Over the course of selling my upcoming e-book Advantage Players, I spoke on the latest World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas. The speech was to a room full of people that monitor video games for casinos, ensuring that no person (gamers, sellers, pit-bosses, whoever) is gaining any edge (legally or in any other case) that the home doesn’t need them to have.
Prior to me hitting the stage, Maria Konnikova was up there giving a chat of her personal. Konnikova, writer of The Biggest Bluff, a unbelievable e-book about Erik Seidel coaching her to turn into a talented match poker winner.
Her subsequent e-book is about dishonest.
Conference attendees care deeply about sharps who illicitly recover from on on line casino video games, resembling blackjack and baccarat. But Konnikova clearly has a mushy spot for poker, and he or she requested the group of recreation safety specialists what number of of them fear about dishonest on the Texas maintain ‘em desk.
Hardly any fingers bought raised.
After all, they deal with losses within the pit – which add as much as damage casinos. They don’t care as a lot concerning the losses to the gamers.
The response led Konnikova to level out that poker-room dishonest is prevalent and that the assaults, coming from a number of fronts, can bleed into pit video games.
She revealed that on the poker desk, there are marked playing cards, hidden cameras (typically embedded in high-tech eyewear), and compliant sellers who merely must pitch the playing cards somewhat bit excessive to ensure that recreation integrity to interrupt down.
Curiosity piqued, a pair days later, I reached out to former Card Player columnist Houston Curtis of kardsharp.com, a dishonest professional and former high-stakes participant, who, final 12 months, logged allegations about sellers taking part in it crooked in a Texas on line casino.
After listening to the alarm bells sounded by Konnikova, I puzzled the place Curtis sees the present state of nefarious poker video games. He advised me it’s not an ideal state of affairs.
For essentially the most blatant offenders, Curtis appears to be like towards jurisdictions the place poker is a grey space enterprise.
“You play at your own risk in Texas,” he stated, providing an instance. “They don’t have regulations. It really is the Wild West.”
Curtis maintains that bosses working rogue casinos in Texas and past carry among the blame.
“They tend to look the other way,” stated Curtis. “Whoever draws the action also draws the cheaters. And the casinos want the action. Some casinos [in less than fully regulated areas] operate legally, taking advantage of loopholes in the law, and then they take illegal rakes. It can be hard to tell which place is on the level and which is not.”
As to what gamers in unscrupulous casinos must cope with, Curtis reeled off a spread of shady strikes.
“There are card mechanics who fix the games, rigged decks that get swapped in and out, and shuffling machines that have been tampered with. They use all kinds of different methods.”
Curtis warns that it’s stunningly straightforward for issues to go south, with the chances of profitable immediately stacked in opposition to those that play on the sq..
“All you need is a staff that is asleep or one person on the inside who has been corrupted,” he stated, recalling a latest instance of a rip-off that was profitable till the perpetrators bought made – and that solely occurred as a result of sheer ineptitude.
“One guy was doing a very poor push-through shuffle. You riffle the two packets of cards together. Then you push one all the way through and pull it apart. So, it doesn’t get riffled at all.”
Curtis and Konnikova see no signal of roguish conduct slowing down. Considering that, Curtis provides defensive recommendation for scrupulous gamers who could also be at risk of getting cheated by a card mechanic.
“Don’t forget, you can always get a reshuffle. If you see something suspicious call for the floor man to shut it down.”
It (type of) works.
“I have spoken to a floor person at Legends,” a Texas casino where dealer-cheating is alleged to have transpired, Sean Deeb posted last year on TwitterX. “Multiple dealers were fired for messing with the decks, but the dealers were not prosecuted or outed, so they can go do it elsewhere.”
And, as Curtis sees issues progressing on the dishonest entrance, they may.
“Bottom line,” he stated, “anywhere people can get away with cheating, they’ll try to.”
Michael Kaplan is a journalist primarily based in New York City. He is the writer of 5 books (“The Advantage Players” out quickly) and has labored for publications that embody Wired, GQ and the New York Post. He has written extensively on expertise, playing, and enterprise — with a selected curiosity in spots the place all three intersect. His article on Kelly “Baccarat Machine” Sun and Phil Ivey is at the moment in improvement as a characteristic movie.
