The Tech Used to Catch Vegas Cheats

Black Jack writes "Interesting piece on silicon.com about the technology used in Vegas for catching the cheats. It goes into detail on a number of things from facial recognition and RFID to some CIA-developed systems for background checking staff. Surprised they're so open about what they do! ...or is this just the stuff they admit to?"

Comments

Making Your Own Tokens

[MBCook]

There was a special about a month ago on Discover or one of those channels about this guy who made his own tokens for use in casinos and how he went about doing it, including having to figure out the right metal combinations, making the dies, getting giant press machines to form them, and everything. It was facinating. The way they finally caught him was the counts of tokens would come out high (they should have 100 $50 tokens at the end of the day, they'd have 120). Then from that they were able to go find him (eventually spotted him using them in a slot machine, and when the machine didn't like a token he put in, he just kept going where anyone else would complain LOUDLY about it).

Facinating to watch.

What about online poker?

[OnceDark]

Anyone have information as to how cheating scanning relates to online poker?

I enjoy playing a hand or 2 of poker, but have been reluctant to try online poker as the chance of cheating seems very high in terms of people working in pairs and sharing information.

Anyone ever see someone accused of cheating on one of the poker sites?

Re:What about online poker?

[Danga]

I have never seen anyone cheat or get caught cheating at any online poker sites (although I am sure it has happened). However, I do play online poker a few nights a week and I believe as long as you stick to the tournaments you should be ok. I usually play in 30+ people tournaments and even if there were people working together it would be pretty difficult to do. Everyone is randomly placed at tables of 10, so you do not know if you will even be at the same table as the people you are working with. Now, I guess a large group could have an advantage, but I don't think the reward would be worth the effort.

I also know that a lot of the website operators look for playing habits, such as if you ALWAYS play with the same group of people. Now I guess there would be ways around that, such as always using new accounts, but I do not believe that occurs very often.

Stay away from the small 10 person money games and you should be alright as well as have a great time. It can be really cheap and fun entertainment. There is a tournament every friday on one site I play at which costs US$5 to join and between 1500-2000+ people sign up. So you get a few hours of poker and if you are decent usually at least get your buy in back. I have won a couple times and 1st place has been between $250-800, not bad for 5 dollar buy in. Hope that helps.

Re:What about online poker?

[MattGWU]

I was reading in this digital forensics book (think it was Computer Forensics : Incident Response Essentials) about a consulting gig one of the authors worked on (IIRC), that was for a Big Unnamed Online Poker Outfit.

Anyway, turns out the site's random number generator wasn't as random as it ought to be. They wrote a program to take advantage of that, and could see not only everybodies hands, but all the cards that would follow.

Re:What about online poker?

[whopis]

One of the more popular ones is Hold'Em Analyzer:

http://www.poker-soft.com/

It just provides the info for what you should do, doesn't actually take the action for you. But with some simple automation, you can make a bot out of it. (Look for the right messages, send the right messages to press buttons in the other program). This can get you started along those lines:

http://www.pokerbot-pro.com/

One problem though... Even though Hold'Em Analyzer advertises for places such as Party Poker and Empire Poker, it is on their list of disallowed software. If they determine you are running it, they can confiscate your bankroll. I've seen that happen.

Interestingly they don't seem to automatically check (at least not very often), but do look for it. I had a friend who had been running a poker-bot for a few months before he got an email from them telling him to quit it, followed shortly by another one telling him they were confiscating his bankroll.

My guess is that it doesn't check very often in order to limit how much you can learn very much about how it checks. Common technique used on the better-designed dongles.

Marked cards??

[Anonymous Coward]

Carol Pride, CIO of Caesars Palace, told silicon.com that many casinos favour chips and playing cards marked around the edges with invisible inks and barcodes, enabling optical monitoring of their movement and authenticity. Such a system is non-pervasive and reliable and currently far more cost-effective than RFID.

What filters are required to view these markings? I'm cool with RFID chips, but this is not at all good. Well.... It is not good until I have lenses with the right filters.

Cheating

[kevin_conaway]

There are two types of cheating. Cheating the house and cheating the other players. I have a problem with the former and not the latter. When you're playing against the house, the odds are severely stacked against you.

However, the best defense for any kind of cheating is, and always has been, a set (or multiple sets) of well trained eyes.

Internet Casinos

[Eightyford]

I'd like to know what kind of technology is used to catch cheaters on internet Casinos. Sites like Pokerstars must have some pretty complex systems in place to catch cheaters, as it seems so easy to cheat at first sight. I mean, how hard would it be to have your friends play at the same table as you while on a conference call with them? Maybe I'll try that right now actually...

Re:Internet Casinos

[Skeezix]

It's not really known how often collusion takes place on internet poker sites. Most reputable sites at least claim to monitor playing habits and look for patterns that might indicate cheating. But who really knows how often they catch people. It certainly seems like it would be in their best interest to catch cheaters. Although stricting speaking the cheats don't steal money from them since they still get a rake of every pot, if a site has a bad reputation players will be less likely to use their site and switch to a more reliable one.

They can monitor to see how often specific players play at the same table and observe the betting patterns of those players. One technique colluders will use is to gang up against a player who is going all in to increase the odds that player will lose the hand. If player X pushes all his chips in with pocket aces and 3 colluding players call with decent hands there is a good chance the aces will not hold up and one of the colluders will win the pot.

There have also been accusations of poker sites doing the cheating. By altering the odds, they can generate bigger pots and therefore bigger rakes. Take a simple example. Deal one player pocket aces and another player pocket kings. Both players are likely to push a lot of chips with those hands and make a big pot. Drop a king on the flop to give one player a set and you're really going to see sparks. The bigger the pot, the higher the rake the house gets. I'm not saying this actually occurs at most poker sites, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

Re:Fucking terrorist blackjack card counters!

[prgrmr]

The simplest card counding method:

Start at zero when the dealer uses a new deck
+1 for a 10 or face card
-1 for every card below 10


When the count is -5 to +5, bet nominal
When the count is below -5 bet higher
When the count is above +5 bet lower, or bet nominal, depending on how much you want to give away

The most difficult part is catching everyone's cards at the end of the hand to get the count for the next hand. There are also doubling down rules that add to the complexity, but I don't have the matrix for that with me.

Caveat Emptor. This is easiest to do when you are playing alone against the dealer, but also the easiest to detect as well.

RFID's a great idea

[dlt074]

back when i worked in a casino i had this guy buy in for a couple hundred bucks on a crap game. i was handing the money into the box person and was joking that the money looked fake. he thought i was serious and so looked at it a little more then i had. turns out it was counterfeit and security pulled the guy off the game. turns out after talking to him and running back the tape, he was passed the bogus money from our our cash cage!

the RFID in the chips is a good idea. we once had some bogus 100's come in one afternoon and everyone knew about them but i was still finding them a day later in "clean" banks. if they were all RFID'd you could scan a whole bank and see if it matches what you have down on paper as the proper amount. short a few 100 then there must be some bogus chips in there someplace better take a good long look.

as far as the cheating goes. the only place it's even worth trying is on a crap game with two of the dealers in on it. when the stick person is watching the dealer who's in on it, that's when you pass off a stack of chips. nothing too high for you might call attention, maybe $100.00.you only do a few hundred a night on a BUSY game other wise they will spot you quick, greed is bad. craps is a very verbal game, unlike BJ where everything is done with hand gestures and easy for servailance to watch. in the years that i dealt craps never did servailance call down and ask about a payout we made or about any of the action on the game. it moves too fast and is too verbal for them to know what's going on. if you have a busy game and no box person or floor watching, you could very easy hand off a "payout" that was not legit and nobody would ask or care. there were many many times where i would book a bet verbaly without seeing the actual money on the table and the dice would roll and the person would either win or lose and they would payup or i'd pay them and there was NO money any where to be seen before that moment for the camera. which is why you are always nice to the crap dealer in front of you and watch what you joke around about, i've booked bets that people were joking about, at that point they pay up or they get escorted out of the casino. that was always my favorite way to get rid of people that pissed me off.

Re:Who's the cheat?

[richmaine]

There are plenty of good reasons to go to Vegas for business meetings. Good airline connections, decent hotels at reasonable rates. Good food. All subsidized by those fools who go there and leave their money on the tables.

Now if you go there to gamble, that's a different matter. But other people should continue to do that in order to keep subsidizing my meetings. :-)

Re:Who's the cheat?

[brianinswfla]

Who's calling who a cheat? They can change the take percentage on their slot machines from the other side of the country? Not taking enough money and giving away to many winnings? Click the mouse a couple of times and fix that.

I worked at a casino in Louisiana for about 6 years and still have relatives that work there. The only way to change the hold percentage is by changing the program chip which is locked down and taped in the presence of the state police. Get caught with the tape broken and the casino pays lots of fines. It's been awhile so perhaps technology has changed but I doubt what you're suggesting is happening, at least not in Louisiana.

Also used to catch legitamite gamblers

[hellfire]

Under law it's illegal to tamper with slot machines, use slugs, play with tampered cards, etc. It's also quasi-illegal to do things like posting, which means changing your bet after the game has started. There are tons of gambler cheats.

The most common "cheat" which isn't a cheat, however, is card counting in Black Jack. Casinos have been known to harass and eject gamblers who are expert card counters. The process is not illegal but they are labelled as cheats anyway. Card counting is little more than being really good at math and concentration and coming up with a consistent pattern. Casinos don't appreciate it because most games have an automatic "profit margin." Roulette, for example, has lots of ways to bet, but if you were to down the same amount of money on every number, you'd end up with winnings of only 80-90% of what you initially put down, essentially losing money. Mathematically they are designed to win unless you cheat.

Blackjack is not the same. You can beat blackjack because the odds say if you play things right, you can come out on top even in the long run. That's why so many organizations have popped up in the past few decades running "black jack" companies. They are made up of math wizzes who train at card counting.

Then the casinos find them, repeatedly showing up, figure out they are counting cards, and then eject them from the casino. It's completely legal so they can't arrest you, but because it's a private company they can refuse your business and ban you from their business, and future excursions to their casino would be considered trespassing.

It's pretty scummy, though I must say it's an improvement over getting your knee caps shot off for being a good poker player, like in the good old mob days.

They nailed Carmack..

[xTK-421x]

JC made a post talking about how the casinos nailed him for card counting:

A few of us took a couple days off in vegas this weekend. After about ten hours at the tables over friday and saturday, I got a tap on the shoulder...

Three men in dark suits introduced themselves and explained that I was welcome to play any other game in the casino, but I am not allowed to play blackjack anymore.

Ah well, I guess my blackjack days are over. I was actually down a bit for the day when they booted me, but I made +$32k over five trips to vegas in the past two years or so.

Taken from here: http://doom-ed.com/blog/category/doom-ed/john-carm ack/

Hacking Las Vegas

[Digital_Quartz]

Here's an older article from Wired on just the opposite; a group of students who sucessfully hacked vegas;

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vegas_pr. html

It's an older article, but it's a good read.

Re:Not giving much away

[cayenne8]

"RFID has enough data capacity for each RFID tag to be uniquely identifiable and cryptographically signed. Think PGP. Even if an attacker could clone chips atom-for-atom, once the system detects a duplicate signature, it can generate an alert."

I'm wondering if they'll honor a chip if say, the RFID is broken, or disabled? Say you were a card counter...took all your chips with you home...microwaved them, and then brought them in to play with. They couldn't track your variance in bets with those chips could they? Could they refuse to pay a chip that was valid, but, the RFID wasn't working?

Don't For a MOMENT Think That Casinos Don't Cheat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a programmer and some years back I worked in a LARGE well known Nevada Casino chain - in MIS. One of my projects involved the databases that tracked big rollers , another involved the databases that tracked which slot machines had hit and for what amounts. A few interesting points:

1. Slot machines are individually set to return a certan percentage of money put in.

2. The casino KNOWS which slot machines have hot and which have not hit and which are WAY behind their expected hit

3. The high money machines ($5 and up) are set to hit at a MUCH higher rate then penny through nickle machines (like 3-4 times more).

4. As I browsed through the database of people who had won money from slots I noticed that certain names came up MUCH more often then anyone else. And the names usually had different SSNs attached (usually differring by 1 or 2 nubers) but were obviously the same people. I brught this to the attention of the VP of the Casino - he pooh-poohed away the interesting info and I was advised that this was no problem and I should spen my analysis time elsewhere.

Soooo.... casino's know which machines are "ripe" to hit (statisticaly) and certain "anonymous" people get a lot more money (think millions) then anyone else.

Of course it smells. Casinos cheat you - not as bad as the lottery (at least you get a buffet out of it) but don't for one momenty think they're not as crooked as as WorldCom .

On the plus side teh Italian guys who ran the place DID are wearing some pretty nice suits these days...

Confessions of a small time "cheater"

[interstellar_donkey]

Back in '99-00 I was spending a lot of time at Las Vegas casinos. At the peak, I was visiting every other weekend, and I was card counting. Unlike the sensational stories popularized in the media, I was not a "big time" gambler. I was not doing this for a living, and I wasn't do it to strike it rich; I was doing it for fun.

Typically, I'd go out there with $500, find a place with 2 deck blackjack (single deck in true form doesn't exist... the places that advertise it typically cut the deck so deep that you'll only get two hands out of each shuffle), and spend 40-50 hours over the weekend playing. At lower limit tables, even playing perfectly, that doesn't amount to much. On average, with that $500 stake, I'd live with about $700 in my pocket, up $200 for the weekend. This works out to about $5 an hour, less then minimum wage.

Sometimes, if I was lucky, I'd come out with more, but I didn't always win. There were times where I'd leave with 5 crisp $100 in my pocket and return home with nothing but a few good stories.

My favorite experience was at the Excalibur. One night, while playing low limit blackjack an older man sat down at my table. He was flanked on both sides by attractive women nearly half his age, and he was really, really drunk. He pulled a giant wad from his pocket of tightly rolled $100 bills, peeled off a few of them and laid them on the table. The dealer picked them up and said "Changing 300", to which this man yelled "no, damnit I don't want any chips that's my bet!" "money plays".

He lost. He did it again. He lost. When he would win, he'd throw his winnings back on the table and give them back to the casino. Chips, he explained loudly, were "unlucky". His play was horrible; he'd hit a 16 with a 5 showing, double down on an 8 against an Ace. Meanwhile, I just sat there quietly plunking down my $5 bets, occasionally raising them to $10 or $15 when the count was good. This guy was attracting so much attention from the casino staff that my small potato attempt at card counting (which wasn't on that night anyway) went by unnoticed.

At one point, he put $800 down on the table. This was a min $5, max bet $500. "I'm sorry sir, but the maximum bet here is $500". Almost instantly, the pit boss swooped down said "This man can bet as much money as he likes". Of course; this man was a drunken idiot trying to impress the those two woman (I don't know if they were prostitutes or what) by loosing as much money as he could. During the 45 minutes or so he was there, he lost about $20 grand. After that fat roll of $100s were gone, he got up with the help of his lady friends and stumbled out of the casino with a big grin on his face.

I pretty much stopped playing seriously after three losing trips in a row. Now when I get to Nevada I might spend a few hours at the tables, but the all night sessions are a thing of the past. To this day, I still don't consider myself a "cheater"

Something to keep in mind

[TheLink]

Casino chips are one way to carry and transfer lots of money.

Thing is with RFID is casino chips are no longer going to be as anonymous as they used to be. You'll know that a particular bunch of USD1 million in chips has been passed from one person to someone else.

I wonder whether there's more behind this story than just catching cheats.