino, making major killings at the baccarat tables.
It was their version of Hit and Run. Once they had their bounty, they got back on the plane to Hong Kong. Wags joked that it was surprising the plane could get off the ground, it was so loaded down with casino money.
The casinos were stunned. They knew something was wrong, but they couldn't put their finger on it. They went back and played and replayed the videotapes of the Asian contingent in action. The first thing they noticed was that at every casino just one of the Chinese players seemed to be the "lucky" one, and when he got the shoe, all the other players would bet heavily with him.
Finally, after endless rerunning of the videotapes someone noticed something—an unusual hand motion used by the "lucky" player with the shoe. As far as I know that's as far as the casino people got in their investigations, and I haven't heard that they ever got any money back.
In one of John Scarne's classic books on casino gambling, he relates an episode at the baccarat table in the Mafia-run Sevilla Baltimore in pre-Castro Havana. The mobster/owners scoffed at Scarne's claim that a player could cheat the casino in baccarat. Scarne bet $500 that he could do it, and with all the boys watching. Scarne asked for—and got—$10,000 in chips for the purpose of testing his boast.
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Casino – Cheating Two-way Street
Does cheating go on in the casinos? You're goddam right it does— by both the dealers and the players.
From the 1940s through the early 1960s, when the mob ran the Las Vegas casinos, often there would be a High Roller who was running a little too lucky at blackjack and apparently was on his way to breaking the bank. Then the casino would bring in a "mechanic"—a cardshark who could control the hand-held deck and grind the hotshot down to size. Today, with most casinos using shoes with multiple decks of cards, it is difficult—but not impossible—to scam the players. More about that later.
Do players cheat the casino? You're damn right they do. In most cases, however, they need the help of dishonest casino employees to pull off their scams. In the old days, if a dealer was tipped off that there were no "Eye in the Sky"—security men on catwalks peering down on the action with telescopic lenses—he might pay off an accomplice/player on every hand, no matter what the cards totaled. Later they'd get together and split the take. Today they have high-fidelity video cameras in operation all the time, and trained on most (but apparently not all) of the tables.
Let me tell you some personal experiences.
During the 1960s on the graveyard shift—the post-midnight hours—I was at the Horseshoe in downtown Vegas shooting craps. It was just me and another player, I at one end of the table, the shooter at the other end. The point was 6. I was playing the Pass Line with a black chip, backing up my bet all the way. The shooter shot wildly, sending one of the cubes spinning off into that little dark corner on the side of the dice box. The die on the table was a 3. The other die, out of sight of everyone except the stickman and me, was a 4, for a total of 7, a loser.
"Hard 6, pay the line," intoned the stickman as he deftly scooped up the out-of-sight die and put it back into play. As fast as I was paid off, that's how fast I hightailed it out of the casino. Evidently the stickman knew that no Eye-in-the-Sky was monitoring the table, or perhaps he was in cahoots with the security man on the catwalk and he was trying to enlist me in the scam for a series of hefty tips. Either way, I wanted no part of it. Scamming casinos isn't my style, and going into business with dishonest stick-men isn't for me either.
That wasn't the only time I was approached on a scam. I was sitting alone at the Sahara's casino bar on the Strip, nursing a beer, when a stranger took the stool next to me.
"You don't know me, but I know you," he began. "I'm a blackjack dealer on the graveyard shift at the Four Queens downtown and I've had you in action at my table. You look like a savvy guy who's with it, so maybe we can make some extra bucks together." I listened as he went on to outline a plan for us to work together on a 50-50 basis. He said he knew exactly when the Eye-in-the-Sky wasn't in operation. Before he could elaborate on his plan, I gulped the rest of my beer and started for the men's room.
"Thanks, but rip-offs aren't my bag," were my parting words to him.
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