It's rude and bad etiquette to check your messages really quick? I don't even take my phone into the casino when I go in to play. If others want to check their messages while playing, then I could care less as long as it doesn't slow down the action. I've seen waitress come up and bother the shooter and stopping the action just as he/she was getting ready to roll the dice. I consider that to be more rude and bad etiquette then someone pulling out his/her phone to check a message.

CIA? Why can't they be FBI agents. PFFFT....

lol if you think a cell phone could interfere with a magnet behind the diamond padding.

In 2001 I shared a room in a Reno hospital with one of the sons of Karl Berge, owner of Karl's Silver Club in Sparks. He told me they sometimes used a card mechanic to relieve a patron of his bankroll.

He also told me that while Fitzgerald's casino was in bankruptcy, the craps dealers paid associates who were players when they hadn't won. Took off the Fitz for over a million this way. He knew this because he had been a craps dealer there at the time.

I am also interested in knowing about casino cheating. I live in NM and visit the Casino's here. Route 66 Casino has dealers who cheat and short change patrons. Even after asking to speak with the floor manager, they give you the cold shoulder. Isnt there a government agancy that will look into allegations of cheating ?

I was in Albuquerque in 1999 and heard about a dealer at Santa Anna Casino getting fired from stacking the deck and dealing out a bad beat jackpot to her friends. Pretty stupid actually because they check the cameras for BBJs and you are never getting away with it. This was back in the day before shuffle machines were rampant...

I was also at Sandia casino when a guy hit the Wheel of FOrtune progressive for $180k however he was an illegal immigrant, no SSN no ID and the casino refused to pay him.

those are the only two real instances I know of, and they aren't really the casino cheating customers.

There is a recent story that happened at Matrix casino, except the casino cheated themselves

They recently got a new game (new for them anywways) called Crazy 4-poker



now, the house edge comes from making the super bonus bet = to the ante bet which is pretty common among games like this.

Well, when they filled out the paperwork for the city, the person who did it did NOT specify that the bonus bet had to equal the ante bet. So, you were allowed to Max the ante bet and then bet the minimum $5 on the bonus bet. So the max bet was $100, bonus bet was $5. Now, in this game when you get a good hand AA or better you are allowed to triple your ante bet in the play spot

So, we calculated that the player had an edge of around 25% - 30% in this game because they screwed up the odds.

So, the waitlist for this game was HUGE, people were calling in every hour to see where they were on the wait list (Matrix only had one table on their opening week).

You know you screwed up when all the poker player rounders are grinding a pit game for 15 - 20 hours. It was sick.

It took them 3 - 4 days to rush the paperwork through the city to change their permits (normally takes 2 weeks minimum).

Rumor has it the Corporation lost about around $100k in those 3 - 4 days. I got on the table 3 hours before they corrected the odds and in that 3 hours I made about $1500. It was so strange playing a table game where you were a favorite, it was hilarious. Even the employees were trying to get on the waitlist for that game. But alas, the good times didn't last...

Why on earth wouldn't the casino just shut the table down? They have every right to open and close tables as they please.

Nope. Apparently not in San Jose. In San Jose, there are very strict and weird rules the casino has to follow as relates to their games and permits and play...

ALso figure in that in CA, your play isn't directly against the casino, it's against the Corporation which is another business entity. The casino merely facilitates the game. The Corporation has a contract that they will back all games. So it was really the corporation that got screwed here.

In any event, yeah, I would have closed the table, but for whatever reason, I don't think they were allowed to...

Odd that the casino would feel the need to rush through the change to the table when they totally have no ties with the corporation or anything. Wink wink.

^^^ I know, the casino and corporation are 100% independent .

I had a friend of a friend who was banking the blackjack game off and on for 3 days, 4 hours a day.

on the 3rd day, the casino decided to ban him. Even though he followed their rules, even though he had been playing there for years. Even though he never had a problem with anyone, the floor, or the dealers. Come that third day of banking, he sat down, the shift manager immediately came over and told him he was no longer welcomed at Matrix and he was banned for life.

I know how it works. I worked for the biggest Corp in California for about a year and a half.

We had every right to shut down a table, or refuse the action from a player if we felt like something was up.

I'm not outright calling bs on you here, but the story doesn't quite add up.

There are two kinds of cameras, an overhead camera and a point/tilt/zoom (PTZ) camera. The poker room will usually have one or two PTZ cameras on it, but the chances of them being pointed at any specific table are slim unless it was just the last place it was left at. The casino is much more interested in protecting their table games, etc, than poker.

A dealer once told me that he would practice dealing the BBJ at home. He said something like if all the cards required to make a BBJ were on the board/ in exposed players hands he could collect them in a specific order and deal it somewhere between 5-10% of the time using controlled shuffling, i.e. stacking the deck. Most false shuffles are impossible to detect from an overhead view, and you really need that side view to see it. From a risk/reward point of view, I don't think it's dumb at all. You always hear about the guys who got caught, but what about the super skilled mechanics that got away with it?