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Casino Pictures
A good rule to paste in your hat is never to play for money with one-way cards, i.e., cards whose backs bear pictures or designs that are not symmetrical from top to bottom. During play, a cheat can arrange such a deck so that high cards are right side up, low cards upside down. I know it sounds obvious, but card cheats know from experience that the obvious device is sometimes the one least likely to be suspected. Most players dismiss this idea, if it does occur to them, as too obvious and primitive a device to be used. Therefore the cheat, well aware of this, sometimes uses it; and a quick shuffle, after turning half the pack end for end, will destroy the arrangement and the evidence if anyone shows any sign of suspicion.
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Cheating in Casino
Do Casinos Cheat Customers?
This is an interesting question because in the "Real Old Days" of Sydney the answer was yes in some places. It was not uncommon for certain casinos to have a person known as a "Mechanic" that could manipulate the cards and cheat the players. This was usually accomplished by sleight of hand techniques such as "Peeking", (secretly looking at the top card of a hand held deck), and then dealing "Seconds". Dealing seconds simply means to deal the second card of the deck instead of the first card. After peeking, the dealer would determine if the card would help his own hand or hurt the player’s, and then decide whether or not to hold this card back.
Other unscrupulous operators were known to remove big cards (10’s, Face Cards & Aces) from a six deck shoe and replace them with small cards. Because the house hits last and must make a count of between 17 and 21 the extra little cards help the dealer’s hand fall into that window of 17 to 21. Extra big cards would hurt the dealer’s chances of making a hand so a few of the big cards were removed. Removing aces really hurts a player because it reduces the number of Blackjacks, soft double downs, (a soft hand is a hand with an ace in it), and splitting ace pairs. All of these hands directly impact a player’s money. When the house has Blackjack they win even money. When a player has Blackjack they win 3 to 2. Doubling down and splitting aces also allows a player to maximize their winnings by increasing the amount bet at the right times.
Slot Machine Operators
Again in the real old days of Sydney some slot machine operators would "Rig" machines to restrict payoffs. The old mechanical slot machines had a star wheel which controlled the payoff amounts. The star wheel looks sort of like the round blade of a circular saw but with varying depths on the teeth. The deeper the cut or depth of the tooth the more the machine would pay. By blocking access to the deeper teeth the slot machine was restricted from paying a big jackpot. (Note: Almost all slot machines produced today are electronic and do not have the old star wheels.)
Game Cheating
In the old days cheating players at the crap table usually involved "Flatted" Dice. Today’s are perfect cubes made to 1/10,000th of an inch alignment. Flatted dice are just what the name implies...dice that are flat, or bigger, on certain opposite sides. The most common combination of flatted dice, (also called "misshapes" or "shapes"), is the six- ace flat. The six side and ace side are opposite one another. These two sides are cut slightly larger then the other four sides. The laws of physics say that the cube will land on the side with the greater surface area more often then probability dictates. (Each side should have an equal chance of I in 6 of landing facing up.)
It is also very common for cheaters to "Bevel"... (Slightly round), the other four sides that are not flatted. The bevel has a tendency to help the dice roll off the beveled sides onto the flatted sides. The six-ace flat combination favors double sixes, (Boxcars) double aces, (Snake Eyes) and sevens.., they are called Mis-out dice. Given that the vast majority of players are "Right" bettors, the mis-out dice weigh heavily against the player and in favor of the house. (The old saying is... "If you bet the "Don’t" Side you live on the Outside.")
Casinos that used flatted dice were known as "Flat Stores"... because you couldn’t get a "Square" game. Flatted dice are made with as little as Sll000th of an inch advantage to as much as 4011 000th of an inch edge. |
