Quote:
Originally Posted by GreatWhiteFish
In S Florida the card marking was REALLY rampant about a year ago. It still happens but it seems like it's died off a little since a few scandals came out and people started looking for it more. Many of the cheats probably just moved on to other methods.
The card marking one in particular is frustrating to me because it would be so easy for the casino to just introduce a new setup once an hour, and rotate the existing decks to other tables. That would make marking cards way less easy and profitable. Instead they usually act like it's an undue burden to switch out a single obviously marked card, and will rarely ever switch out the entire deck.
Also in case anyone thinks I'm being paranoid. Just a few weeks ago a dealer at one of the places I play went through an entire deck and showed that cards were all marked in consistent ways (this happened after the game broke). It wasn't marked aces like you would expect either. It was something like sevens and eights along with certain suits that were marked.
A number of years ago I used to live in Tampa FL and there was a 1/2 PLO game with a $5 mandatory button straddle and unlimited restraddles that ran every Monday and would get 5 or so tables.
Games were great action, there were a couple of Cuban guys who always showed up at 10am when it started and would rush to take seats 1 and 6 at the table. We knew they would signal each other to try and trap players between them, but their hand selection was so bad we didn't really care so much.
But then I went through a 2 month period where I was losing to these guys in spots that made no sense, they'd find their way to the river and get me everytime and I'd see their hands at showdown and be scratching my head how they made it that far in the hand.
I wound up doing a google search and found a tweet from Kristey Arnett about two Cubans who were kicked out of the Commerce and believed to be marking cards, and they always sat diagonal from one another.
I hopped into the tweet thread to revive it and explain what I was experiencing and was told it sounded like them.
I sent the info to the manager of the poker room in Tampa and his response was "I've been in this industry 25 years, we use a burn card, how could they possibly know the outcome of the hand?"
I told him I didn't know what they were doing or how they were doing it, but something was off and if those two were playing I wasn't. He said he'd put a fresh deck in on Monday and monitor it throughout the day.
Fast forward two weeks, I haven't played there. I get a text from a friend that the two Cubans were escorted out by security and were banned for life. The manager wouldn't tell me squat, they want to just brush it under the rug.
But I knew dealers and found out they were using their fingernails to mark the outside edge of the cards based on the value of the cards (so broadway/aces at the top, middle cards in the middle, maybe they didn't put markings on the low cards?)
The guy in seat 1 can see the side of the deck, so they won't know suits, but they'll know if the flop should favor high, middle or low cards and then play hands most likely to connect.
They got away with this for a long time at this location. They would both get up and take a walk when certain dealers sat as well, so maybe those dealers held the deck in a way they couldn't easily read it.
I noticed they were wearing Best Bet Jacksonville hats all the time and got in touch with a manager there who said "oh yeah, we banned those guys two weeks ago!"
They got caught somewhere in Texas, at Chasers in New Hampshire, etc.
Unfortunately all that ever happens is they get the boot and move on to the next room to fleece players, never facing any real justice or consequences for their actions.