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Microcameras Versus Casinos


cashinmattress

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HOLA441

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In January, at the newly opened $4-billion Cosmopolitan casino in Las Vegas, a gang called the Cutters cheated at baccarat. Before play began, the dealer offered one member of the group a stack of eight decks of cards for a pre-game cut. The player probably rubbed the stack for good luck, at the same instant riffling some of the corners of the cards underneath with his index finger. A small camera, hidden under his forearm, recorded the order.

After a few hands, the cutter left the floor and entered a bathroom stall, where he most likely passed the camera to a confederate in an adjoining stall. The runner carried the camera to a gaming analyst in a nearby hotel room, where the analyst transferred the video to a computer, watching it in slow motion to determine the order of the cards. Not quite half an hour had passed since the cut. Baccarat play averages less than six cards a minute, so there were still at least 160 cards left to play through. Back at the table, other members of the gang were delaying the action, glancing at their cellphones and waiting for the analyst to send them the card order.

The gang had just walked away from Macau, the largest gambling city on Earth, with millions. They took $100,000 from the Bicycle casino in Los Angeles only weeks after the Las Vegas run. The Cutters’ scam did not require marking or switching cards, so casinos’ card scans and tracking software was irrelevant. Security consultants say that the gang numbers about 70. (With so many players, facial analytic software is easy to beat.)

At the Cosmopolitan, about 25 black-domed surveillance cameras hang from the ceiling above the high-stakes baccarat tables. Camera feeds, card scans, information about individual betting chips, and even biometrics about players are fed to a security suite at most new casinos, where software analyzes the data to determine betting outcomes in real time. a Cosmopolitan security official hovered a few feet behind the players, too, tracking wins, losses and betting patterns to identify cheats like the Cutters. Jeff Voyles, a hotel management instructor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, says that a new casino will spend at least $10 million on its surveillance.

Even so, casinos lose 6 to 8 percent of their revenue every year to some form of cheating, and sophisticated hustlers can take as much as $500,000 in just an hour. As cameras get better, smaller and cheaper, the cheaters are gaining an edge and casinos are struggling to keep up. “We’re really buried in tech and don’t know how to get out,” Voyles says, adding that because security systems don’t generate income, casinos are slow to update.

But that night at the Cosmopolitan, the house won. One of the Cutters slipped up, and security was alerted. Nevada Gaming Board agents were called in and shut down the game and detained the players. Still, they couldn’t find a camera. Bill Zender, a security contractor for high-end casinos, says that the agents didn’t find anything because they couldn’t get a warrant to search the gamblers. Video footage showed no illegal moves or suspicious behavior, and under Nevada law, the agents didn’t have probable cause to perform a full body search. The cutters were released.

In May, some of the Cutters were finally caught. A casino surveillance manager in the Philippines spotted a “spatula like” camera hidden up a baccarat player’s sleeve and he identified four more likely gang members nearby. meanwhile, casinos are considering installing counter-surveillance scanners that detect the low-frequency sound that video cameras emit.

Not four miles from the Cosmopolitan, you can buy such a scanner for $720 from Fox’s Spy Outlet. Manager Andrew Rowles will tell you that it has a range of only a few feet, and it might be picking up a cellphone, not a video camera. Rowles can also sell you a camera to beat the scanner. It’s hidden in a stick of gum and costs just $150.

Hmm. How will these guys be routed out before they pocket a small fortune, especially as things are miniaturizing at an astonishing rate.

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HOLA442

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Hmm. How will these guys be routed out before they pocket a small fortune, especially as things are miniaturizing at an astonishing rate.

I'm surprised they were allowed to leave Macau alive...

In Macau of the 80s and 90s when there was only the Lisboa and two other mega casinos if you won the dealer would take a 5% cut of your winnings. Complain and you were taken to the back room and beaten to a pulp.

If you won big you were invited to the backroom and beaten to a pulp or found hacked up in a suitcase floating in the sea a few weeks later.

If you lost a loan shark offering loans at around 20-50 million % APR would offer (under duress) to loan you money, if you refused you were beaten to a pulp.

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HOLA443

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Hmm. How will these guys be routed out before they pocket a small fortune, especially as things are miniaturizing at an astonishing rate.

I reckon, if it has not happened already - people will have tiny cameras inserted under their skin or elsewhere actually IN their body. Maybe made to look like a mole with a wee bit of effort ? Couldn't be that hard ? Could it ?

You heard it here first. :D

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HOLA445

Excuse me for being thick, how would such a camera help you win? Surely you would need some kind of earpiece audio and microphone device to talk to and hear accomplices who, I assume, would be watching the camera feed?

It isn't a live feed. They get a snap shot of the order of the deck. The deck isn't reshuffled in the shoe. With a camera and a very high FPS, you can flick the cards during the cut and have the order of the cards. It gets analysed and then you find a marker point where you expect a the next three cards to be. This confirms your marker point at which you can make your bets based on the next lot of cards. You get a text message 155 chars can tell you the next 78 cards. With 8 decks and 7 text messages you can find the order of 416 cards. But takes time to analyse them so even if half the deck is dealt out in the shoe. You can still get the card order.

Team card counting for instance needs no constant communication

The casino can pretty much defeat any of these scams by reshuffling the deck. But this peeves players off. I've tried team card counting NOT sat at the table, and it works, one of you counts +1, the other -1. Problem is team card counting is illegal and you tend to get murdered for it.

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HOLA446

It isn't a live feed. They get a snap shot of the order of the deck. The deck isn't reshuffled in the shoe. With a camera and a very high FPS, you can flick the cards during the cut and have the order of the cards. It gets analysed and then you find a marker point where you expect a the next three cards to be. This confirms your marker point at which you can make your bets based on the next lot of cards. You get a text message 155 chars can tell you the next 78 cards. With 8 decks and 7 text messages you can find the order of 416 cards. But takes time to analyse them so even if half the deck is dealt out in the shoe. You can still get the card order.

Team card counting for instance needs no constant communication

The casino can pretty much defeat any of these scams by reshuffling the deck. But this peeves players off. I've tried team card counting NOT sat at the table, and it works, one of you counts +1, the other -1. Problem is team card counting is illegal and you tend to get murdered for it.

Let's assume for a moment that I understand anything you wrote... why don't the casinos just ban use of mobile phones at the tables?

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HOLA447

Let's assume for a moment that I understand anything you wrote... why don't the casinos just ban use of mobile phones at the tables?

Probably because it would annoy their clientele the ones that lose big....

As said merely taking half a minute to shuffle the deck eliminates most common methods to win against the house. But annoys clientele even those who are not cheating which means although sure you get less cheating and fewer winners. You also get less people playing therefore it is counter productive. Sort of like ABS, people merely compensate for the risk.

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HOLA448

Probably because it would annoy their clientele the ones that lose big....

As said merely taking half a minute to shuffle the deck eliminates most common methods to win against the house. But annoys clientele even those who are not cheating which means although sure you get less cheating and fewer winners. You also get less people playing therefore it is counter productive. Sort of like ABS, people merely compensate for the risk.

Why would it annoy anyone that's not cheating?

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Why would it annoy anyone that's not cheating?

Most of the casino's I've played at won't let you use your phone whilst at the table.. You could easily get aound this though by just stepping away in between hands.

I thought about having a card counter in each shoe, activated by the toes. Left is +ve and right -ve or whatever. Count could be sent to a friend who gives you a missed call whenever the count hits the target range.

I wouldn't try that in Maucau though, not cilivilised enough if you get caught.

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HOLA4411

Like this Ken?

Art imitates reality, as said anybody who wins big isn't allowed to leave.

A few years ago in London a group won millions and they called the cops, they were invasively searched and they found nothing but were not allowed to leave with their winnings until after an investigation.

Casinos are like insurance companies their will do anything legal or not to avoid paying out. As said in Macau you win REALLY big especially at the MGM whose parent company is broke. You'll be invited to the back room for champagne and probably sleep with the fishes.

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