Slashdot Mirror
CCTV Hack Takes Casino For $33 Million
iComp writes "A sophisticated scheme to use a casino's own security systems against it has netted scammers $33 million in a high-stakes poker game after they were able to gain a crucial advantage by seeing the opposition's cards. The team used a high-rolling accomplice from overseas who was known to spend large amounts while gambling at Australia's biggest casino, the Crown in Melbourne, according to the Herald Sun. He and his family checked into the Crown and were accommodated in one of its $30,000-a-night villas. The player then joined a private high-stakes poker game in a private suite. At the same time, an unnamed person got access to the casino's CCTV systems in the poker room and fed the information he gleaned back to the player via a wireless link. Over the course of eight hands the team fleeced the opposition to the tune of $33 million."
the casino only loses it's reputation in this situation. the monetary losers are the ones sitting across from him on the poker table.
It was a private poker game in a private suite. The casino didn't lose $33 million, the other players lost $33 million. The casino made money (they take a cut from every game).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The house just provides a table to play at and charges based on the bets placed. So the only people fleeced here were the other players.
Casinos operate within things called laws. Yes, they have a mathematical edge in the long run, but this is a known factor (and in the UK at least, the long term odds have to be published). What these people did is illegal, meaning it breaks those laws (specifically, the ones about using a "device" to assist you - eg you can count cards if you want, that's perfectly OK, but you can't use a smartphone app to do it). Nobody is forced to go to casinos, and if anybody is seriously surprised that the odds favour the house then they probably shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a table on the grounds that they don't have sufficient mental faculties to understand what they're doing.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
" got access to the casino's CCTV systems in the poker room and fed the information he gleaned back to the player via a wireless link" Who's to say the casinos don't do this themselves on a daily basis? The fact that this was possible at all makes me question the frequency of such an 'exploit', and not only that, the fact that the opposing players cards were 'readable by security camera' is something that should worry pretty much everyone
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
33 mil in eight hands? Wow...more than 4 mil per hand?
I must assume that at least some of the people around the table will have faster and more extreme ways to recover their cash and/or pride than regular law enforcement. Plus the dude was dumb enough to check in with his family?
Hope they live long enough to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. Mind you, one could argue that taking 33 mil from people who are clearly prepared to gamble it away is less immoral than mugging a tramp...
I think the real story here is that a handful of people had $33 Million to blow on a card game while others are dying on the street, and there wasn't a pitch fork and torch wielding rebellion.
It's typically legal to count cards, however the house isn't legally required to let you do so. And that's even if you aren't using mechanical assistance. Typically if they catch you doing it, the pit boss will come over and switch things up, and if that doesn't work they'll eject you from the casino or ask that you not play any more blackjack.
Which is understandable, blackjack only gives the house about a .5% edge over the player with normal play, and counting cards can easily change the house into operating at a loss.
But, the fact that things are stacked in the house's favor and that the house keeps it that way is dubious ethically speaking. Most players are not in any position to understand that to any appreciable degree.
I'll never understand that. How are you supposed to play, if not by counting cards on your mind to decide what's your best bet? Just speak nonsense at random times just to see if you win? And how can they know you're counting cards? It's insane.
The difference is that if you're counting cards, you're varying your bets so that you're betting more when you're more likely to get a good hand and less when you're less likely to.
And yeah, they've got a pretty good idea as to who is and isn't counting cards. The industry puts a ton of money into figuring that out as they can easily lose tons of money to card counters if they don't. Usually, they're looking at things like bet history, rate at which the player is playing and such, often times the pit boss will go over and chat you up if they think you're card counting, to try and distract you a bit.
The only part of the casino where they ever permit people to be profitable without being lucky, is the slots. The slots will have the pay schedule on the front of the machine, and sometimes you find some machines where they're set to pay out more than they take in. They'll usually be up front near the door to try and entice suckers to come and gamble. And they're usually video poker where if you play perfectly, you can expect a small profit over time.
Protect your cards.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Can you loose that autism?
"Loose" it on whom? And how?
I am not a crackpot.
I haven't read the article so I'm not sure of the details, but you generally don't need to be able to read all the cards. Lots of cards are distinguishable from each other. An 8 for instance looks nothing like an Ace. A face card can easily be distinguished from a regular card. You could tell if the card was black or red even if you couldn't see the suite.
With Texas holdem and other community card games, it's easier to see the important details. Does he have a pair? Does he have a flush? A straight? An Ace or a face card? You could at least have some confidence of what they don't have.
How can they tell? Because you're winning - and also because of your betting patterns. The original MIT Bringing Down The House guys got rumbled fairly quickly because of their betting patterns, so they switched to using a low-stakes gambler to do the counting who would continue to lose when the odds were in his/her favour, and they would discretely signal an accomplice to come in and bet big when this happened.
These days casinos combat it by using multiple decks of cards in a shoe which are changed before they've run through enough of them to give a good statistical idea of the remaining contents.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Mind you, one could argue that taking 33 mil from people who are clearly prepared to gamble it away is less immoral than mugging a tramp...
And clearly more profitable.
I am not a crackpot.
Because the casino's security network was used to perpetrate the cheat, the casino has liability. Also, when cheated players howl, houses have to make up the cheat-losses to proof that they were not partners in the scam. This is one of the reasons casinos pay top-drawer card-sharpers to scan and play, especially where unnatural luck appears, especially against the house, but also for, for public relations.
High-stakes players are of high value to casinos, even in rent-a-table poker games, because the house's collects a percentage of the stakes, just as auctions do of the knock-down (sale) price.
Not true, the fact of the matter is that card counting depends upon there being relatively large number of cards to function correctly. If you were trying to count against a single deck, you wouldn't see enough hands in order to have any meaningful impact on the cards.
That's ridiculous. The reason they use multi-deck shoes is to increase the difficulty of counting cards. If they were only dealing with 52, it would be relatively easy for a normal person to count cards according to a simple system and watch as the odds turned for or against them and increase or reduce their bets or change the level at which they stay. Also, if they use 12-deck shoes, it's impossible for a player to determine when the casino isn't playing with full decks.
So, who lost more? The suckers around the table lost $33M. The casino lost the reputation that convinces people to drop $33M on their poker tables *every single day*. In the long run, I bet this is far more than a $33M loss for the casino: they've just lost their fishing seat next to a billion-dollar-a-year cash river from high rollers.
I am surprised that no one has commented on the fact that this is another case of a backdoor that was intended for the use of whitehats being commandeered by blackhats. When you build backdoors into systems you weaken security.
Another, really amazing story along those lines is the cell-phone wire-tapping of greece during the months before the last olympics games in athens. The system was designed with a wire-tapping backdoor, greece didn't even purchase that feature when they bought the switches, but the blackhats were able to turn it on and listen in to the phone calls of the mayor of athens and the prime minister of greece.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
i think it is safe to say that Google Glass won't be allowed in any casino past the front doors
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not true, the fact of the matter is that card counting depends upon there being relatively large number of cards to function correctly. If you were trying to count against a single deck, you wouldn't see enough hands in order to have any meaningful impact on the cards.
That's ridiculous. The reason they use multi-deck shoes is to increase the difficulty of counting cards. If they were only dealing with 52, it would be relatively easy for a normal person to count cards according to a simple system and watch as the odds turned for or against them and increase or reduce their bets or change the level at which they stay. Also, if they use 12-deck shoes, it's impossible for a player to determine when the casino isn't playing with full decks.
It doesn't increase the difficulty of counting cards at all. But, it does decrease the variance. Card counting involves placing higher bets when there are a significantly higher than average number of 10's, face cards and aces in the deck than 2-6's. With a small number of decks, this situation occurs much more frequently than with a larger number of decks. Player's can't easily determine whether or not they are playing with a full deck even when there is only one deck because they do not deal all the way down to the last card, and they also burn a card at the beginning. A typical card counting scheme involves each card having a value of either -1, 0 or +1. For example, card 2-6 might be +1, and 10's, face cards and Aces would be -1. You just keep track of a running total of the count. But usually, that number is pretty close to zero because the cards tend to cancel each other out. I think the highest count I ever saw was like +15. You can teach yourself to count cards pretty easily. If you are good at it, with say a $15 hand minimum bet you can have a positive expected value. The problem is it will usually be something like $250 plus or minus $2000 or something. So, in the end, you need to have a lot of capital in order to have a hope of beating the variance. Meanwhile, you are likely to be detected and banned.
Ok, but you had better not have any possessions or anything other than bare subsistence yourself. If I find out you have incredible luxuries like cars or computers when people are starving, I shall judge you to be immoral.
Also, many tables use a continuous shuffle shoe. At the end of each hand the cards are placed back in the shoe which is continuously shuffling. Making the that table completely useless to a counter.
The only part of the casino where they ever permit people to be profitable without being lucky, is the slots. The slots will have the pay schedule on the front of the machine, and sometimes you find some machines where they're set to pay out more than they take in. They'll usually be up front near the door to try and entice suckers to come and gamble. And they're usually video poker where if you play perfectly, you can expect a small profit over time.
(disclaimer: I work in the gaming industry)
That might be true in unregulated or poorly regulated gaming markets. Some Indian gaming casinos have no state oversight.
However, in the larger markets, such as here in Las Vegas it is completely a myth that casinos will put the "looser" machines near the door, end of the aisles, etc.
They are disallowed from changing the odds of it "hitting" and they will NEVER allow a machine on the floor that pays out more than it takes in. And they don't need to...people come in play them regardless if someone near the door hits.
Also, slots are about the worst in terms of probability.
And they're usually video poker where if you play perfectly, you can expect a small profit over time.
Um...no. But the Casino can expect to make a large profit over time.
There isn't really anything like "play perfectly" but you might "get lucky" once in a while and enjoy some small, near term profit. Over the long term, you'll still lose overall.
If it didn't work that way, casinos wouldn't operate them.
This is plain wrong. On standard video slot machines every single game has a random result, there is no 'memory' of past games in order to reach a certain payout percentage. There are jurisdictions and game types who do/did this (eg UK AWP, Germany street market) but in typical (Las Vegas style) casinos the hold is defind by the math of the game and is only true for large numbers of games played. A casino game can be way over or under the theoretical payout percentage even after many games played, because it is - (pseudo) random. This is tested and certified by global gaming labs like GLI and others.
Perfect strategy in video poker is not to play.
Not quite, you can get payout of 100.7% if you pick the right machine and strategy. Add on comps and free drinks, and you can end up well ahead. Not my idea of a good time, but some people love that.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I disagree with this. The casino has to pay for space, pay for equipment, pay for materials, pay for utilities (lighting/heating/cooling/water/sewer/garbage), pay for staff, provide profit to investors, etc. If the games were perfectly 50/50, it is an absolute certainty that the house would lose money. In that situation, it would be the players taking advantage of the house.
Secondly, name a business that isn't some kind of investor scam, where investors are absolutely certain to lose money (and yes, there are stupid ideas that get funded, but that's different from a scam because still, people (unwisely) expect that a profit can be made). A casino that is absolutely guaranteed to lose money, obviously would give a lousy return on investment, and would never be built because there would be no investors.
I disagree with this too. The fact that the house has an edge is so widely understood, it has made it into colloquial phrases such as "you can't beat the house" or "the house always wins."
Of course, there are other ways to run a casino and I could imagine one with 50/50 games, but you're parking spot would probably cost $100/hr, a coke would cost $10, etc. etc. And who knows, people might flock to that. But having a house edge on games is really similar to a restaurant charging $1.50 for a cup of coffee that costs $0.10 in materials (coffee grounds) to make -- because you aren't just paying for the coffee in a restaurant: you're paying for a place to drink it in, someone to make it, someone to serve it, someone to wash the cup, someone to wipe down the table, the table, the cup, the dishwasher, etc. etc..
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
A casino game can be way over or under the theoretical payout percentage
Yes, with one machine the payout can vary wildly from day to day but with a large casino such as crown (2500 machines, 24hrs a day) the daily variance from 15% will be pretty close to zero.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.