Except for the fact that the shuffler would have picked up on missing cards before any hand is played. Other than that, yeah, sure!

Cheers. A very thoughtful and helpful rebuttal.

OP never mentioned a shuffling machine. There are many tables in the rooms that I play that don't.

And even if they did. Villain could still have had the extra cards already on his person via various obvious means.

And where they don't have counting shufflers the dealer will be counting the deck. Yes he could have brought with him. But when he took it that deck would be short and once that was known the tapes would come out. If he isn't real good he is is real trouble.

You say that. In London this practice is not employed unless there is an occurrence for example card on floor. Does every card room in US count deck every hand?

Anyway, more likely he already had extra cards from another deck.

There are just too many coincidences in this story.

Also, in my experience it is highly unusual for a card room to make any restitution for a dealer or ruling mistake, especially for such an amount. The floor makes a ruling and that is binding and that is accepted by most of us. Even if it's a bad ruling.

The floor at the time of the event was probably too distracted to even check the deck. What if, later after scrutinising video and the deck they realised the scam. Of course, the casino would not reveal their suspicions to hero. But, that would however explain why they reinstated him and also made a large exgratia payment. In isolation, it's not as if this is even the worst ruling in the world, as discretion is always allowed.

My point is maybe the villain wasn't an operator. But, the whole episode as described fits the bill and if the OP was "I got cheated at a casino" then all the points I made would have been discussed in the thread as to how he was cheated.

Congrats. You have created the most bat **** insane theory in this thread

No they dealers don't count the deck every hand. But the good dealers, especially the ones who dealt before shufflers were common do count the cards left after the river is dealt. Not every hand but routinely. They also look for marks, blemishes, etc.

I haven't seen that in a long time, but that's more geared toward stud and Omaha games where there aren't 24 cards left in the stub every time right?

Our policy is to count at least 1-2 times per orbit. If you don't do it in Omaha (we play 10 handed) every hand you are lazy as ****.

Tough story.

Not that it justifies anything that went later but you could have diffused this way before it escalated.

anglefish - was it an excellent read that villain picked a racist as the target or just luck?

I think black people just presume that the majority of white people are or will be racist when push comes to shove.