Gadgetory

the thing about beating a casino is this place set up this game they made the rules they provide the equipment they provide the dealer and they're basically saying come on in and try to beat us any time there is an opportunity someone is out there that's going to try and take advantage of that opportunity whether that's a poker table a slot machine or a table game we're gonna know who you are if you're a bag if you're not a bad guy we I don't care who you are but if you're the bad guy we're gonna catch you always been interested in finding ways to make money by playing games or basically ways to make money without actually getting a job there's a lot of work to beating games an awful lot of work people who get paid to catch bad guys are getting paid whether they catch them or not the cheats don't get paid unless they figure it out so they're motivated 1962 the only state in the United States that allowed gambling was Nevada gambling was a much smaller industry a much smaller business much more run by the mob and kind of shady characters but there was there was a lot of cheating that went on in 1962 Thorpe wrote a book explaining how players could use this card counting system that he devised to actually get an advantage over the house and it was the first book that actually gave players an edge at the game of blackjack and suddenly when people learned there was a way to beat a casino game everybody wanted to do it and the casinos just made money hand-over-fist because people couldn't do it you know advantage players are not cheats so we don't treat them like cheats they're just I've been an advantage player I played blackjack whole card I've card counted I don't do it anymore just because I don't have the time or the bankroll my wife and daughter seem to that I'm going to give you guys a little tour of some of the gadgets and devices that cheaters have used throughout history to win money at poker blackjack craps other card and dice games all of the world this probably won more money than any other single device in history with the exception of marked cards it's a chip Cup that's not really a stack of chips it's a hollow shell that chips can hide inside but it is a device that uses the Trojan horse principle it allows us to shuttle money back and forth across the table these are actually weighted dice you can't really hear a difference when they roll if you handle dice a lot you could probably feel a difference I can tell when I pick these up instantly I know that they're loaded I don't necessarily know what they're loaded for but I know that they're heavier than 3/4 inch casino dice should be a lot of the stuff I have in this room may have been used in the casino world at one time but these days the private game world is where most of the money is as far as cheaters are concerned most cheaters just aren't willing to go up against the modern surveillance systems and the modern security devices that they have in the casino this is our surveillance room we're pretty proud of the room we've done a lot of things here they're kind of innovative we've been open three years but we're still pushing the envelope on the new things we bring in this is the future right here and this is just the beginning of the future with these cameras so um this camera goes back seven days and it's a forensic tool what we use it for is to follow people who were here three days ago five days ago seven days ago it doesn't matter when they were here as long as we have the video we're gonna be able to track every step they made in this casino with just about 50 cameras so wherever that person's going we'll follow them and look at the shot we have there and there's other things we can do then the facial recognition technology has pushed OCR even further than we thought we can actually read the cards now the suit you saw the 1080p camera we can see it with our human eye and silk and software so I'll be able to track the skill level of every blackjack player that walks into this building that's what's coming next we do have staff that monitor continually the what's going on with technology what's going on with risks with technology right now and what our methods of penetration we do have ethical hackers on staff who stay conversant in that particular area just to stay on top of you know could it be possible to hack into Vegas at present I'm not aware of a significant presence of hackers or of any and hackers you know folks from outside trying to remotely perform some nefarious activity on a gaming system the the Rings of cheats that we typically see involve the physical realm where you have people trying to take advantage of the slot machine itself we you know that's typical fortunately I believe the gaming devices themselves are pretty bulletproof and that it requires a significant level of illusioned to do anything with a gaming device so we have over 700 fixed cameras that are in over 350 PT Z's and you can see they're all focused primarily on games because that's what I'm interested in if someone's going to beat us that's where the money is that's where I've got to have my focus I don't how about baccarat what we're looking for there we look for past posting we look for a lot of different things here we look for the bets being switched which we've caught the casinos we look for players introducing their own cards perhaps we look for players dealers doing a fall shuffle like the Tran organization you've probably heard about we look for players with a camera in their palm that will fan the cards when they cut and then gather the sequence of the cards and then they download that into their iPhone come back a few minutes later with all the data and they know how to bet every hand twenty hands in a row they win every hand it's not just the cameras it's the data and cameras now are data so it's all data it's just learning to understand that data is important we're here at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Nevada we're about to take a walkthrough on the showroom floor and see what kind of objects or devices we can find that could be used to cheat at gambling so when I look at something like this I don't see a cheating device yet but I see a cheating device a couple of years from now and maybe there's a company out there that's already got one can we get rid of these wires and can we build it into the frame of the glasses because once you've done that it's there and now you have some potential because now all you're doing is filming something gin rummy bridge poker blackjack games where our decisions really matter all you're talking about at the end of the day now is information if I know your whole cards I'm going to be you know if I know what's coming on the flop I'm going to beat you so it's all information transfer and that's all everything in this room does is move information from one place to another information management is all it is at the end of the day I've had a lot of people asked me what draws me to all of this stuff and at the end of the day there is some sort of kind of cool James Bond and Q quality to some of these devices you know I think most of us have seen a James Bond movie were desmond llewelyn der whoever's playing Q these days pay attention double-oh-seven and he shows him the watch with the laser beam and there's something in in all of us that kind of goes like to have one of those and you know you kind of have to leverage that with the fact that most of this stuff has been designed to rip people off so I don't necessarily approve of the morality of these devices but I approve of the ingenuity of these devices I think most people feel that if you can find a way to beat a casino more power to you most people respect it doesn't it doesn't matter who they are we're never going to be ahead that's just the way it is the cheats may succeed but once they do it then we go full in anyway if it happened at another property we're going to know everything about it and stop it here I think almost everybody has a certain amount of compulsive gamble in them I mean life itself is a gamble you get out of bed in the morning it's a gamble you have no idea you know if you you go you find a new job that's a gamble you get married it's a gamble you have kids it's a gamble you you buy a dog it's a gamble everything you do in life is gambling it's you know it's it's it's not the same as drinking where you don't have to drink to live you have to gamble to live you have to take a chance you got to take a risk and anybody who thinks like you know yeah but if what if I could do it good enough to make my everybody fuck would find that attractive it's like gee that's like the ideal lifestyle I can go play cards and go home with money in my pocket