Didn’t see a thread yet.

Wired magazine story. Crazy

It's been mentioned in this thread:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-live-1813491/

Can't hurt to have a separate thread though, especially since the other one is a train wreck.

Exactly! The socks buried this **** fast AF and TY.

I can't wait til folks figure out that like poker itself, real time access to hole cards (let alone the deck) and internet poker with the same access... was designed to extract money from the marks.

It is good to finally see a published story about the multiple ways, yes multiple ways, to compromise a shuffle machine. There were a couple of shuffle machine threads on 2+2 with the rare insider knowing what can and has already been done trying to pass along that info, but the knuckle heads kept saying it can't be done.

Hackers can access pretty much everything through USB. No machines containing any form of sensitive data should have open USB ports.

Tobey Maguire was quite insistent they have one at the celebrity games according to the book Molly’s Game. Explains a lot.

It feels like it just isn’t possible to find a square game anywhere nowadays. All I want are regular cards, no RFID, no marked decks, no collusion, no scammers, and people who enjoy the game. That really doesn’t seem like much to ask but it’s impossible now.

I think most games are reasonably square both across live and online. I'd say less than 20% of people(probably closer to 5% or less) would actually cheat their fellow man/woman if given the opportunity. Once there they then have to actually be successful enough to pull it off so probably something like 1 out of every 20 people is actually morally corrupt enough and intelligent enough to actually pull off cheating successfully.

These types may come to the surface more in poker so maybe I'm wrong but I think it's exaggerated in threads similar to this one.

Try and find or create a home game with friends if you want to be sure; assuming you have reasonable friends but overall I don't think it's a huge deal right now.

Collusion among stables and just overall scummy small edge taking behavior is a bigger problem in many of the lower to middling stake tourney games. These players aren't even technically always breaking the rules but their scummy time wasting and soft playing in late game has to be quite annoying for the players signing up for tourneys and just trying to have a good time. I've seen some attacks on American players in the past but one thing about the early poker boom which was mostly North American players; those players were not looking how to abuse registration structures to their advantage, etc. Now players are looking to optimally time their late reg, etc. and attempting to squeeze out every single tiny edge they can possibly find on the field.

I thought the most amazing thing in the article is that the "new" shufflers use an actual camera to count the cards and insure the deck is proper and that the boxes have a standard USB port. Seems like a recipe for disaster.

the safest is an established casino with a license and a million cameras all over the place. You'll never be 100% safe but better at the Bellagio than the backroom of Joe's Totally Reputable Card Club.

hmmm

I'm pretty sure that you're right. Though the counterpoint is that almost nobody has ever suffered consequences for cheating, even when caught. If you ARE the right combo of smart, dishonest and knowledgeable about poker, there's no reason to not travel around cheating or, if possible, set up a private game you can cheat forever.

But if OP wants a fun game to play without all the cheat/scumminess, I think practically all 1/2-2/5 games in public casinos fit the bill. Competent cheaters are going to want to play bigger. Not that I think every 5/10+ game is rife with cheating, but I think there's almost nothing worth worrying about at small stakes.

Pretty impressive work by the IOActive team.

It'll be interesting to see how quick a fix gets released and more importantly what's actually required to deploy that fix. A bit surprising but not shocking that they didn't have a fix ready given that the IOActive team reached out to disclose the issue and likely also made them aware of when they planned to publicly disclose details. (Presentations at Blackhat are submitted / approved moths in advance)

how did you think the shufflers counted/inspected the cards?

Quote:

The IOActive team also looked at the earlier model of the Deckmate, known as the Deckmate 1, which has no external USB port and no internal camera.

Sorry, read your post assuming knowledge of the differences between the two.

Appreciate the article, read and get some nice Zzzzzs

Just a thought. One way to minimize someone benefiting from knowing the sequence of the shuffled cards in Hold'em is to require that the deck be cut before the flop, turn and river as apposed to just burning a card. This should become SOP in private games that use the Deckmate 2. Asking for that may make you persona non grata now, but in the future if the community accepts that as SOP, those who are contrary may be suspect with regards to running a fair game.

If I remember correctly, years ago in the Mayfair Club in NYC (where the games were self dealt in the '90s) they had a rule that any player could ask that the deck be cut before the next board card was dealt. That was an effective rule for dealing with a possible cheat who may have stacked a deck.

I realize that rule is a tough sell in a private game where they're raking something like 10% with no cap. If you're a winning player in that game, you're playing regardless of the high rake because your opponents are clueless and you don't want to scare them away by implying they might be victims of cheating. But if such a rule becomes SOP, asking for it shouldn't be that big a deal in a fair game.

Since the point of adding a USB and a camera was to facilitate cheating why are you surprised.

It's worse than you think. The Deckmate 2 doesn't shuffle the deck in the way most people might assume. It "stacks" the deck in a random sequence. What is does is take the top card from the deck (or bottom card) and place it in a wheel containing 52 slots (possibly more to allow for jokers, if used). The position where it's placed in that wheel is supposedly random. It continues that until all the cards are in the wheel, then unloads the cards onto the platter for disbursement out of the shuffler. Yes, there is a camera (or more than one) that reads the card and the shuffler verifies that all cards are present and that none are duplicated. What I don't know is whether the Deckmate 2 reads the card and uses that data to decide where to sort it, or just randomly places the top card in the wheel. It doesn't really matter. It's a software algorithm, and as such, is susceptible to being hacked.

IIRC, the Deckmate 2 advertised that it could suit a deck (sort it into sequence and suits). It also could be used in games like duplicate bridge, where the same sequence is desired for multiple games (in other words, stack the deck in a pre-determined sequence).

The Borgata started using the Deckmate 2 a few months ago. It takes exactly 26 seconds to "stack" the deck, placing two cards per second into the wheel.

Here's a video of a wheel type shuffler in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QHDgVWMdw4

IOActive is getting a nice article on Wired, but several informed posters on 2+2 broke a lot of these deck shuffle exploits back in 2019, 2020 or 2022 depending if you are talking about a 2+2 thread on cheating in Boston or Texas or LA. Time for 2+2 to step up their game and not let **** heads derail threads. Then maybe 2+2 will be the one getting the Wired article type glory.

I assumed that each chip had an invisible and unique RFID that the shuffler read

I think it has something to do with RFID cards for the shuffler to read each one or the cards have to be marked with barcode cards i think as well . I would like the IOS team to comment more on this in more detail then what was given in the article

Re-read the wired Article!
It's a different method which would allow a cheater to know the sequence of all cards dealt and the runout once the flop lands (they input the flip on a device and it orders the cards, obviously they wouldn't need to do this if the deck didn't get cut)

The method you're thinking about is an IR deck and a reader which has nothing to do with a decimate other than cheaters getting the cards into a deck.

From what I see from the operator's manual, the USB port is there for a few reasons:

• Software installation and upgrades (e.g new card libraries)
• Accessing event log and image data for viewing/printing
• Connecting the remote display

The third item gives me a semblance of hope: if the remote display is attached, should it mean that no other device can connect to the shuffler for the purposes of intercepting real-time info?

Of course, there is probably a workaround, such as a USB hub. This oddly makes me wonder if the USB port should be on the top just so people can see there is nothing else connected to it during play.

By the way, to anyone who has worked as a dealer or a card room manager, or who knows someone who performs one of these roles, how much value is there to having a shuffler put the deck back in its factory order? I can't help but think that feature in Deck Mate 2 – that is, to put the deck into three specific sequences – is an unnecessary component. In this case, it provides an opportunity for an exploit that is not worth the benefits.

The software installation happens via the touch screen, so those seem to be two different ports.

The camera is also used for the “card recognition” errors, not just the pre defined sorts. (and also, potentially, actual shuffles)