Deputy Editor
Warnings about live poker cheating rings have begun to spread around the country, and poker rooms are starting to respond. According to one report, Red Rock in Las Vegas has begun enforcing a policy against phone use at the tables. And the policy is a direct response to recent whispers of poker cheating.
Bart Hanson of Crush Live Poker appears to have been among the first to sound the alarm. He posted a lengthy interview with a cash game regular who wished to remain anonymous. The player was identified by the alias “Joe” in the show, and he detailed how he and other regulars uncovered the cheating scam at Aria.
The short version is that the players allegedly used a hidden camera to track the cards that the dealer pitched.
The entire situation reopens a large conversation about technology at the poker table. What should be allowed, and how should poker rooms adapt to the ever-growing threat that technological advances pose to live poker?
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To hear Joe tell it, he was sitting in a $5-$10-$20 game at Aria this summer when a seeming recreational player sat down. The player was chatty and loose, the perfect action.
“He would play a massive amount of hands,” Joe said. “He’d show down hands like 6-2 offsuit and K-7 offsuit, just be three-betting them and all this.”
Weirdly, though, the player seemed to be winning. The Aria regulars at first attributed the unexpected results to a lucky run or good live poker instincts. But eventually, after a couple of weeks, they started to grow suspicious.
“He would bluff a lot but somehow never bluff into the nuts,” Joe said. “He would often know exactly if you had a marginal hand.”
However, the more suspicious part was the presence of another player. He seemed to always play at the same time as the apparent recreational, but they never interacted. That second player sat the entire time quietly with his face obscured by a mask, while a baseball cap sat on the rail in front of him.
“He never played a single hand,” Joe said. “The guy who would play no hands, you would never suspect of cheating. He’s not making any money, so we’re not suspecting him of cheating.”
Eventually, the regulars decided it was likely the two were working in tandem. They noticed that the players always sat as close to the dealer as possible. The regular figured the most likely M.O. was that the players had hidden cameras recording the dealer’s pitch for a third party off-site. That person could then relay key info back to the point man, the seeming recreational.
Players Report Sightings Around the Country
The players apparently went to Aria management with their suspicions, but without proof, they were told the room could do little.
They opted to take matters into their own hands one day by confronting the pair.
“They pretty much immediately got up and left at the same time,” said Joe, who indicated that they finally broke the facade and spoke to each other in a foreign language.
Joe reported that he understood the pair to have already been banned from the Venetian and the Wynn.
Players on social media reported running into a similar scam in other rooms and cities, including:
- Encore Boston Harbor
- Hollywood Park (L.A. area)
- Parx (Philadelphia)
- Tampa
- Talking Stick (Phoenix)
What Poker Rooms are Doing to Combat Potential Cheating
Red Rock, where the alleged cheaters were reported to be playing $2-$ no-limit hold’em, seems to be the first casino to take a step beyond simply barring these particular players. By banning electronics at the poker table — or enforcing some similar policy — they’re creating an environment that makes this sort of cheating much more difficult.
In addition to banning electronics from the rail, Joe recommended that poker rooms retrain their dealers to use a “European-style” pitch. This method involves placing the deck close to the felt and then sliding the cards to the players, rather than pitching them through the air.
In theory, that dealing style obscures the face of the cards much more effectively.
As the threat of cheating via advanced technology grows, poker rooms may soon have little choice but to implement these policies. Retraining dealers could be a somewhat costly measure, since it would require paid training hours. But enforcing policies that remove technology from the table is sure to be the easiest, lowest-cost measure.
It’s likely the first one players will see in their local cardrooms.
Image credit: Blake Patterson/Flickr (license)
