Card-Counting Cheating Wars Erupting in Maryland Casinos

Don't tell Maryland!

Ever since the US state of Maryland got its first legal gambling casino in 2010, blackjack card-counting has been a major combative issue, and it seems that the state's casino authorities at least secretly consider card-counting as cheating at blackjack.

Statistically, this makes sense.

I am getting more reports of blackjack players suspected of card-counting in Maryland being shown the door than from anywhere else in the world. And in some cases these "86ings" of suspected card-counters have been getting a bit rough--with at least three current law suits against Maryland casinos for illegal detention and battery on patrons currently running through Maryland's courts.

Also on the rise, faster than in any other US state, are casinos' conversion to continuous automatic card shufflers on their blackjack tables. Casino authorities state that they are using these shuffling machines, which shuffle played cards into the existing deck every few hands and render card-counting and other forms of advantge play nearly impossible, more to speed up the deal of blackjack games than to deter the card counters and shuffle trackers.

But whatever the truth really is, casinos neither in Maryland nor in the rest of the world will ever be able to convert to using the continuous shufflers on all their tables. That's because lots of high rollers and preferred customers simply don't like them,

Not because they're counting cards but rather for a general distaste of constantly seeing played cards invade the unplayed decks.

My take: Let the wars go on! The casinos will win most of 'em--but not all of 'em.

How the Pro Roulette Cheats Feast on Casino Roulette Wheels

Lots of ways to cheat the wheel

First, there are no betting systems or strategies to beat roulette.

But there are five proven ways to do it and they’re all called cheating. 

·        

      Pastposting

·         Bet-switching

·         Wheel-clocking

·         Chip-color manipulation

·         Dealer ball-control

Pastposting is the art of making a bet after the roulette ball has already landed on the winning number.

In roulette it’s usually done with a team of at least two cheats, one of whom distracts the dealer while the other makes a lightning-quick bet a split-second after the spinning ball drops into a number on the rotating wheel.

The key for success is that the distraction be subtle, not something stupid like spilling a drink on the layout.

One that works extremely well is an angry man making a fuss in front of the table at the crucial moment. All it takes is getting the dealer’s eyes off the layout for the fraction of a second needed to make the late bet.

Bet-switching is a stronger form of pastposting that increases the amount of a legitimate bet made before the ball was spun.

After the winning number is determined, the bet-switcher picks up the original bet off the layout and replaces it with a new, usually much bigger bet. The move is far more complicated than a simple pastpost and is carried out by very professional teams using a series of ingredients.

·         The Set-up

·         The Psychology

·         The Switch

·         The Claim

·         The Bet-back

·         The Disappearing Act

Say an original $10 bet straight-up on a number is to be switched to a $100 after that number wins. 

The person who eventually “claims” the switched-in bet makes a legitimate set-up bet of $100 straight-up on a number. Win or lose, he leaves the table but remains close by.

The psychology comes into play when the claimer returns to the same table a bit later to claim the bogus $100 bet and $3500 payoff. The dealer and supervisor will remember that they’d already seen him make an identical bet.

The switch goes down with the aid of logistical distractions caused by bet-patterns other team members make that control the dealer’s movements, enabling the window necessary for the “mechanic” to switch out the two $5 chips he´d bet and replace them with a $100 chip covered by a $5 chip. 

The “claimer” returns to the table as soon as the mechanic has made the switch, claiming the $100 chip now lying beneath the $5 chip on the winning number. He is paid $3500.

He now “bets-back” $100 on the same winning number, further enhancing the psychological element of the move. Had the claimer left immediately after being paid $3500 for a $100 bet nobody had seen placed, the casino is more likely to get suspicious.

Win or lose the bet-back, the claimer does his “disappearing act,” immediately leaving the casino. The mechanic and the rest of the team soon follow suit.

Wheel-clocking is the art of identifying biased wheels, those that by defect or wear-and-tear produce an uneven distribution of winning numbers in the long-run.

The “clockers” back in the day actually entered casinos with pad and pencil and charted thousands of spins hoping to find biased numbers that came out more than once every thirty-seven or thirty-eight spins, depending on zero and double-zero wheels.

Today’s wheels are constructed with better materials and tested and re-tested to eliminate any bias, and maintained like sensitive military equipment to make sure they stay that way.

The High-Tech Clockers

They are armed to the teeth with everything from Google Glasses to roulette computers to digital cameras to smart phones to laser scanners. All this high-tech equipment is programmed to clock revolutions of the ball and the speed of the spinning wheel to calculate quadrants into which the ball will land.

We first heard of this in 2004 when an Eastern European team beat a pair of casinos in Budapest for a cool million. Then came similar high-tech roulette attacks in popular London casinos. Again the digital and laser booty was in the millions.

How they do it

·         Expensive laser scanners often bought from the dark side of the Internet.

·         Clocking teams practice in workshops with real roulette wheels.

·         Wardrobes that house and hide their equipment are tailor-made.

·         Team enters casino and legitimately plays other games besides roulette to hide true motive.

·         It hits the wheel, one member clocking and signaling the high-roller, who places big wagers in the proper quadrants.

·         Often a third member stands outside the table with jamming equipment so surveillance doesn’t pick up electronic signals. 

·         They cash out and leave after short periods of play to avoid detection.

In today’s casino wars, the high-tech roulette cheats battle constantly with casino surveillance departments, each upgrading its electronic equipment in response to what the other has implemented.

The huge risk to wheel-clocking cheats is that in nearly all casino jurisdictions, anyone cheating in casinos with the help of equipment is charged with a major felony.

In fact, in some jurisdictions like Nevada, it’s a felony to even possess roulette devices inside casinos—even if they’re turned off!

Chip-color manipulation

This is one of the easiest scams in roulette, and it’s a favorite of women casino hustlers who love playing.

The scam follows these simple steps.

·         Woman #1 plays at a roulette table and buys $100’ worth of pink $1 roulette chips.  

·         She plays for several spins and then cashes out all but five of her $1 chips.

·         She leaves the table and passes off the five $1 chips to Woman #2.

·         Woman #2 goes to another roulette table and buys $100’ worth of pink $10 roulette chips.

·         She covertly adds to her pink stack the five $1 pink roulette chips Woman #1 had given her.

·         She plays for a several spins and then cashes out all her pink chips, including the five $1 pink chips from Woman #1.

·         The dealer is duped into thinking that those five $1 chips were part of the stack of $10 chips she bought at the table, since all the chips are identically pink.

·         Woman #2 is paid $50 for five roulette chips that Woman #1 had bought for $5 at the first roulette table, making a $45 profit.

It may seem surprising that this rinky-dink scam works so often, but it does. Even though all roulette chips are marked with a letter designating to which table they belong, there’s always confusion with these chips as many disappear off the table, mostly as tips given to cocktail waitresses who later redeem them for their original value at the table.

Dealer ball-control

Can roulette dealers actually affect where the ball will land on the spinning wheel?

Most people are quite skeptical, but like in craps where some dice-throwers can control the outcome of their rolls to a certain degree, some roulette dealers have similar talents dealing their roulette wheels.

How it’s done

·         Dealer gets to know the inner grooves of his wheel and begins timing his spins.

·         He gets familiar with certain dead spots on the wooden plates that affect the initial and subsequent bounces.

·         He hooks up with a partner who comes to his wheel to play.

·         If the partner was not told beforehand how and where to bet, the dealer inconspicuously signals him at the table.

·         Just a minimum of accuracy by the dealer will result in handsome profits over the long haul.

          

The Best of ’em all

Ball control by roulette dealers has been very popular for decades, especially in Europe.

In 1973, one innovative French roulette dealer took roulette ball-control to the hilt. He sculpted his own roulette ball and embedded an electronic receiver inside it. He snuck the ball into play, and his beautiful female cohort placed large bets as she held a pack of Marlboro cigarettes.

Unbeknownst to the casino, the Marlboro pack contained a transmitter. When the foxy lady gambler subtly pressed it, the spinning roulette ball went into a controlled dive and landed in the specified six-number quadrant more times than not.  

They earned $5 million but finally got caught when the casino owner began wondering why foxy lady never lit up a cigarette.

Wrong Car Park? Sorry, I Left My Buick in My Other Pants

This is the second part of my reaction to experiencing MGM’s new “enhanced parking” for the first time.  You can find part 1 here, and we pick up right where we left off.  

The next night I went directly to the MGM garage, first time under the new system.  And except for the lines (because one gate in each direction was broken), it worked smoothly.  Furthermore, the MGM garage is so freaking big that the gates to get in and out are not at the top of big inclines.  They are located on flat driveways.  This makes the MGM garage much easier to deal with than either Mirage or NYNY.  The MGM garage thus becomes the first “robvegaspoker-approved” enhanced parking garage in the MGM chain.  In fact, things went so smoothly that I thought to myself….I know now why they went to this gate system. It’s because when it works properly and you get in easily, you feel like you’ve won something.

Exiting went smoothly too.  They had two of the three exit gates open, and when I approached them, and noticed that no one was following me, I stopped before entering either of the open lanes, waiting to see lane would empty first. That way, I was assured I wouldn’t get stuck behind someone who couldn’t open the gate, for whatever reason.

I parked at MGM a few more times before trying one more MGM property’s garage.  That would be the Monte Carlo.  I actually parked there on consecutive days.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I park at Monte Carlo whenever I go to Aria.  The reason is that I can get to the Monte Carlo garage without driving on the Strip, but (as far as I know), you have to drive on the Strip to get to Aria self-parking.  I hate driving on the Strip and will do (almost) anything to avoid it.  You can take a fairly short walk from the Monte Carlo garage to the Aria poker room and stay indoors approximately 99.27% of the walk, so I do that. 

Monte Carlo is the second “robvegaspoker-approved” MGM property garage.  It’s not as big as MGM, but the layout of it allows for the gates to be on flat driveways, not inclines.  So it’s easier to get in and out of.  Now, in order to get to the MC without driving on the Strip, you actually have to take the entrance to NYNY on Tropicana. You then drive past NYNY and past the new T-Mobile arena to get to the MC garage.  Note, for accuracy sake, I should mention that you can also get to the MC garage from the aforementioned Frank Sinatra Drive, too.  But that has nothing to do with this blog post.

I only mention this to point out that, as I drove past the entrance to the NYNY garage on a late Monday afternoon/early evening, the backup of cars trying to get into the NYNY was considerable, It was almost backed up to Tropicana, in fact. I assume one of the gates wasn’t working, and who knows if maybe some people were having other issues entering.  But if it backs up like that on a quiet Monday evening, you can see the potential for trouble.

No such issues at MC and I entered and exited without any issues.  Again….made me feel like a winner.

The very next day I returned to MC (to head to the Aria) and again had no issues entering.  I left many, many hours later.  Now, for some reason—I can’t remember why—I didn’t have to put my card in the machine to open the gate.  It was already opened.  I want to say that the gate was opened for me by the attendant who happened to be there, but am not sure. Maybe was just open when I got there.  Whatever, I just seem to recall that I left without inserting my card.

The next time I went to an MGM property to park wasn’t for a few days.  The MGM Grand was hosting a charity tournament for comedian Brad Garrett.  Through my connections with Ante Up, I was offered a free entry to it.  You might remember my last column led with a piece on the tournament (see here).  The magazine itself had also offered them a special deal on advertising (as they tend to do with charity events).  So I was on the VIP list to play in the tournament. 

I had mentally circled the day and time of the tournament.  All the time I was in Vegas, I was thinking it was the last Saturday I was in town, and that it started at 12:30PM.  I wanted to get there early to make sure I had time to meet Brad’s assistant, who had arranged the whole thing.  I’d never been freerolled into a charity event like this before, and didn’t really know how it worked, but her email said she was looking forward to meeting me, so I assumed I had to find her to get my free entry.   My aim was to be there no later than Noon.

I was ahead of schedule and then went to look at my email to make sure I had the lady’s name right.  When I read that email, I saw that it said the tournament started at 12 Noon, not 12.30!  WTF?  I was so sure it was 12:30!  I checked my column and damn if I didn’t have it starting at Noon there as well.  How embarrassing to have gotten the time wrong when I even put it in my column!  Now, suddenly, I was rushing, and my plan of getting there half an hour early was shot. 

I rushed out, and fortunately, there was little traffic between me and the MGM.  There were just a few cars in line getting into the lot.  There were no attendants to be seen, though. When I pulled up, I inserted my MLIfe Gold card and it ejected it without opening the gate. Huh?  I tried again.  I believe there was some message about what was wrong on the little screen, but it was pretty hard to read as the bright sunshine was beating down on it.  I did notice that the rectangular light around the slot for the card was red as it kicked out my card for the second time. I seemed to recall that when it worked previously, that rectangular light had turned green as the gate opened. I was worried about being late and so after the second rejection, I gave up and did what I “knew” would get the gate open—I pushed the button and pulled a ticket.

That worked and I made a mental note to be sure and check with someone in the poker room before trying to leave to see if they could figure out what the issue with my card suddenly not working was all about.  Now I guess my experience in the tournament itself will be a separate blog post down the road (hint: it didn’t end well and the dreadedhand was involved).  The tournament was held in a different area of the casino from the poker room, so when I was done there, I went over to the poker room and presented my card to see if they could tell me what the issue was.

The person helping me at the poker room was a relatively new guy who didn’t know me.  But he checked my card and said my account was still gold and he couldn’t see what the problem was.  “Must have been a glitch.”  Sure. The all-purpose "glitch."  He checked my card not by swiping it but by punching in the numbers into the computer.  I felt I should have asked him to swipe it just in case the coding on the card’s electronic strip had worn out.  That seemed unlikely though, since the card was just a couple of weeks old. 

Well, I went back to the car and didn’t know what to expect.  Fortunately, when I approached the exit gate, it wasn’t very crowded, but again, there were no attendants around.  I inserted my card, which ejected, and the lighted rectangle around the slot was red.  This time I was able to see the message on the little screen.  It said, “Wrong Car Park.”

What the hell?  I had parked the wrong car?  Sorry, MGM, this is the only car I’ve got.  And it was most assuredly my car.  I guess by now there was a car or two behind me waiting to exit behind me, no doubt getting anxious.  As I said there was no attendant to call over but there was an intercom, so I “called” for help.  It took close to a minute for someone to answer.  I told him what the problem was.  He said he was going to look something up in their system.  He put me on hold.  When he came back, he asked, “Did you pull a ticket to get in?”  I told him I had.  “Ok, put the ticket in the slot, then put your card in.”  I put the ticket it and the message said I owed them $7.  Yeah, good luck collecting.  Anyway, I then put my card in, the rectangular light around the slot turned green and the gate opened!  I had my escape route.  As I left, my main concern was that the guy stuck behind me was thinking, “Dumb California driver couldn’t figure out the new parking system.”

As it happened, I ended up going back to MGM to play that evening.  I think I would have played there that night anyway, but I was damn curious to see if I still was going to have a parking issue.  And yes…I did.  Put my card in and it came back with the red lighted rectangle.  This time I was able to read the message.  I wish I had written down the exact wording, as I managed to forget it soon after, but it was something like “Already entered,” or “already parked,” or “already in system.”  The first word was definitely “already,” I’m at least sure of that.

I gave it one more try and got the same result.  Again, no attendant around but there still were no cars behind me.  So I figured I’d use the intercom and try to get to the bottom of this.  A guy came on and I told him what the issue was.  He didn’t seem like he was looking anything up like the last guy. He told me to push the button, take a ticket, and then, “when you get in the casino, just throw away the ticket.”  Yep, that’s what he said, just throw away the ticket.

Well, I pushed the button, took the ticket, drove through the now-opened gate, but there was no way I was throwing away that ticket! Remembering that I had to insert the ticket before inserting my card to exit earlier that very day, I sure as hell kept that damn ticket.

Hours later, my session over, I headed back to my car to see what it would take to exit.  Well, it was pretty quiet then, no one behind me, and again, no attendant.  Twice I got the same, “wrong car park” message.  Was it telling me I was in the wrong parking garage?  We don’t refer to them as “car parks” on the West Coast.  Anyway, I used the intercom again, and explained to the guy what happened, including the guy earlier telling me to throw away my ticket.  He sounded a little panicked.  “Do you still have your ticket?”  I said, “You mean the one the other parking genius told me to throw away?  Why would I have kept it?  I threw it away like the guy told me to!”

Actually I didn’t say that.  I told him that I did indeed have the ticket.  He told me to stick it in and then put my card in.  After it read my ticket, it told me I owed them $10.  But after putting my card in, the green light came on, all was forgiven, the gate opened and I was on my way. A part of me is wondering if I’d still be stuck at that gate if I had followed the other guy’s instructions and thrown away my ticket.

My trip was winding down, but I knew I had to give it one more shot at an MGM property to see if I could decipher what was going on with my parking issue.  I drove back to the MGM late in the afternoon on July 4^th, hoping that perhaps the issued had resolved itself over time.

No such luck.  Red light, no gate opening, and a message that read “Already entered” (or parked, or whatever the second word was).  It was still bright daylight out so the sun made it hard to read.  But the second time I tried it, I strained and was able to read a little more of the message. And it looked like after “already whatever” it had a date.  And that date was 6/28/16.  Hmm….I had to remember that.  In the meantime, there were cars backing up behind me, so rather than hit the intercom, I just pulled a ticket because I knew that would work.

As I started to walk to the poker room, a light bulb went off.  It seemed like the system was telling me that my car was still parked from 6/28, that’s why it wouldn’t let me enter again. It thought I was already in the garage, or one of their garages.  I stopped and tried to figure out where the hell I was on 6/28.  Fortunately, I keep records of this stuff and I didn’t even need my cell phone.  One of the few things I still keep track of on my notepad is where I played when (and how I did).  I took a look at the notebook and I saw that I had played a big tournament at Aria on the 28^th.  Which meant I parked at Monte Carlo….which meant—Ding, Ding, Ding!  That was the time I exited the Monte Carlo without having to put my card in the gate!  It let me out without using my card, as I mentioned earlier.

Now it made perfect sense.  The damn parking system hadn’t checked my car out of Monte Carlo a week ago.  It wouldn’t let me in another parking garage until I was out of the Monte Carlo garage.  Except that I was actually already in the MGM garage.

I felt like Sherlock Holmes having solved a great mystery. “The Case of the Wrong Car Park.”  Now, how to fix it?  I mean aside from going to Monte Carlo for the sole purpose of exiting their garage to get me out of their damn system.  As far as I could tell there was no parking department inside the casino to go to.  The only thing I could think of was, maybe the place where they give out Player’s Cards could help me.  Fortunately, it was right on the way to the poker room.  Unfortunately, there was a huge line for it, and since I had no idea if that was even the right place to take the issue up, I didn’t bother to get in line to find out.

I wondered if the poker room supervisor could either help or direct me to the right department.  So when I got there, I went over to the regular swing shift manager, who knows me well, and explained what my issue was, and asked if he knew what department could help.  He said he didn’t know, other than asking the attendants or the perhaps the guys on the other end of those intercoms. Well that’s what I’d be doing and though I was never trapped, it wasn’t getting the issued resolved.

I thought of one more thing to try….tweeting to MGM corporate. They’d actually seen some of my tweets earlier about the parking (mostly smartass jokes) and responded seriously, so I figured they would respond to a serious inquiry.  I did a two part tweet to them that said, “Your ‘enhanced parking’ apparently thinks I'm still at Monte Carlo since Tue, how can I convince it I'm not?As a result I have issues entering and exiting your other properties with my Gold Mlife card.”  But they totally ignored me. No response at all.

While I was playing poker, I thought of a little flaw in my supposition.  I recalled that leaving MC wasn’t the only time I exited one of their properties without using my MLife card.  I remembered (as should you, back in part 1) that my second night in town, I exited at the newly created exit from NYNY…..and the gate had magically opened for me without a card.  Yet, I had no issues entering or exiting MGM several times after that.  It was only after I exited Monte Carlo without using the card that the issue developed.  Perhaps because the night at NYNY was so early in the whole “enhanced parking” scheme’s roll out, all the computers weren’t quite fully speaking to each other yet?  Who knows? I still think my theory of the system still having me in the MC garage is valid.

After my session, I walked past the Player’s Card booth just after they closed for the nite, so no help there.  But when I got to the gate, there was actually an attendant there, so I waved him over. Perhaps I could finally get this resolved.  I explained the problem.  I started to tell him that I had to keep pulling a ticket and that the system thought I’d been in the MC garage for a week.  He didn’t say anything.  When he saw my gold card, he took some kind of magic card he had hanging around his neck, stuck it up against the machine where you normally put the card in, and, just pressed it against said machine, without inserting anything.  It opened the gate like magic!  The ultimate “get out of jail free” card, I guess.

Well, I was out, but I don’t think it really solved my issue.  I never returned to another MGM property the rest of the trip, so when I eventually return to Vegas and try to enter an MGM garage, they’re probably going to want to charge me a few hundred bucks for long-term parking.  We’ll just have to see.

Imagine how much more fun I would have had if I had been one of those poor schlubs who actually had to payfor parking?  

Game Protection Post--How Bad Ass Casino Dealers Cheat Your Ass

Watch out!

Most casino gamblers believe that casinos do not need to cheat the customers because their profits are huge enough on the square.

What they overlook is that the vast majority of cheating in brick and mortar casinos is done by dealers in business for themselves who keep their casino bosses in the dark.

Suspicious gamblers, especially losing ones, will say that all dealers cheat at one time or another, and often bend their own bad-beat stories into horrific tales of being the victims of cheating dealers.

So what’s the truth?

It’s simply that casino cheating scams engineered by dealers or other casino employees are of a small proportion, but since there are so many casinos with so many tables, there are several episodes of dealer-cheating in all major casinos across the world—every day.

How do they do it?

They cheat in two basic formats.

One is to partner up with an “agent” to cheat their own casinos for individual profit. The other is to cheat legitimate players at their tables in order to replace the chips missing from their dealer chip racks.

That’s to say if Dealer-Peter is cheating the casino and dumping off those chips to his Partner-in-Cheating-Paul, he then has to cheat Poor-Innocent Mary out of her chips to balance out his chip rack and avoid suspicion.

5 ways Dealer-Peter cheats his casino and gets the chips to Partner-Paul

1       

P    Paul plays at Peter’s mini-baccarat table. On a baccarat score card provided by the casino, he charts the exact order of the cards dealt from the first hand out of the shoe until the last hand.

Peter then performs a false shuffle of the six decks of cards and puts them into the shoe. Paul, knowing the exact order that the cards will come out of the new shoe, bets accordingly and kicks the casino’s ass.

Peter and Paul divvy up the money outside the casino after Peter’s shift.

2       Paul next sits at Peter’s roulette table and buys in for chips. Peter, who has mastered the craft of roulette “section shooting,” by which he can control the ball so that it drops into a certain six-number quadrant on the spinning roulette wheel a fair percentage of the time, carefully monitors both the speed of the wheel’s revolutions and the speed with which he lances the roulette ball, and hits the desired quadrant more than probability would dictate.

Once again, Peter and Paul divvy up the cash over a cold one at the neighborhood tavern and play some live video poker.

3       Paul now strolls up to Peter’s blackjack table and takes a seat. He knows Peter will help him along in various ways.

        

a) Peter will “push” or even pay Paul’s losing hands.

b) Peter will overpay Paul when his hands do win.

      c) Peter will help Paul steer tens and aces to his hands off the top of the shoe through a method of controlled-shuffling whereby he protects the order of certain cards or clumps of cards.

      d) When dealing handheld blackjack games, Peter will take a surreptitious glance at the top card of the deck that Paul would receive on a hit, double-down or split. He will signal Paul how to proceed.

This time when the party’s over, they split up the booty in Peter’s apartment, which happens to have a blackjack table in the dining room so that Peter can practice his dealer-cheat moves.  

     

4        Paul takes a long walk to the other side of the behemoth live casino. Lo and behold, his buddy Peter is dealing a lively craps game, which is flowing along at an impressive pace. He hunkers in between two players along the human wall surrounding the craps table.

As is common with today’s craps tables, there is no supervising boxman seated at the middle of the table between Peter and the other dealer at the opposite end of the craps table.

a)      Paul makes a $50 bet on the Don’t Pass Line.

b)      The shooter rolls the dice and they come out 5-5 for a total of ten.

c)       Paul lays $100 double-odds against the shooter rolling another ten before he rolls a seven-out

d)      The shooter does roll the winner-ten and Paul’s bets lose.

e)      Paul quickly swipes his $100 double-odds bet off the layout before Peter can collect it for the house.

f)       Peter sees Paul do this but purposely ignores it.

g)      Paul loses only the original $50 Don’t Pass bet.

h)      The shooter rolls the dice and they come out 3-1 for a total of four.

i)        Paul lays $100 double-odds against the shooter rolling another four before he rolls a seven out.

j)        The shooter rolls the seven-out.

k)      Paul leaves both his winning bets on the layout.

l)        Peter pays them both.

m)    Paul wins $50 on each bet for a total profit of $100.

Paul continues swiping his losing odds bets off the layout in the dark, but leaves them intact when they win. Peter, knowing there is no one supervising him, just keeps paying Paul’s winners and ignoring the losers that Paul swipes off the layout.

This time the casino-cheating pair split up the profits at Paul’s house.

             

5       Finally Paul finds the brick and mortar poker room where Peter is dealing a $10-20 hold’em game. He sits down and immediately plays a hand. He receives his two cards face down and is delighted to see a pair of black aces. He tucks his cards underneath his chips in a predetermined way which signals the value of his hand to Peter, who immediately peeks at the top card to be burned before the flop.

By golly, he notes it’s a pretty red ace!

Instead of burning it, Peter holds it atop the deck and peels off the second card and burns it. Then he turns over the flop which contains the red ace. Paul goes on to make an aces full house and win the hand.

Paul continues playing with the artful dealer’s help and cleans up the poker game.

This final time, the happy boys cut up their ill-gotten gains at their girlfriends’ house (they’re sisters.)

  

Did we forget about Poor-Innocent Mary, the victim whom Peter has to cheat to hide the cheating-profits he made with Paul?

We did not!

So how does Peter cheat Mary?

The same way he cheated the casino with Paul, but in reverse.

When Mary sits at Peter’s blackjack table, he shortchanges her on winning hands, sweeps her bet on push hands, and just takes her losing chips when her hands lose.

Of course Mary might catch on and claim that Peter shortchanged her or took her chips on a push hand, to which Peter will apologize, make the correction--and then wait for the next “Mary” to hit his table.

The same vicious cycle continues on all the other games that Bad-Ass Peter deals in the casino.

MGM's Enhanced Parking is a Steep Hill to Climb

(You didn’t really think I’d talk about my first live experience with MGM’s new “enhanced parking” policy and do it in fewer than two posts, did you?  Do you not know me?  This is part 1--Part 2 is now posted and can be found here.

Twitter is a wonderful thing, and once again I urge you all to get on it and follow me.  For one thing, imagine the fun of seeing yours truly trying to fit a blog post into 140 characters or less.  And besides, it seems that a certain huge internet company that shall remain nameless is doing it’s gosh darn best to keep it a secret whenever I have new post up.  So following me on Twitter is may be the best way to know when I’ve got something new for you to enjoy (following me on Facebook works for that too).  

Twitter started allowing tweeters to tweet polls.  I always wanted to try one and the other day, I finally came up with something to survey the public about.  Of course, it was about me.  Specifically, I had four ideas for my next blog post and wasn’t sure which one to do first.  So I polled my Twitter followers. 

The problem is that each possibility had to be described in a few characters (25 I think).  So I couldn't really explain the ideas clearly and that may have skewed the results.  Also, only 36 people voted (but honestly, that’s more than I expected!) so I dunno how representative it is.

Anyway, the four options, exactly as I presented them, and the results, were:

Why I playedwhich tourns – 8%

3way all I won w/ 0 out – 25%

Update on MGM parking – 33%

Dlr shafts player purposely – 34%

The “winner” has been published and can be found here (here’s a secret, I was gonna publish that one first anyway cuz it was the easiest to write and I was running late).

For awhile, the MGM parking post was leading and I think it actually finished tied, but to make it add up to 100%, Twitter had to pick one to give the extra percentage point to.

I was surprised, I really thought based on some other comments that people were tired of my MGM parking rants.  I guess some people can never get enough.  Truth is, nothing could stop me from talking about this now that I’ve fully experienced MGM’s “enhanced parking” in all its glory. So I’m glad there are some people who actually do want to read my report.

You can find my previous posts on MGM’s new parking policy here, here and here.  Now as I mentioned last time, I qualified for my MLife Gold card and am entitled to free parking (both self and valet) at any MGM property in Vegas—at least for the time being.  So this will not be a post about how much I hate being charged to park at MGM casinos.  Note:  I still hate that anyoneis charged to park at a casino where the whole idea is to get you to come in and lose several mortgage payments playing games of chance where the odds are stacked against you.  But let someone who actually is stuck paying write that rant (since I’ve already done it).

I’m just going to explore the mysteries, the wonders, the inconveniences and the sheer awesomeness that is MGM Resorts International's “enhanced parking.”

When MGM announced they were going to charge for parking, the actual fee they would be collecting was only one issue I had with it.  The other issue was the inconvenience and delay of both entering and especially leaving a giant parking garage while waiting for people to pay or present a validated ticket to exit.

I remember last summer I parked in Binion’s garage downtown.  I busted the tournament around midnight and collected my usual min-cash.  I had parked on like the 6^th level and by the time I descended down to the fifth level, I ran into a solid wall of traffic trying to exit the structure.  It took me 20-30 minutes just to get out of the damn garage that night.  It wasn’t just that they had only one exit lane and one attendant there (who probably once called Benny Binion “Sonny.”)  It was also due to the fact that once past the gate, cars had to wait a long time for pedestrians and cars to pass to enter the street.  It was a huge fustercluck, and I could only imagine that it would be a lot worse at the MGM properties.  Even without gates and such, exiting the MGM on a night when there’s a concert or a fight can be a mess.  Now, adding the fact that everyone is going to have to stop and pay or enter a ticket to exit was sure to make it a lot more chaotic.

But as the system was set up, they made it all computerized.  There is no one there to take your money.  You have to pay before you get in your car to exit.  There are signs all over the garages that say “Have you paid for parking?”  I suppose they could be accused of rubbing it in but that is not the purpose of the signs.  They don’t want you to be the poor schmuck who gets to the gate and doesn’t have a paid ticket with which to open the gate.

There are actually three ways to open the gate to get in, and three ways to open it to get out.  To get in, you can just pull a ticket that comes out when you push the button at the gate.  Pretty standard.  If you have a valid NV driver license, parking is free (for now), so you can pull your license out of your wallet, and run it under a super-market style scanner, which should confirm your local status and open the gate.  Finally, there’s a totally different slot for you to insert your magic MLife card, and should you be worthy, the gate will magically open for you.

For exiting, the driver license and MLife card work exactly the same way.  But if you’re one of those unworthy schlubs who must pay, you had better remember to visit one of the kiosks right inside the garage (next to the casino entrance) and pay the piper.  I really didn’t explore this since it is beneath me, having been designated one of the 1 percenters by the MGM gods.  I assume the kiosks take credit cards and cash, but honestly don’t know.  But you better have inserted your ticket in the machine and figured out a way to have the machine bless your ticket so it will open the gate when you and your car try to open the gate to get out of the garage.

I arrived in town just a few days after they started enforcing the new parking rules.  Of course, there was much confusion among the visitors and employees alike.  They had a bunch of (presumably temporary) employees at all the gates to help explain what people needed to do to get in and out.  They would even insert your MLife card or ticket for you, or wave your license under the scanner for you.

Still, it was rather chaotic, especially early in the trip.  Before I got there, I recalled seeing a tweet from poker guru Ed Miller that said something like, “Hey, MGM Resorts….the 15 minutes it took me to get into your garage was 15 minutes I wasn’t spending money in your casino.”  Heh heh.  Leave it to Ed to point out when something is –EV.

Aside from the general chaos, it seemed that at every entry/exit point that had more than one gate, one of them was always closed for a malfunction.  I saw this almost every time, and there was usually a long line of people trying to get in or out of garage.  Fun stuff.

Now, my own very first experience with the new system took place on my first night in town, at the Mirage.  Why Mirage?  Well, there was an unofficial PokerAtlas/Ante Up mixed game scheduled for that night.  Alert readers will recall that I’m not really a fan of mixed games but I did want to be social and join my friends and colleagues.  That was also the night of game 6 of the NBA finals, so I stayed in my room and watched the game before heading over to the Mirage.  Thus, I was too late for the mixed game; it was already full.  Aw, shucks.  I was sociable with the group and then went ahead and played 1/2 NLH. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to write a blog post about that game in the future.

But this is a post about parking. At that point, all I had was my feeble MLife scum-of-the-earth card that they just give to just anybody. I was a member of the cool crowd but couldn’t prove it.  Now, as I drove to the Mirage, I assumed that my old card would be read by the machine as a Gold card and therefore I would be let in as the royalty I am.  But I wasn’t sure.  .

As it happened, there were two entry gates to choose from, and both were working (I think one of the exit gates was closed).  I picked the one that had the fewest cars waiting (by a factor of one, I believe).  Now here we come to one of the issues of the new parking system that I had already heard about from the 2+2 forums. They were complaining about the locations of the gates at some of the properties—notably Aria, if I recall.  The gates at Aria—and here at the Mirage—were on a steep hill.  So you would have to be at a dead stop on a steep incline to get a ticket or insert your card or whatever.  And then when the gate opened, you’d have to climb that hill from said dead stop.  And people were understandably worried that if the car in front of you had a manual transmission, it could easily roll back right into you before the driver was able to get it in gear and navigate the hill.

Hell, my car has an automatic and it started to roll back when I tried to drive up the hill from the dead stop after the gate opened.  Once inside, my friend Don, who was in the mixed game, asked me which gate I used. I told him and he said the other one—the one he used—was even worse, because that one not only had the same incline but also had a big speed bump right there in front of you where you stop for the ticket.  And he said his car’s tires were spinning like crazy before he was finally able to get over the speed bump.  Really great design!

Anyway, before I got past the gate, my main concern was opening it.  There were a couple of attendants there helping other people—none were free.  There were already a few cars stacked up behind me when I pulled to the gate.  I wasn’t sure my crummy old MLife card would work—or how to insert it.  I didn’t want to delay the people behind me any longer than I had to trying to figure out.  I guess I sort of panicked.  I knew—or at least thought I knew—that pushing the button and pulling out a ticket would open the gate.  So I did that.  And sure enough, pulling the ticket got the gate open, and then I managed to accelerate enough to climb up the ramp and look for an “enhanced parking” spot at the Mirage.

As I walked into the casino, I noticed all the kiosks there where people are supposed to pay for parking.  I wondered if, inasmuch as I had a ticket, I would have to visit one of those kiosks to get my ticket validated, even though I presumably wouldn’t have to pay.  There was a kid—and I do mean a kid, not sure he could actually go into the casino—helping people using the kiosks to pay for their parking. I really just wanted to go to a machine and read any instructions I might need.  But the kid asked if I needed help, and I told him I had pulled a ticket out even though I was sure I was qualified for free parking—I just needed to get the right card.  He said in that case, I wouldn’t need the ticket, or the kiosk, I should just be able to insert the card at the gate and it would open.  Then he said if that didn’t work, I might have to put the ticket in first, then put my card in.

OK….I would have felt better if he looked old enough to vote, I suppose.  I headed to the Mirage poker room, and after saying hello to everyone, I went to the podium with my plain vanilla MLife card and explained that I believed I had qualified for gold status and thus wanted a new card.  The woman up there checked and confirmed I was indeed entitled to the magic gold card.  She made a new one for me.  To my surprise, she gave me back my old card and said something like, “You should just keep this gold card in your car, and carry the old one with you to clock into games.  The gold card only matters for the parking.”  Hmm…..I hadn’t thought of that.  Then, just for fun, I asked her if my old card would have opened the gate.  She surprised me by saying no.  Really?  The machine that opens the gate reads the color of the card?  There’s some extra coding on the strip of the card that only is there on the right color card?  Well, it didn’t matter, I was “in” and although I could have tried to use my old card to get in or out any time after that, I never thought of trying it.

In fact, I didn’t leave the gold card in my car, I kept it in my wallet and stuck my old card in a draw.  It dawned on me that if my car was stolen while I was parked at an MGM property, having my card in there would let them escape too easily.  If I didn’t leave the card in the card, they’d be unable to open the gate to make their getaway.  They’d have to ram the gate to get out, and damage their new stolen car.  Hmm…..maybe I didn’t think that one through too well.

Anyway, when I was ready to depart, I followed the kid’s advice and just inserted my newly minted gold into the machine (after a false start or two inserting it the wrong way) and viola….the gate opened!  I felt like I’d won something.  So I still had the ticket I’d used to enter, which I decided to keep as a souvenir of my first “enhanced parking” experience.  Yes, I still have it!

The next night I parked at New York New York and this time I would try out my new Gold card to try to get into an MGM property.  In the past, I’ve parked at NYNY a lot.  There are a couple of places I like to eat there, and I think that the MGM poker room is about the same walking distance from the NYNY parking garage as it is from the MGM parking garage.  So if I’m going to eat at NYNY, it’s always been pretty convenient to park there.

Until now, that is.  I arrived early evening and there was of course a line to get to the gate.  And at NYNY, that gate is up a much steeper incline than the one at Mirage.  I don’t recall a speed bump, but man, I really had to floor it to get going forward once I had figured out the right way to insert my gold card to get the gate open. And yes, I was rolling back before I started going forward.  But the card worked fine once I figured that out.   As I was waiting my turn in line, I noticed a much, much longer line of cars waiting to get out.  These cars were all pointed downhill—again, a very steep hill—and I sure didn’t want think about the possibility that someone at the gate couldn’t get out for whatever reason, and you’d have a mass of cars trying to back up that hill trying to get into another lane to exit (assuming there was another lane open).

As I was driving up the parking garage, I noticed what appeared to be a brand new entry/exit point for the garage that never existed before.  I made a mental note to investigate when I was ready to depart.  It was on the second or third level of the garage and I had no idea where it might lead to.  But when I was ready to exit, I drove up to it and it appeared to be a legitimate exit (and entrance) that I could take.  There was no one in line (either to get in or out), and, remembering the line I had seen exiting at the “normal” exit earlier, I decided to take my chances and take this new exit.  To where, I wasn’t sure.  Ah, the thrill of discovery!

The gates were of course at the top of a steep incline, but at least the waiting line to exit (if there was one) was on level ground.  Only the entry would present a steep incline to navigate.  As soon as I approached the gate, card in hand, the gate mysteriously opened all on its on, without my having to insert a card.   OK, cool.  But keep in mind that I didn’t have to insert my card to exit, that will come into play later (in part 2).

It turned out that this exit lets you out onto Frank Sinatra Drive.  Now this is pretty inside baseball, but Frank Sinatra Drive is kind of a secret street located between the Strip and the I-15.  Once you know about it, you can use it as a shortcut to get to some Strip properties’ parking areas.  You do have to be careful because once you get on it it’s not that easy to get off of it.  Unless you live in Vegas, or go there by car as often as I do, the first time most people discover it is by accident when they make a wrong turn. And if you visit Vegas and never have a car, you may never encounter it at all.  Anyway, it took me a bit out of my way but it was no big deal.  Much better than exiting NYNY by the regular exit, at least in my mind. 

And that will do it for part 1.  Part 2 is now posted and can be found here.