I'd like to thank the OP for starting this thread, even though his reaction was questionable, this conversation is important.

We know that the Venetian Poker Room has detected and dealt with cheats of the type described in the very recent past. Or rather, we think we know. Here's what we know for certain:

1) The V recently bought a new full set of tournament chips with DSE logos.
2) The new chips are now being used on alternating days with the old chips, so that only one tournament at a time is using each chipset.
3) The new chips were introduced in the April 2010 DSE (the smallest festival the V has run in quite a while).
4) There are unconfirmed rumors that two players were quietly 86ed from the V during the February 2010 DSE for stealing tournament chips. These rumors have been "neither confirmed nor denied" by V floor staff, and I have heard the same story from multiple regular players and one dealer.

That the 86ings described in 4) were quiet is not surprising, but it does shock the conscience. AFAIK, no tournament cheat has ever been loudly and publicly busted by a casino, even a vigilantly clean one like the V. This is terrible for poker, not to mention the bottom lines of the casinos. When a previously-busted cheat is permitted to play tournaments, the casino gets vig from one player, but they drive away players who fear a rigged game. For blatant cheating like sneaking tournament chips, there is no reason for not publicly naming and shaming; it reassures people that the casino is watching out for them. (For poor bastards like the OP who are ground down by the corruption in their local rooms, it's extra incentive to come to Vegas to play.)

Poker has come a long way from marked decks at the Stardust, but the live poker rooms need to step up and make a public commitment to the security of the game, if they want to attract and retain customers.

EDIT: In case it wasn't obvious, we do not currently know for certain who got 86ed from the V in February, if anyone. We have strong suspicions, and might share those (hence the throwaway account), but would much rather see dcarp or another Venetian official channel confirm the details.

yes mate im with you on this but it's still not a good idea to vent your anger on the OP

he did say something, in the end right and hopefully something good will come of this for all of us who shoot straight


i got an idea if a casino wants to talk ... :O)

This.

You were playing too. You let yourself!!! get cheated.

+1 Cheating makes poker less appealing to good and bad players alike. I for one want poker to be appealing to as many people as possible (I'm pretty sure you do too).

+2

What can be done to keep chip stealing/adding to a minimum?

Well it would help if players like yourself actually reported cheating when they see it.


I think the OP is a little crazy. This isn't the 1960s and some small time casino. You really think the Venetian (which is huge) has floormen and regulars that are assisting each other in cheating? I mean come on that is ridiculous.

You associate small with dishonest and huge with trustworthy. That's not a reliable measure of honesty.

People make mistakes. I do not mean through th OP under a buss at all. He should have said something a did not, oh well. He needs to ask in a forum what the right move is... good. What all the paranoid 'nothing can be done' crappy is I don't know. I am offended by the attitude. Maybe OP is dead money and will sleep better if he assumes he is 'always' cheated.

+1

it's not, but there is a difference between a small casino owned by the mob 30 years ago, and Venetian, a multibillion (probably) dollar corporation.


I guess OP didn't say anything not because he was scared (he shouldn't be, no one is gonna bury him in the desert), but because he thought the staff was in on it, which is possible, because they prob don't get paid much (most of the poker staff I know are extremely honest people, but there are always a few bad apples), so a nice way to suplement their income.

OP, why don't you meet with dcarp, who claims his game is clean (I believe dcarp, but I cut the deck), you tell him who the 2 guys who cheated were (since you said they were regs, they shouldn't be too hard to find), dcarp can check the camears (you best believe everything is on tape), and hopefully we can clean this game up a little bit. In the end both you and dcarp will be heroes, although you might want to be a hero anonimously.

For the guy who called this "snitching".... if you and me are crime partners, and we get caught, and you open your big mouth to guarantee you don't go to jail while I do, then yes, you're a snitch. But if someone beat you down, robbed you, raped your wife, burned down your house, or stole your money at the poker table by cheating, you think it's "honorable" to keep your mouth shut? gtfo

Has anyone called shenanigans on this guy yet?

He was horrified by what he saw! So he didn't say anything at the tournament to anyone, and then waited a few days to post to us. I don't know anyone that ******ed, and I know some dumb people.

a security guy looking at a bunch of cameras would almost never catch this. however a few security guys being alerted, and knowing what table to look at and seat to look at and rewatching 1hr of tape 2 times then rewatching the few suspicious minutes a few more times would catch this. If you brought this to the floors attention i think its 75%+ they wouldv gotten caught. Only way they dodge it is if venetian has a bad camera angle/setup... but then u could go to NGC (nevada gaming commision) who would completely ream them and they would probably quickly double the amount of cameras they had on poker tables. So basically any result would be good. Posting this on 2p2 and making those people more careful in the future (assume they'd hear about this somehow) along with possibly scaring off some fish because of a not too likely occurrence (cheating happens, u should be careful- if you use logic you can protect yourself fairly well with the floor/casino's help. Its not 100%, but plenty close enough that it shouldnt be negligible to ur bottom line in tourneys)

rfid's in all of the chips. they could track the movement of each chip and the size of every stack on the table. its already in many high denom chips, this is slowly becoming standard as it becomes cheaper. i figure 5 years from now it will be cheap enough to put in all of the tourney chips too.

It should only be in MTT chips, RFID in all denominations with a player card I would imagine makes the IRS happy.

first hand after the break, ask him how much he's playing. make sure everyone hears you. pretend like it's affecting your decision.
but yes, definitely alert the floor.

There are measures casinos could take to stop this. Serial numbers or, better yet, RFID tags for high denomination tournament chips would be sufficient. Some casinos already do this on their normal chips, so it's a known technology that could be implemented (at a reasonable cost) for their tournament chips as well. As I understand it, RFID chips can be scanned at various levels and ranges. Wal-Mart uses them so that an entire crate's contents can be scanned at once. Casinos use them so that betting action can be accurately tracked in table games, so that players can be rated and given comps accordingly (this technology could also be used to identify cheaters or card counters, as well).

In theory, scanners could monitor the poker room and its vicinity as a whole and, if someone removed a chip from the premises, it could be accounted for. Likewise, scanners could be placed at all entrances and exits to the casino floor (in some places, this is already the case, where the normal chips already have RFID tags) and know if a chip enters or leaves the premises. Tables could be equipped with scanners and, since each chip could have a unique ID, chips could be tracked as they moved from player to player. If one went missing (which could be determined by way of a scan of all of the chips at the conclusion of the event), it could be determined who had it last prior to its disappearance from the event.

It's annoying but understandable that casinos will use RFID technology in their chips when it benefits them directly, but they will not take the initiative and do it for their tournament chips, where any cheating does not affect them directly.

I believe that RFID technology is quite inexpensive. It must be if an entity like Wal-Mart makes heavy use of it, seeing as how Wal-Mart is all about minimizing expenses and offering consumers low prices. If it added, say, $5 to the cost of each chip, it probably wouldn't cost all that much for all of the 5k+ tourney chips to be tagged. Given the field sizes and stack sizes you see at the DSE events, it would probably cost them something like $30,000 to put RFID tags in the 5k+ chips, maybe as much as twice that if I'm severely miscalculating things. Those chips would be usable for several years. I don't know how much scanners cost but, given the amount of income the DSE tournaments are generating for the Venetian, it seems like a small, one-time expense that could substantially increase the security of their tournaments.

Of course, as with all issues of security in poker, be it online or live, the casino has little, if any, incentive to actually spend this money. I believe this form of cheating is rampant in poker tournaments and, unless someone with a lot of industry clout takes this issue on and pressures casinos and poker rooms to protect their games better, it's not going to happen.

Since we all agree that this is somewhat of 'bogus' (for lack of a better word) first post, can we please put this thread to bed? No offense, but I really don't like seeing "cheating at the Venetian" pop up when I run a search. We don't condone cheating and it's kind of in our best interest to stop it.

Oh, and RFID's are out for the forseeable future, just fyi. Current sets of chips can cost between$15-30k. And to run a large event like ours, you would need at least 3 sets. RFID sets, and I'm speculating here, would probably cost 3 times as much. Maybe more. No poker room is going to spend $300k on chips...plus whatever soft/hardware you would need to track them.

Someday, I'm sure, though. And, I'd be willing to bet that the Venetian will lead the way!

dcarp

Ah, big surprise a Venetian representative would rather a thread criticizing the Venetian poker tournaments be "put to bed." The concern it completely valid, and I seriously doubt anyone who is familiar with the DSE hasn't heard things like this before.

As I pointed out, RFID chips are already in play at other casinos for their normal chips. Some of these are much smaller casinos than the Venetian, yet they've managed to implement the technology. But, nobody does it for poker tournament chips, even though it would go a long way to help with game protection. For the record, it looks like an RFID tag costs between $0.07 and $0.15. You say that a set of chips costs between $15,000 and $30,000. How many chips of a 5k+ denomination are in that set? You could get nearly all of the protective value of RFID by just tagging the bigger chips. I'm guessing this can't cost that much, given the affordability of an RFID tag.

I think if you don't enjoy bad publicity like this, the right move is not to complain about the OP, or talk about how something like RFID is not possible, or to claim that you don't condone it and that stopping it is in your best interests. The right move is to walk the walk and actually be proactive about putting a stop to cheating and earn a reputation for having the best-run and best-protected tournaments.

Why is this post bogus? I believe the OP in that he saw cheating going on at the Venetian. Whether or not he should have notified the Venetian staff at the time is immaterial. OP is not in any way singling out the Venetian, since this sort of cheating probably takes places in all casinos. I think that several valid questions have been raised and have been unanswered.

Has the Venetian counted more (or less) chips at the end of any of the DSE tournaments? If yes, have they initiated any countermeasures to protect the integrity of the tournaments knowing that cheating has taken place? Have they reviewed any video tapes to catch any cheaters? Have they been extra vigilant against "regulars" to ensure that they are not passing along chips or accumulating from previous tournaments?

I knew bogus was a terrble choice of words, and for that, I apologize...

I'm just saying that if we were alerted, we could have handled it. We take game security very seriously...our livelyhoods depend on it. We count and recount our chips constantly.

All I meant to say was that it just feels like V bashing when we obviously don't condone the actions involved and there is just not anything we can do about it right now.

And, yes, RFID tags In just the chips 5k and up is a great idea and i can forsee us doing it, but let's be real, it's not going to happen overnight.

dcarp

P.S. I seriously meant no disrepect to anyone in this thread, it's just that I take my job VERY seiously and I'm sorry if I get a little defensive when peoe say it's not on the level.

Oh, and I don't recall 86'ing anyone in February. If we did, I would tell you all, believe me. We had one player take a chip home for a 'souvenier'...we caught him because of our chip security. We started the final table with X chips and finished with Y...we reviewed the tapes and caught him.

We got the new set of chips for added security. No conspiracy there.

dcarp

Did he get 86ed or reprimanded?

We, as a community, really need to stop railing on OP for his non-action at the time. It was a mistake, that is understood.

Now everyone who reads this thread will know what steps should be taken if they are in a similar situation. Piling on isn't productive. If anything it would cause more 'thin-skinned' people to avoid posting something that can and should be read by all of us.

robfulop,

This is not business as usual. It is a very serious cheating indictment that I have never seen before. You should out the player here, report the incidident to the venation and to the gaming commission.

this thread should not be put to bed or whatever you said, cuz you dont like seeing cheating pop up in ur google search for venetian, cuz it affects your lively hood, thats so lame

this is a very serious thing, and im willing to bet its more common than more people realize, and people need to be aware for obv reasons

although op handled the situation poorly, im glad he at least came here