There's no money in Vegas Poker. Everyone is solid and cheats.

Seems the consensus is to not worry about it and that cheating is rare, if at all.

Thanks for the opinions.

That being said, if you have a bad feeling about a table for any reason, ask for a table change.

Must have just been your Harrah's at the one in Tunica a few months ago a player was caught palming Aces while sitting at #1 seat, he would put his discards on top of the muck himself this made it hard to see when he was holding out a card and he would later use the ace as needed. After about 3 hours he was caught by another player. The players lost alot of money to him but no charges were filed by Harrah's but he was 86'd and the dealers and floor were fired for not counting the deck once every down as required. The dealers and floor were given their jobs back after appealing to Human Resources. The house takes cheating seriously only when it affects their money.

Automatic shufflers would take care of that problem, wouldn't they? I mean, I've seen automatic shufflers report an error to the dealer when the machine counted fewer than 52 cards.

Not ever casino has them and some just have them on some of their tables. Some poker rooms do not feel the cost is worth it. They cost $400 per month on a lease. A dealer who doesn't get lazy and follows most states gaming regulations would eliminate that from happening, just count the deck once per down.

An example of Vegas cheating from tonight...

Now, we all know about husband+wife, boyfriend+girlfriend, father+son playing at the same table from the same bankroll. Often it annoys people when they softplay each other, but you pretty much come to accept that it's tough to enforce a no-softplay rule, and when they have openly stated they are playing from the same bankroll, at least everybody is on the same page and understands that once it's heads up between them, whether they bet at each other doesn't impact their total bankroll, only the distribution of chips on the table. Yeah, it shouldn't happen, but it's common and it's too big a PITA to try to stop it, at least at small stakes.

So tonight was a player in the 3 seat with 20BB, a GF in the 4 seat with 70BB, and her BF in the 5 seat with 100BB. Yes, BF+GF already made it clear they were playing from one bankroll and had softplayed each other a couple times. This time, though, the 3 seat goes all-in preflop with KJ. GF calls with 33. BF calls with AK. Flop comes out KX3 and GF picks up chips and starts to bet. BF flips over his cards. GF looks confused. BF tells her to turn her cards over. She does. Dealer looks confused. "What's happening?" I ask. "We're checking it down", says BF. Dealer says "oh, ok" and instantly deals out turn+river.

THAT is cheating. It didn't change the outcome of this particular hand--KJ was hopelessly dominated, but BF didn't know that. When there is a third player in the hand, open collusion to check it down is absolutely cheating. One player ordering another to not bet is cheating.

And no, these were not Vegas locals doing it. These were visiting tourists.

I don't know if this is accurate, but this is the scenario that was described to me once by an experienced Vegas floor. Any NV lawyers in the crowd? Any NV poker people with experience seeing prosecutions through?

Imagine you catch a cheater red-handed stealing money from a poker player. It might be a dealer pulling money out of a pot, or it might be another player cheating or just flat out taking chips off someone's stack. You have him on tape. This floor's claim is there is no way to prosecute unless there is a complaining party; the crime was not committed against the casino, it was against an individual. So now they have to get the person who had $10 or $500 or whatever taken from him to swear out a complaint and appear in court to testify however many months later. What're the odds that will happen if the victim is a once a year tourist, or first-time visitor from abroad and the crime was for a few $hundred? Particularly if the victim gets the money back?

Sometimes all they can do is fire the person if it's an employee, or 86 'em if it's a player.

Did anybody say anything about it? Mr KJ?

Thats not really true ...... but may raise issues of practicallity.


A person may be prosecuted for an offense against another person even if that person does not choose to "press charges" in fact this happens frequently with Domestic violence cases.

However as with domestic violence cases it may often be difficult to prosecute a case without the cooperation of the "victim". In the case of cheating at a poker table the case very well may be prosecuted based on surveillance footage and staff testimony.

Suppose that two players are sitting next to each other. At one point one player reaches over and takes some chips from the other ones stack. Suppose he gets caught and arrested. Suppose he doesn't make any statements which implicate him. He takes the case all the way to trial. The prosecution better have that victim available to testify at trial ... because if they don't have the victim there they aren't going to be able to prove that the victim didn't tell the guy he could have the chips. So if the guy was stealing $20 bucks and the victim lives in Florida the state probably isn't spending the money to bring in the necessary witnesses. Of course the good news is these guys almost always make incriminating statements when they get caught.

Now suppose the guy is holding out cards to cheat the game. If they are prosecuting this they presumably have been able to get enough of it on tape, or a staff member saw the guy doing it and can testify. Now you don't need the testimony of the player in the hand ..... because its irrelevent. You don't need to establish that the players didn't consent to the guy holding out cards because the players can't consent to that.

prosecuting players for softplay/collusion would be a difficult task from an evidentiary standpoint.

Well... my tale was getting long so I was trying to keep it short.

Nobody seemed to think there was anything odd about it except me. And I didn't speak up because I'd already had a few words with this "gentleman" for an earlier angle and got the distinct feeling if I opened my mouth again I'd have to make a choice to either run for my life or stand my ground and get laid on my ass. No actual harm was done by this--KJ was not actually harmed since the flopped set held up, so I decided to not upset any apple carts or pay for any emergency dentistry.

This is one of those things where when i tell a player they can't do that they all sill swear I'm out of my mind ... even the all-in player I'm trying to protect

I was playing at Bellagio years ago (roughly 2002, give or take a year or two) when a guy had been caught holding out cards a few hours before I arrived and people at the table were still talking about it. The cheat in question was arrested and taken out of the casino, and I think there were threads about it here, but I don't know if he was ever convicted of anything. Not sure how the search feature works for posts that old but if it's possible to search the older archives, if you search for "Bellagio hold-out" or "Bellagio hold-out artist" you might find discussion about it.

I wasn't able to find anything about that incident but I found something similar from the Mirage from 1997 discussed on RGP:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...22ef00f3199a56

I'm pretty sure the guy in question at Bellagio had the same sort of device hidden in his sleeve, although come to think of it, I'm not 100% sure it happened at Bellagio. At the time I was almost certainly playing something around 10-20 to 20-40 Hold'em and at that time I think it was only Mirage and Bellagio that spread that game, so I would have to assume the incident I'm recalling was either at Mirage and Bellagio.

A good room won't let people playing out of the same bankroll to play at the same table a very simple way to eliminate any possibility of collusion.