Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Game Protection--Why some casino staffs just don't get it.

Teaching the right way
I travel to different areas of the world doing game protection seminars and hands-on training to casino floor staffs and surveillance staffs. I often visit the same casinos more than once, and the second time around is when I notice how much the casino’s staff benefited from my first visit.
Sometimes it’s not as much as I would’ve liked.

Is it my fault?

Well, I like to believe that with all my experience as a casino-cheat and advantage-player, and then as a speaker and trainer of casino game protection, that what I deliver to casinos that hire me is the best out there.

So then if I’m not to blame for this lack of game-protection progress on the part of the casinos, who is?

I hate to say it but the answer is: the casinos. I mean their staffs.

And the reason is twofold:

One is that not enough key employees are in attendance.

The other is that some of the key employees who are in attendance are not there with the right attitude. I have encountered many with an already-know-it-all attitude that is very detrimental to both themselves and the casinos they work for.

A good example of this occurred recently at a major South American casino. The head of its surveillance department was from the United Kingdom, which happens to be the sharpest casino area in the world as far as cheating is concerned as far as I’m concerned.

This particular Brit, who no doubt had seen his share of high-end casino cheat scams, immediately took on an attitude of “How can I learn anything from you if I’ve already seen it before.”

I had asked the casino’s director of table games beforehand to supply me with an employee who could help me during the seminar by actually doing cheat moves I would teach him. I often do this to draw attention away from myself so that the attendees can witness (after the fact) that it was their own colleague doing the cheating and mot me, whom everyone expected to see do it.   

This type of attendee-participation approach serves well to get attendees interested in the seminar.

But in this case at the South American casino, the surveillance director who was assigned to help me decided to challenge my knowledge at every turn. I was trying to get him to a blackjack pastpost to which he responded, “That’ll never work in a casino where I’m surveillance director.”

I wanted to respond, “How much would you like to bet?” but instead asked the table games director to lend me another employee, which she did.

Then during the seminar, while the self-exiled surveillance director stood behind the blackjack table with his arms crossed and a bored look on his face, his replacement did the blackjack pastpost and fooled the dealer and everyone else in the room.

The surveillance director saw nothing, but still insisted in rebuttal that the move would not work in a real blackjack setting. What he ignored is that it worked over five thousand times over the course of twenty-five years on real blackjack tables.

He and I got into it verbally throughout the seminar and the result was that the more than one hundred employees in attendance got very little out of the seminar.


So my point is: casino employees—especially key employees--need to keep an open mind and leave their egos at home when attending and participating in casino game protection seminars.

Link to Richard Marcus Game Protection Seminars

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

The Importance of Proper Blackjack Shuffle Maintenance


Are your dealers boxing?
The shuffling procedure of brick and mortar casino blackjack is extremely important. When it is done correctly, many forms of cheating and advantage-play are wiped out before a player even has the chance to implement his attack.

What I have noticed lately during my worldwide casino travels is that many casinos are letting their regular brick and mortar blackjack shuffle procedure be affected by the shuffle procedure they use on their online live blackjack games.

Of course there are valid reasons why live blackjack shuffles differ from those used in the brick and mortar casino, but this must not influence how shuffles are done when real human players are at the table.

A good example of this problem is the stacking of packs of cards after the riffles into several small stacks across the entire perimeter of the insurance line. This is real dangerous on brick and mortar games as it opens up cheating opportunities, especially the thievery of cards at the end positions of the table.

One player could distract the dealer from first base during the shuffle and another can then pilfer a card or two from the stack so close to him at third base. Then of course these cards can be switched into play at key moments for the cheats.

So it is imperative that the stacking of cards after the riffles be done into no more than two stacks directly in front of the dealer. And equally important is that all brick and mortar blackjack shuffles contain strips which prevent ace and key-card tracking, and "boxes," which is the 180 degree turn of packs of cards within the stack to offset the possibility of edge-sorting scams.

Here is a good video on proper blackjack shuffling and dealing procedures.