Slashdot Mirror
Two Years In Prison For Using Infrared Contact Lenses To Cheat At Poker
dmfinn writes "It was back in 2011 when Stefano Ampollini and two accomplices cheated a French casino out of over €90,000 thanks to the help of Chinese-made infrared contact lenses. According to French authorities, Ampollini and two casino workers marked cards using an invisible liquid that would be picked up by the infrared lenses, which Ampollini then used to read his competitors' cards. Though the contacts themselves cost over €2,000, the crew managed to take €71,000 in their first night. However, the trio was finally caught when a lawyer working for the casino became suspicious after Ampollini folded with an unbelievably good hand, which suggested he knew the croupier's cards. This week, a French court sentenced Ampollini to two years in prison and a €100,000 fine. His main accomplice was handed an even harsher sentence; he was forced to pay the same fine and given a 36-month sentence. It appears, despite their best efforts and advanced tactics, that the men were still unable to beat the house without raising significant alarms. So, at least for now, it seems modern technology still can't simulate good old 'luck.'"
You're leaving out something really important and the real reason that he got caught: the casino was cheating too. Otherwise they wouldn't know that he had good cards when he folded. When he, or anyone else, folds, they just throw in their cards face down and those cards are not exposed for all players to see. The casino can't legitimately claim that they know he was cheating because he folded on good hands unless they were cheating and knew what his hands were.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Shut up and take my money!
How do you make these? You need something that will convert a frequency our eyes can't detect, in your focal plane (it's a contact lens) into something you can detect without changing direction of the light wave. Never mind they cost allegedly $2000 I want to know what the science behind them is.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The only surprising thing in this story is that casinos don't have infra-red cameras.
No sig today...
So I get modded down for knowing actual facts about the casino industry?
I get modded down for bothering to find out that the player was cheating at a house game (Caribbean Stud Poker) rather than a player vs player game like Texas Holdem?
I don't see why using CCTV to monitor a house game where one player is winning heavily would count as the "casino cheating". Does anybody have an explanation?
In such a poker game, the player does not willing expose his cards for either a spectator or a casino camera to see. If that happened then someone else sitting at the table would have a team of accomplices watching everyone's hands and giving pre-arranged signals. Poker is not played with spectators watching all of the cards in any player's hand. Even casino cameras are generally overhead watching the cards to insure that none leave the table or are added, but players wouldn't play if they believed that the casino could read their cards when they took a well guarded glimpse of their dealt hand. Too much chance for a player to be cheated by the cameras if that could happen, as it would be extremely easy to signal to a house player or shill and win hands. No, if the casino knew what was in his hands they were cheating. Most likely they knew because the controlled the deal and dealt him some very good hands, expecting him to bet big and then lose to better hands they dealt themselves. When that didn't work they suspected that they were not the only ones cheating.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Even aimbots quickly included code to intentionally miss a shot every now and then.
but that's a terrible method of hiding an aimbot.. what gives them away isn't high accuracy, but inhuman movements.. the best way to hide it is to not have it aim for you, but only to have it shoot for you when you mouse over a target yourself.
source: i wrote hacks for cs and cheated in the highest ranks of CAL without ever being suspected let alone caught.
Standard deviation is an elementary statistic applicable mainly to normal populations. The beauty of stats is that many quantities (they're all technically called "statistics") can be monitored, and _all_ of them converge simultaneously to their distributional values due to the law of large numbers. Detecting deviations from the expected distribution is therefore a matter of monitoring several quantities simultaneously. In most cases, these will be of the Neyman Pearson variety, or approximations thereof, if you care to know.
Yes actually.
Currently most casinos have 1080P 120fps broadcast quality security cameras on the tables. They can see the slightest thing and zoom in to check the sex on the fly that just landed.
They also have cameras UNDER the table edge watching you if you try to hand off something to someone sitting next to you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, high limit casino poker games do not use glass tables or have cameras on them. That is strictly a television thing.
Also of note is that high limit casino poker games are often filled with players that are playing quite badly. The phenomena is sort of based on the players "threshold of pain" when it comes to what limit they are playing. There are several common types of players that sit in the highest stakes game in a public poker room but cannot play well for long period of time precisely because they are in that particular game.
The first common type is the player with a very big ego that cannot admit to themselves or let others know that the game is too large for their bankroll: Every time they lose a pot it hurts like a motherfucker because they cannot afford it, leading to them going on tilt or otherwise making decisions that arent even an approximation of optimal.
The second common type is the player that has an obscene amount of money in the bank. They are in the largest game in the room because there isnt a larger game in the room. Nothing that happens in the game will meaningfully effect their lives in any way, so sooner or later they start gambling-it-up because thats a lot funner than trying to play a solid game of poker when the results dont really matter.
As far as this story goes.. these guys werent playing actual poker.. they were playing a house game.
"His name was James Damore."
By definition, people can't see infrared. If they could, it would be "red".