The Never Ending Cycle

Anyone who thought that the team of Chinese cheats that took the Mint Casino in Kensington for a cool quarter of a million quid are a rarity better think again. What these guys did was to use a hidden camera inside the sleeve of one of the accomplices to spot the dealers cards on the Three Card Poker table. There is a constant ongoing battle between the casinos and cheats and advantage players. Catching these guys is the tip of the iceberg and ice bergs are very dangerous….remember the Titanic! There are legions of advantage players out there taking the casinos for millions between them who go undetected simply because the daily amounts are un-sensational.

Using cameras and other electronic aids to beat the casinos is hardly groundbreaking. Apparently Michael Hoskins, the director of security for Stanley Casinos who own the Mint said that their “crime prevention systems were successful”. Just who is he trying to fool, if they were that successful then why did they get 250K ahead in the first place. The scamming team was too small for an operation of this size. If they had expanded the operation by recruiting more team members and taking it into Europe then they would have took millions.

There is only one reason and one reason only why these people were caught and it is nothing whatsoever to do with the success of any security systems. They were caught because of the fact that they were greedy. Hitting anyone club for too much money is asking for trouble. Irrespective of what you do, getting the money is only half the battle. The act of repeatedly getting away with it is always the hardest part and it is this that I preach to my Blackjack students.

I knew about this back in late 2005 when it happened but it has been swept under the carpet by an industry who are only too aware how vulnerable they really are. Anyone who has read my book “Princes of Darkness: The World of Highstakes Blackjack” would be aware of techniques to get the better of them. The rest of the world has only just become aware of it because it has gone to court and received publicity because of this.

Imagination and creativity will always overcome knowledge….Always! This is the essence of my strategies to beat the shuffling machines that everyone thinks cannot be beaten. But what these Chinese did can actually be done without cameras, all it takes is a little imagination. Not using cameras also eliminates the evidence but it also is highly dependent on visual ability. But there are devices and techniques that can substantially improve this that would leave no trace.

It is a never ending cycle, the casinos invent security measures to get around the latest cheating techniques and then the cheats invent methods to get around them and so on. Down the years, large amounts of money have either been scammed or extracted through skilful means on a regular basis on nearly all casino games and it will continue to happen. But the casinos don’t like being on the receiving end but then again why should they.

All they are doing at the end of the day is providing a means of entertainment. But the fact of the matter is that when you purposefully throw food into the sea to attract the fish then don’t be surprised when the sharks come calling.