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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?"
Facinating to watch.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Catching an employee in the counting room taking his work home with him or a crooked dealer is all well and good, but card counting and varying your bet amount isn't cheating, it's playing shrewdly within the rules. This is where the casinos, IMO, are going over the top with the spying.
While the casinos might not want to let every detail out, they certainly want people to know if they have impressive anti-cheating capabilities. The casinos would prefer you didn't do X in the first place than catch you doing X, and if you're aware that they can catch you doing X, they've solved a lot of their problem right there...
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...
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FTA:
On a behavioural level such intelligence could also flag up 'one to watch' - for example a player laying $5 bets while sitting with $100,000 of chips in his or her pocket. This is certainly no cause for concern in its own right but such behaviour would in the past have caught notorious card counters waiting for the odds to fall in their favour or getting their eye in and honing a system.
While I will agree with the casinos' rights as a business to ask ANYONE to leave their casino for whatever reason, I just want to point out to everyone that card counting is NOT cheating and that people who in engage in card counting are simply using the casino rules and game's strategy to their best advantage. Both Las Vegas and Reno gambling laws state that cheating is defined as manipulating the rules of the game, or using devices to get around the rules of the game, not using the rules to your advantage, thus card counting is not illegal according to Nevada state laws (and many, if not all other state laws as well).
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
It shoudln't suprise you. It's the same reason the police officers drive around in very obvioulsy marked cars while on patrol. (Except for undercover cars of course, but they are doing a different type of work) While driving for instance, when you see a policeman pull up behind your car the first thing that comes to my mind at least is some form of "am I doing anything wrong at this point in time?" and that's kind of the effect they're after. They want you to know they are there and patroling hopefully keeping you from doing something you shouldn't because you just saw a cop.
I think the same thing goes for a Casino owner. The more that you know about the measures they are using to keep you away, the more likely you are not to try to cheat in the first place. There is also a show on TV currently on Court TV called The Takedown. It's a team of prior casino cheats and thieves that are now hired to go and test the security in casinos by beating them at their game. Interesting show, even more interesting concepts.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
Now how about catching some of the cheaters in my engineering classes?
Don't worry. They'll be caught in the real world when the buildings they design collapse, or the machine they design breaks apart and kills someone, or when they can't design a functioning 4-bit comparator.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
THe id in an RFID would have to match the database, and known not to be in play (if the same id is supposed to be in slot machine 3 and 5, one is a fake).
Its not about making it impossible, its about making it extremely hard.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
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.
No, they can't. First of all that's illegal, and is tracked. Second the machines simply aren't built to allow that. Slot machine have a locked "theoretical hold" value which is the theoretical long term amount that the machine will retain as a percentage of turnover. It is fixed, tracked and cannot be changed - certainly not at the click of the mouse.
What a casino can and will do is lay out the machines on the floor with theoretical hold as a consideration. That is, they will endeavour to put a bank of relatively low hold nickel or dime machines near the entrance (not at the entrance mind you, the machine right at the front will be dollar machines or the like: they want casual gamblers wandering by to play the high stake slots) so you get to hear the sound of people winning. The rest of the floor layout is just as carefully designed, taking into account the theoretical hold, popularity of the game type, denomination of the game, quality of the floor space (harder to quantify), and so on to maximise profit. I used to work in the R&D department for a software company that helped casinos do this more effectively, so believe me, I know how exacting they are.
Jedidiah.
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