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Two Years In Prison For Using Infrared Contact Lenses To Cheat At Poker

Posted by Soulskill on from the somebody-warn-levar-burton dept.

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.'"

32 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. They were greedy by bartron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Be greedy and you raise suspicion. If you have a hand that you would consider a winning hand under normal circumstances then you play it, regardless if you know you will lose. Start doing impossible or improbable moves and you may as well be wearing a huge neon arrow sign on your head.

    1. Re:They were greedy by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The only surprising thing in this story is that casinos don't have infra-red cameras.

      --
      No sig today...
    2. Re:They were greedy by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This. Every cheater knows that to stay undetected, you can't win too often. Even aimbots quickly included code to intentionally miss a shot every now and then.

      There are only two ways to get away with stealing money at a casino. One is to remain within the margin if probability - appear to be lucky, but not impossibly lucky. Either win some, lose some, with a total just slightly in your favour, or lose mostly, but then get the jackpot and stop playing after that. Make it a huge thing. Celebrate, rent a limo, marry a stranger, whatever. Don't pocket it and vanish, that'll be crazy suspicious.

      Oh, the second way. That is, of course, to own the casino.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    3. Re:They were greedy by jandersen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Greedy? I suppose so. But it has always struck me as a funny way to look at things, when casinoes call people cheaters; they are the ones who invite people to come and throw their money out against overwhelming odds: "You MIGHT win" - yeah, and all the air molecules in the room might suddenly end up in one corner. After all, it is only probability that keeps it from happening.

      The standard argument one always hears is that "Nobody forces people go and be stupid". All that means, IMO, is that some people don't have the backbone to stand up for decency.

    4. Re:They were greedy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:They were greedy by cruff · · Score: 3, Informative

      Running a Google search on "infrared contact lens" turns up quite a few videos and sites devoted to "gambling tricks" that shows the backs of the cards are marked with rather large letters, numbers and symbols revealing which card is printed on the obverse side.

    6. Re:They were greedy by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The standard argument one always hears is that "Nobody forces people go and be stupid".

      Yep. It pretty much is a discussion ender.

      All that means, IMO, is that some people don't have the backbone to stand up for decency.

      Or that "decency" of your sort is worthless. As I see it, I live in a mostly free country. That means people have the freedom to make bad decisions. And lo and behold, they do indeed make bad decisions. Maybe you should do something about the weather while you're at it.

    7. Re:They were greedy by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    8. Re:They were greedy by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.
    9. Re:They were greedy by Cryacin · · Score: 4, Funny

      And we're worried about the TSA checking out our wives panties?

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    10. Re:They were greedy by Oligonicella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yep. Glaringly obvious difference is a casino owns their own house. Unless of course, you believe the government owns the country and not the other way 'round.

    11. Re:They were greedy by TheCarp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That sounds very plausible. I bet a real player has a firing solution on a target far more often than he actually realizes it. Though knowing the technique does give some ideas on how to catch it.

      > source: i wrote hacks for cs and cheated in the highest ranks of CAL without ever being suspected let alone caught.

      Which I think brings up one of the reason casinos attract cheats beyond the money. Cheating and winning is a game too. In fact, its really no different from a bluff, you are not playing by the same rules, but you want to look like you are. However, in a casino, you have to do it while sitting in front of real people. I have to imagine that is a rush and a half....which like bluffing.... is also why so few can really do it well consistently.

      If your motivation is being the best cheater.... then no amount of bitching about how it ruins the game for the rest of us is going to help.

      Amusingly, I have a relative who is um I think almost 14 now. He started running cheats in games a couple of years ago after some cheater did something and convinced a bunch of other people he was the one running cheats. So they banned him and he started googling to figure out what they were talking about! Next thing you know, he is griefing himself.

      Ahhhh kids.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    12. Re:They were greedy by stenvar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      By definition, people can't see infrared. If they could, it would be "red".

  2. Just avoid being stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    On the other hand, how did the "lawyer working for the casino" know the hand that the crook folded with? That sounds like we are talking about crooks on both sides. An important part of poker is that folding does not expose your betting strategy.

    1. Re: Just avoid being stupid by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How about this: RTFA and as usual it answers all of your questions and more...

    2. Re: Just avoid being stupid by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

      My other question is how did they figure out he was using special contacts? I feel like he could have easily bluffed his way out of this.

      (According to the article) once the casino got suspicious, they called the betting police (whatever those are), who used telephone surveillance to figure out how they had cheated.

      So once you raise suspicions, you need to avoid surveillance.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Outliers and out and out liars... by DontScotty · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you find a way to game the gaming system, you will appear as an anomaly.

    And, anomaly detection will highlight you as such.

    Winning at a game of chance over a long enough sample period? Cheating is more probable than an improbable string of luck.

    The only effective way to steal is to steal from people who are powerless to detect it, powerless to stop it, or weak enough in both areas.

    Can you win the day at a casino? YES.

    Can you win during your entire life? YES, considering your life will probably be forfeit when you've stolen too much from the wrong people.

    1. Re:Outliers and out and out liars... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Poker is a bit more than 'a game of chance'. There's a chance element, of course, but skill is a major factor. The most important aspect is you're not playing against the house. There's no such thing as 'winning the day at a casino' in poker. 'It's all one big session.'

      It's not a typical casino game like roulette or craps where you're playing against the house and the payouts are structured such that every bet has negative expectation. If you consistently play against people who make worse betting decisions than you, you will be a consistent winner in the long term.

      So your assertion that winning over a long period in poker is cheating is false (although, it is true that most players are long-term losing players).

      The reason the casino went after them is that it's in the casinos interest to run a fair game. The casino takes a cut of each pot over a certain amount, and some also collect an hourly vig from sitting at the table. Players won't play in an unfair game though, so the casino has to protect this model or lose its players. It was the threat of an indirect loss of money that necessitated action, not that the players were taking directly from the casino.

      And the reality is - these guys got caught because they were greedy. There have been several highly publicised (within the poker community anyway) cases of cheating, and its always the same. The cheater makes some ridiculous reads, bets / bluffs consistently at the right time with very marginal holdings, or folds big hands in big pots when they are beat. Once that suspicion is triggered, anyone who understands the game will spot it easily.

      If they were smart, they would be much more subtle about it, losing their fair share but making sure they get the big pots. Once the cash starts rolling in though, I guess it's very hard to resist pushing it just a little too hard.

      Casinos take this shit very seriously. From a purely academic point of view the IR contact lenses are an interesting concept, but you have to be pretty damn stupid to try it so brazenly.

    2. Re:Outliers and out and out liars... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Where does the article say that? It mentions "the cheater knew the croupier's cards" - are you suggesting that the croupier participates in the action in a standard poker game like Texas Holdem?

      It seems that they were playing Caribbean Stud Poker, which is a game where the players compete against the house, and where the croupier does indeed have a hand representing the house.

  4. They got off easy by VinylRecords · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Two years? For cheating at cards? That's nothing. Lots of people are killed over cheating at high stakes gambling. You cheat the casinos and they usually take it up with the police and lawyers. They can't break your legs and keep operating a legitimate business.

    You cheat a private game? You deal with individuals who might smash your fucking face in and throw you in a six foot feet hole in the desert. At the very least you get beaten within an inch of your life and then they take back all of your 'winnings'. Those guys should have tried to get into a private game where high rollers in organized crime or even professional sports play.

    The most hilarious part about this story though. Is that there are bankers that make billions cheating the system. Insider trading, fraud, embezzlement, Ponzi scheme, and so on. And those guys get a free pass as long as they throw the occasional six-figure-pass to the politicians. These morons get two years for cheating the casinos.

  5. Information missing from summary and articles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most people associate "poker" with games where the players compete against each other, rather than the house. Texas Holdem and Draw poker are two well known variants. Many casinos have poker tables now - they provide a dealer, and make their money by taking a small percentage of each pot.

    The article talks about Stefano Ampollini knowing which cards the croupier had. The croupier would not have any cards in a normal game of poker.

    Looking at their website, it appears that the Les Princes Casino in Cannes does not have any normal poker tables. Instead, they run a casino game called "Casino Stud" or "Caribbean Stud Poker". It is a normal casino game that gives the house a 5% edge if the player uses the best possible strategy.

    The players must ante before each game. After they have seen their cards, if they want to continue they must place a "raise" - a bet which is double the ante.

    When the cheat decided whether or not to raise, he looked at the dealer's face down hand. He knew if the dealer would win or lose before he made his "raise" bet.

    It's likely that the casino knew the cheat's cards from the video surveillance footage.

  6. Your Bullshit is BS by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Your Bullshit is BS by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It was not the croupier, but some casino lawyer who got suspicious. For all we know this lawyer could have been in the audience, just standing behind the player looking at the player's cards.

      Besides, the casino's play is usually bound to fixed rules, and the croupier has no influence on it.

    2. Re:Your Bullshit is BS by InvalidError · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Normal floor staff does not communicate with the security and anti-cheating staff.

      What likely happened:
      1- anti-cheating staff noticed someone with statistics-defying luck
      2- the staff couldn't figure out how he was cheating with their normal monitoring
      3- the table was instructed to change decks and save the player's hand (it is a common procedure)
      4- the anti-cheat staff looked at the discarded hand, concluded that no normal player would have folded on it under normal circumstances, analyzed the cards and found out about the IR markings
      5- anti-cheat staff investigated who handled those decks and put them under increased surveillance
      6- next time "lucky" showed up and showcased his odds-defying luck, they busted him and his accomplices to find out what his IR detection method was

  7. Infared Contact Lenses? by dutchwhizzman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?
    1. Re:Infared Contact Lenses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Infrared-Goggles!-For-Under-$10/

      I think this is how they did it. This isn't true IR, but near-IR. The ink would need to be near IR but I think you could find something that would work and it would be all but invisible under brought lights at a casino.

      For those to lazy to follow the link. Someone makes near-IR goggles using welding glasses and two theatrical movie light gel sheets. Am guessing someone in china would be willing to make this into contact lenses. With the right equipment you could make them your self.

    2. Re:Infared Contact Lenses? by hankwang · · Score: 4, Informative
      Near-infrared ink (as posted by an AC) sounds like the most plausible approach. In the range 700-750 nm, the sensitivity for light is less than 1% of the peak sensitivity. You would need (1) a proper long-wavelength-pass filter, (2) ink that absorbs only in this wavelength range, and (3) an illumination source that is heavy in this wavelength area (e.g. halogen/incandescent lights).

      For the naked eye, the ink would appear as a very pale cyan color. With a proper filter, everything would look very dark due to the filter removing 99% of the visible light, but the ink would show up with much more contrast. Effective long-pass filters do exist, e.g. Schott RG695 or RG715 for a 695 or 715 nm cut-off, respectively. There are plenty of suitable dyes. Probably you would want to have this filter only on one eye, otherwise the world around you might appear very dark.

      The other theories that have been posted here make no sense.

      Frequency-doubling needs extremely high intensities (like a high-power or focused low-power laser beam), which would render you blind. Moreeover, frequency-doubling requires proper phase matching, which boils down to the requirement of an exact combination of angle and wavelength.

      Polarizers: it is not possible to turn unpolarized light into polarized light without throwing away half of the light. Once the light is polarized, the polarization direction can be manipulated with optically active materials, though.

      A high-refractive index coating would not only change at the Brewster angle, it would make the cards much more glossy as seen from any angle. It is not possible to make the refractive index change dramatically within a short wavelength range without changing the absorption as well, so the glossiness would appear in visible light as well.

      A phosphor coating would not work for several reasons: phosphors do not emit the phosphorence in the same direction as the absorbed radiation; they always convert from short wavelengths to long wavelengths, and the phosphorence light would be completely out of focus.

      --
      Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
  8. IR contact lenses can be bought here by bactus · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.gambleromania.com/5-sets-ir-contact-lenses

  9. Re:The house ALWAYS wins. by jamesh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even if it somehow loses. They WILL find a way to win.

    If the house loses, it's because someone is cheating. That's how they tell you are cheating - if you are winning in a game of chance with the odds firmly tilted in the houses favour then you must be cheating. It's that simple.

  10. get real by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:get real by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's an interesting theory, but the casino in question doesn't have any "player vs player" poker tables.

      Instead they play a house game where each individual bets against the casino, as per the link above. The croupier's actions (on behalf of the casino) are predetermined by the game's rules, so it doesn't matter if the casino can see the player's cards or not.

      The most common variant of this game is called Caribbean Stud poker.

  11. Re:Glass tables by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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."