Saturday, March 30, 2019

Watch Out for the Asian Dealer-Made-a-Mistake Baccarat Scam!

Over the weekend I read an article about the Star Casino in Sydney, Australia suing a baccarat player from Singapore over A$43.2 million it says he owes in baccarat losses. The Singaporean gambler, Wong yew Choy, is not paying up, however.

Choy does not dispute he lost the money, but he does say that he lost the money only because the baccarat dealer on the game where he lost it made mistakes.

This story immediately reminded me of a current big-time baccarat scam out there. I do not know if Mr. Choy is using the same scam to try to defraud the Star Casino, but I do know a scam that several groups of high-limit baccarat players use to defraud casinos all over the world.

The "Asian" baccarat scam is not limited to Asian baccarat players, but I've been told it may have originated in Asia, and I know it is carried out all over the world, from major gambling capitals to US Tribal casinos.

Here's how it works:

These players always play in groups, and they are not hardcore cheats, but they will take huge shots at you if you give them the chance.

They play normally without cheating. They wait patiently for a dealer to make a mistake on the third-card rule, which does not happen often, but it does happen. For those of you Table Games people who have dealt or supervised baccarat, you know that the most common dealer error on the third-card rule is when the Bank hand is 3 and the Player hand hits a third-card 8. The Player hitting an 8 against the Bank 3 is the only time the Bank will stand after the Player takes a third card.

I myself, a former baccarat dealer, remember that I made more mistakes in that hand-situation than any other.

So...back to the baccarat group waiting for that mistake...It indeed comes but guess what?...they don't say a word, even if that third-card-draw error cost them money.

Instead, on the next hand, and with a sudden fury like a tidal wave, the entire group bets the maximum on either Player or Banker, all of them betting on the same side. They will hurriedly sign markers to get more chips if they don't have enough in front of them to make the maximum bet.

That next hand is dealt. If they win, great!

If they lose?

What do you think happens? Do you know?

Of course you know!

They claim the mistake the dealer had made on the previous hand. The Table Games supervisor asks them why they didn't claim the mistake when it happened. The group replies that they just realized it!

Sure! (sarcastic). If there's one thing I can tell you it's that these baccarat players know the third-card rule as well as any Table Games person who's been dealing and watching the game for 30 years!

So surveillance is called and the previous hand is reviewed, and sure enough the dealer mistakenly hit that banker hand of 3 after the player drew an eight. The floor supervisor immediately stops the game and instructs the dealer to rectify the amounts paid and taken on the previous hand in accordance with the surveillance review.

But wait one second! Do you think for another second that this high-rolling baccarat group is going to be satisfied with that?

Of course not!

So the lead player (these groups almost always have a lead player whose bets the others follow) declares that the mistake on the previous hand led to their losing this current hand, and therefore they want their lost money back.

Even if going back through the played cards shows that they still would have lost the big hand anyway, the group leader will claim that the whole karma of the shoe went bad because of the mistake, and that in their culture this is the same as the order of the cards being changed for the worse.

Of course the supervisor, and by now the shift manager who surely had arrived at the table, won't have any of this nonsense, but then the group throws them the malicious curveball.

The leader says, "If you don't give us the money back for that bad-karma hand, we will take our action elsewhere and never come back here again!


Any Table Games executive's first thought might be to say to the group, "Go ahead and take your action somewhere else."

But on second thought, that executive may think, "Wait a minute! This group of big-time baccarat players is good for $ 2 million a year in losses." Then he or she looks at the table and sees 9 maximum bets of $10,000 each. So it's $90,000 the group wants returned to them.

Only $90,000.

So what does the casino do? The group's threat may be real, depending upon where this actually happens. If it happens in Macau or Las Vegas, where they can play high-stakes baccarat in dozens of different casinos, sure as hell they can get up all pissed-off and you never see them again.

But if you happen to be the only high-stakes baccarat casino within a few light years, you can call their bluff.

I have witnessed this ugly scam firsthand one time. I will not name the casino, but they sure as shit refunded the money.

So, how do you protect yourself from this? The first thing is reduce your dealers' third-card-rule mistakes as much as humanly possible.

How do you do that? You make sure that your best baccarat dealers are on the games and that the ones learning break into these games slowly, by dealing significant periods of time on slower, lower action games.

Beware of this scam!

Friday, March 29, 2019

Rash of Cheating and Stealing incidents at Vancouver, B.C. Casinos

Evidently, casinos in the beautiful Canadian province of British Columbia are having some compliance problems with cheating and other unlawful incidents. This is the second wave of such incidents that I can remember.

Parq Casino Vancouver
The first incident, of course, was another clumsy yet effective insider-dealer cheating scam that saw three dealers on card games at the Parq Casino passing off chips to their player agents, netting some $120,000. The dealers were fired and formally charged with crimes.

The second incident, again no surprise, was a case of money laundering at the River Rock Casino. No details were given except that the crimes date back to 2017.

A third incident was, however, a bit surprising. Apparently some former River Rock dealers have gone into business for themselves, but not the usual way by cheating in collusion against the house. These enterprising dealers decided to open up their own casino! Which, of course, is illegal. Their casino was duly raided.

Back at the Parq casino, a worker from Coquitlam's Hard Rock Casino was caught using phony chips to obtain cash. I don't know if he was arrested, but the Hard Rock Casino did fire him.

And, finally...and thankfully, the last two incidents reported, believe it or not, were the theft of a cigarette lighter and cigarettes by one Chances Casino employee from another, and the theft of two chocolate bars from a concession stand by a Penticton gaming employee.

My take: Well, if Vancouver Casinos can cut this rash of dishonest incidents to just stealing cigarettes and chocolate bars, that might be an acceptable result!

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

2nd Major Advantage-Play Win Recorded at Online Casino..Major Stuff!.

Golden but Beatable!
I bet nearly everyone out there has believed and still believes that, apart from hacking, there is no way to beat online non-poker casino games.

Is everyone right?

Absolutely not!

Since Super Bowl weekend 2019, two online casino games offered by New Jersey online casinos have been beat hard, brick-and-mortar-casino style.

They are the Golden Egypt game and the Ocean Magic game. And the take between the two online casino beatings, ,engineered by the same group of advantage players who play both in B&M and online casinos, totalled some $1.5 million.

So how did this happen?

The same reasons that make some table games in B&M casinos beatable: mainly the games' designers, sometimes advantage players themselves, overlooking the true odds of a game and not doing the mathematics.

This does not happen often but it does happen. The biggest B&M casino example of this is when professional gambler Don Johnson saw a huge advantage-play opportunity on Atlantic City blackjack games. He simply calculated that casino rebates to induce big-action play made the game of blackjack vulnerable to advantage play, shifting the odds in his favor.

Johnson ended up beating Atlantic City casinos for a cool $15 million before they wised up.

My suggestion to games designers and casino operations...DO THE MATH!

Read the article about this here.

Sunday, March 24, 2019

NFL Star Adam "Pacman" Jones to Plead Guilty to Casino-Cheating...Wow!

NFL Casino Cheat Pacman Jones
Wow! I understand he allegedly threatened to kill an Indiana Gaming Commission officer, which is not to be taken lightly, but still I can't believe a star athlete is actually pleading guilty to a felony over a casino cheating charge. Just less than a year ago, ex-NBA star Charles Oakley was arrested in a Las Vegas casino for allegedly cheating the same way Pacman Jones was,,,pastposting, bet-capping and pinching bets (removing or reducing losing bets before the dealer takes them), but pleaded to a misdemeanor and walked.

In both cases, the chips involved in the casino crimes were black $100 chips.

There have been several cases of star athletes cheating in casinos, most of them not prosecuted. Why do they do it? I don't believe it is often related to compulsive gambling or a desperate financial situation. I think rather it has more to do with ego than anything else. Sometimes celebrity stardom goes to professional athletes' heads, and those who are famous in violent sports like boxing and American football may be more prone to these types of incidents.

As far as jail time for Pacman Jones, I'm not sure I understand the article correctly, but it appears he will be sentenced to 545 days for the cheating-at-gambling charge and 365 days for resisting arrest and battery on a person, but all but 14 days of both sentences will be suspended, thus Pacman will only spend 28 days in jail and be ready for the 2019 NFL season.