YOU'RE CHEATING HEART..LAS VEGAS STYLE

The dealers watch the table, the players watch the dealer, the floorman watches the dealer and players, the shift boss watches the floormen, the dealers, and the players, surveillence watches the dealers and players as well as the slot machines for tampering and the security guards watch for theifs and other problems. So who watches the watchers? And is anyone cheating? And if so, who's cheating who.

Let's start with the simple structure of gaming control. First there's the Gaming Policy Comittee chaired by the Governor who elects an eleven member board which consists of: 1) State Senator. 2) State Assembly member. 3) Nevada Gaming Comission member. 4) Nevada Gaming Control Board member. 5) A Nevada Indian Tribe member. 6)Two representatives of the general public. 7) Two members with an unrestricted gaming lisence (casino). 8) One member with a restricted gaming lisence (bar owner).

These people set gaming policies and oversee the Gaming Comission and Gaming Control Board. The Nevada Gaming Comission deals with lisencing and enforcement. This is a five member board appointed by the Governor. They set gaming regulations and only serve part-time. The Gaming Control Board is the Gaming Comission's enforcement arm. When you have a dispute in a casino against the house, it's the Gaming Control Board Enforcement Agency that answers to the dispute, and don't think these guys are paid psychologists that come out and sift out the problem, these guys carry badges and guns and have full authority to handcuff and arrest anyone they deem necessary.

But the question is who's cheating who and is anyone getting away with it? And the answer is undoubtedly yes. In the age of computer chips and electronics and more sophistocated gagetry than you can imagine, more safeguards than you'll ever know, the cheaters are becoming even more sophistocated at an alarming rate. And the most alarming fact is that they're not doing it alone. For the most part the sucessful cheaters are working in bigger and bigger teams and are very difficult to spot since they're trained like never before. But one disturbing fact is that the most dangerous teams are completely, well almost completely legal. The act of card counting is not yet illegal, although once a card counter is identified they are barred from any further play and usually are barred from the casino totally. Although some do make the book of excluded players, which isn't exactly the Black Book, excluded players aren't criminals, they're mearly people who have developed a craft to the point where their play pushes their winning advantage above the point that the casino deams fair to the casino, and so excludes these people from participating and since even their presence around the tables constitutes a possible problem, it's usually wiser for the casino to bar them completely.

But the problem with the card counters is they were so few and far between that they stood out amongst the average players that put up a bet and pretty much stick with the same or smaller bets, card counters on the other hand start with a small average bet and with no apparant reason kick the bet up multiple times and then back again to the smallest average, and then again to an almost unreasonable sum which would often set off bells and whistles to the floor and surveillence. But things have changed. Now days the rules have changed. Now the card counters are going to school on computers and their teachers are more like mathematic professors than mob goons and trust me, they're learning well. But rather than a few people settling for a large score at one casino, teams of 4 or 5 are hitting the tables together and taking small hits at several casinos. And they're almost impossible to spot. They're also armed which alarmed security. Not armed with weapons, but armed with electronics. And now the casinos are fighting back, and although it's expensive to wage this electronic war, the casinos are wining. The latest scam came when a man sat at a table in a strip casino in September. The man was dressed informally with a baseball hat and a baseball jacket, the hat was fine, but the jacket, when it was in the upper 90's in Las Vegas was a stupid move. Security first noticed him and after watching him a while noticed a bulge in the middle of his back. A strange place for a bulge since it was too high for a gun, or was it? They also noticed he had been there 15 minutes and hadn't taken off the jacket while even people in short sleeves were warm.

Security decided to make their move and asked the man to step quietly off the table with them and into a back room where they opened his shirt and revealed electrical tape around his chest which greatly alarmed them, their first thought was that is was a bomb. They even placed the man in a room alone and while waiting for bomb control, had the man prove that it was only a transmitter device. When faced with a long jail sentence the prosecutor offered a deal, he jumped at it, and all he had to do was tell them what he was doing and how he was doing it.

The explination was undaunting. When Gaming Control officers heard the technology that was being used, they were stunned. The new technology was digital and computer generated, and the scariest thing was that it was very very fast. With fiber optics combined with digital stop motion the transmitter can actually pick up the face of the cards coming out of a shoe, stop motion on the digital picture and enhance it from the camera up the sleeve on the player on first base, and transmit the information to the player on third base as to what the dealer's hole card is, and all is done by the time the dealer can get to third base to play the hand. I didn't believe it either until I saw the technology work. Then the next technology dealt with Roulette. Here the same technology was used but linked to a computer that can take the shot of a ball as it passes a stop on the wheel then take the same shot the next time the ball comes around and tell by the number it passes each time what the likely outcome will be by the speed of the ball what section of 5 numbers the ball will fall into. And believe me, they've done their homework, they've spent alot of time with the Roulette computer, and why? to make a move on a $5 table to win $35 would mean risking $5 seven times sucessfully. In Roulette, you only have to risk $1 one time to win $35 , sure it's harder since the odds are so much higher, but when you're cheating, the odds are the same every time, and always in your favor if you're good.

But the point is that if a player is cheating the casino, the other players really don't know or care, all the other players care about is weather they're being cheated by the casino. If anyone thought a slot machine or poker machine could be fixed and would be fixed by a casino, no one would ever put another nickel in a machine, and infact, when American Coin company, who owned most of the poker machines in the bars in Las Vegas in the 80's, was caught switching legal computer chips for chips that couldn't possibly hit a royal flush, the company was out of business before they could even replace the chips and pay the fines. But here we are in the year 2000 and I can tell you when a computer chip is put in by the casino that has a 68% payback, you might as well hold the 10 of spades on every American Coin machine waiting to hit the royal flush. And most casinos aren't setting anything over 78% in the slot machines these days. Even the famed 98% payback guaranteed machines mean only that one of the machines on the floor in that section have a 98% chip at any time, and that's based on 100,000 pulls. Is that cheating? well when you play the state lottery's, your chances of winning that are quite a bit less and that's legal so what we ask for, bigger and better casinos, are what we get, but at our own cost. The fact that the only person in the history of the state of Nevada gambling who hit 8 out of 8 in video Keno for $100,000, was found on the tape to be draped over the machine, on a close up from another camera angle, something was spotted in his hand, while waiting to be paid, he was asked to step into a private room for the payoff, and when he agreed, they asked him to take off his jacket and in the pocket was a hand held computer that was hooked up to a random number generator that would record the numbers hit on the machine over an hour period, when the generator recognized a pattern it alerted the player, two hits later he lined up 8 out of 8 for 18 months in jail. Not quite the payoff he bargained for.

So for the player all I can tell you is play at your own risk , the chances of being cheated are slimmer than being in an air crash and if there is cheating going on by a player against the casino, if it's any consolation, it won't affect your money, and the chances the cheaters will be caught nowdays are pretty good. Surveillence is good, Gaming Control is even better, when faced with the problem of computers and transmitters they countered with frequency ocillator detectors which can detect any incoming or outgoing radio frequencys within the casino and pinpoint the exact location of the transmissions and receptions. So if you're thinking of cheating... well, I can tell you the Beef Stew on Wednesdays in the Clark County detention center isn't too bad, but good luck getting through the oatmeal, those little black things in it AREN'T raisins.

-Kenny Pearlman