How To Identify Card Cheats In Casinos

Cheating in casinos is much more common than casinos like to admit. Although game protection is important to casinos, it’s just about impossible to catch every cheat.

You may not be sympathetic for the billionaire casino owners. But in games such as poker, honest players can be easily taken advantage of. This article explains some of the cheating technology actively being used in casinos today, and how to spot cheating card players.

Although playing in an established casino environment does offer a level of protection, it is not complete protection.

You can’t rely on dealers

Dealers are trained to report suspicious behavior that may allude to cheating. But dealers are human, and are easily fooled by professional players. Just take for example a magician that can make something seemingly disappear, even with your close observation.

Casino surveillance staff watching video footage are no different. And although they are able to review video footage repeatedly, a casino cheat needs to be suspected of cheating before a proper review takes place. The professional cheats avoid suspicion to begin with.

Marked cards

Environments where cards can be handled create the possibility for cheating. Marked cards are quite common but more so in private games. You’ve probably heard of them but in case you haven’t: basically special dyes can be added to cards. The dye is invisible to the naked eye, but can be seen with infrared cameras and special lenses. The technology itself is quite simple. In fact most mobile camera phones are quite sensitive to infrared light. And through the use of an infrared illuminator, cards can be illuminated, with the light being detected by the mobile phone camera. In fact generally the cheaper cameras are more sensitive to infrared light, so you don’t need expensive equipment.

Casino surveillance often believe that the use of infrared illuminators would easily be detected by CCTV cameras. The reality is the infrared light is indistinguishable from visible light when viewed on camera. In the casino environment, there tends to be many flashing lights, shadows and reflections. So unless casino surveillance staff are very carefully monitoring suspicious objects, it would be very difficult to detect infrared sources. Furthermore, some of the more sophisticated technology requires a very short burst of radiation which may not even be detected by most CCTV cameras which operate at 25 or so frames per second. So all that’s required to see through a card is a very short burst of infrared light and a high frame rate camera. Then with the right equipment, it would be nearly impossible to detect even if casinos surveillance staff reviewed video footage.

Card counting devices

Card counters are not new, but the technology is developing very rapidly. What was impossible years ago is now reality. Just consider how quickly mobile phone technology has evolved. But cheating devices are not necessarily built into mobile phones. In some cases, they may be the perfect cover at the table. But most casinos wont allow any electronic device to be at the table. In some casinos, you can freely sit at a table on your phone or even listen to an mp3 player with earphones.

The more modern counting devices use an adaptation of the infrared technology. They can both read cards and automatically count. An example of the sophistication is the side of a stack of cards can be penetrated with radiation, and read by a high resolution camera. 4K resolution might seem sufficient, but some wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation are only visible in lower resolutions with off-the-shelf components. So only rare light sensors are capable of reading the resolutions required. Keep in mind that cards are very thin, so the high resolution is required to read the sides of cards when penetrated with radiation. Although the technology is expensive and rare today, we can expect the technology to be more widespread in a few years.

Monitoring gambling forums for new technology

You wouldn’t normally expect secrets to be released on a gambling forum, because generally players with effective technology tend to keep it private. But gambling forums are often used by professional teams to recruit new players. In fact that’s one of the primary purposes of GamblersForum.com. Although most casino gambling forums tend to be full of irrelevant and inaccurate information, even casino game protection experts lurk on forums to stay informed of potential new technology.

Cheating devices in other casino games

There are cheating devices in just about every casino game. The more sophisticated devices are roulette computers as explained on the page explaining tips to play roulette, although they cheat the casino owners and not the players. If your focus is card games, you need not worry about such devices and can focus on how your opponents may be getting an unfair advantage over you.

Things to observe when checking for card cheats

Again playing in a reputable casino does provide you with some protection. But it is far easier for a cheat to take advantage of you in private games in the home environment. Here are a few things to check for you ensure you aren’t being cheated:

Check for any objects on or near cards: it can be any object including a mobile phone, or even a fake stack of chips. Use the same lenses worn by cheats to spot marked cards: see what they see.

Observe your opponent’s partners or associates: usually cheats work in teams. By observing your opponent’s associates, you can see if there’s potential collusion.

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