Poker & Casino Scam of The Month     

  In the 2003 casino film “Cooler” with Alec Baldwin and William H. Macy, the term “cooler” was applied to Macy’s character in the film who was called in by the casino owner, Baldwin, to cool off gamblers’ winning streaks. Macy would rush into a hot craps table where a shooter was on a big roll making tons of winning numbers, then all of a sudden, as if Macy somehow applied voodoo to spook the hot shooter and “cool him off,” the shooter would roll a seven and his streak would be over. Not only was that whole plot improbable and ridiculous, but the creators of the film misused the term “cooler.” A cooler in a casino is actually a card scam that has been used by cheating dealers to rip off casinos across the world, and the term denotes cooling off the casino table rather than hot players on a roll. How does it work? Firstly, it happens on casino games using cards, not dice. It has been performed on blackjack, baccarat (mostly mini-baccarat) and poker tables. The cheating dealer is the main player in the scam, working with a least one confederate but usually two or more. The scam itself is switching in entire decks of cards that have been prearranged to deal winning hands to the players at the crooked dealer’s table. If the game uses multiple decks, such as blackjack and baccarat, the entire amount of legitimate decks in  the shoe will be switched out for a replacement shoe that has been prearranged for the players to win. In baccarat, where there are no player decisions to upset the order or placement of the cards as they come out of the shoe, this scam has several times resulted in more than a million dollars of illicit profits off a single switched in “cooler,” the term itself meaning the shoe that has been switched in by the dealer and his partners to “cool off” the casino, or better yet, put the casino on ice! Often a floorman and/or pitboss are involved in the scam, as can be a surveillance operator/operators in the eye-in-the sky. If not, the dealer’s cheat team will use a distraction to remove pit personnel from the scene when the actual switching of the decks of cards takes place. A person working with the team will simply approach the floorperson or pit boss on the game from the other side of the pit and ask any question, which will take the supervising person’s eyes off the game. The same can be done with other legitimate players at the table who are not in on the scam, but sometimes every player at the table is involved. All that is needed to pull off the switch is a second, basically the time for a quick handshake. Then the dealer loads the cooler into the shoe and deals out successive winning hands to his confederates, giving the casino a really “cool” bath. The cooler scam has been pulled off most in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Macao. In the mid ’90s in Macao, one dealer cheat team scored $6 million when they took all 14 seats around a baccarat table that got very cold for the casino. Steve Forte, the ex-anti-cheating casino game protection expert who gained notoriety in 2007 for allegedly masterminding the Atlantic City Borgata high-tech poker scam, was arrested some twenty years earlier for attempting to switch in a cooler, also in Atlantic City. I don’t know what went wrong with that attempt, but it’s probable that surveillance caught it on tape, which is always the biggest threat to those cheating dealers looking to switch in coolers. In today’s super-surveillance casino world, I would say that surveillance people would have to be involved for a successful switch-in of a cooler. And if you’re wondering where the cheat team gets the legitimate casino decks of cards to form the cooler, there are numerous possibilities including stealing them with the help of other crooked employees who oversee card inventories and use, as well as getting them directly from companies that print the cards, as has happened in both Australia and South Africa. The “cooler” is one very hot scam!

Players swapping cards at poker is a cheating trick that began on 19th century Mississippi gambling riverboats and spread to poker games in Wild West saloons. It is simply carried out by two cheating players sitting next to each other who switch one of their original dealt cards to improve either one or both their hands. In the old riverboat and saloon days of poker, the trick was done in five- and seven-card stud games. Today’s modern professional card-swappers ply their craft mostly in Texas hold’em games, and despite what most people think and state of the art surveillance systems, there are many professional card-swapping teams out there and most of them are quite good.

The best card-swapping pair I ever saw was in $20-$40 hold’em game at the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens, California in 1999. In two seats across the table from the dealer sat a man in a baseball cap and a woman with medium-length dark hair. The man was seated to the woman’s left. Neither one was dressed obtrusively; they blended in perfectly with the other players at their table, and with most everyone else in the card club. To probably everyone’s eyes but mine, their actions warranted no double takes.

What I noticed first was that the man’s right shoulder and the woman’s left shoulder bobbed simultaneously. It was the slightest movement but somehow it caught my attention. Out of curiosity, not really thinking something was up, I continued watching. After the flop, the man folded and the woman stayed in the hand. From where I stood I couldn’t see the community cards on the table, but I could tell who was playing and who was not. The woman chucked her hand in the muck after someone bet on the turn.

I saw the dealer sweep the pot to the eventual winner, then watched him deal out the next hand. As soon as I determined that the couple had received their cards for the new hand, I put my sights on them closely. At that instant, their shoulders bobbed again. The man put in a pre-flop raise while the woman folded. I watched a pretty decent pot unfold, and when it was over the dealer slid him the chips.

The third time I saw their shoulders bob told me they were cheating. To confirm my suspicions I decided to make a pass of their table. As they were receiving their second cards on the next deal, I slipped right up behind them. I froze for an instant to get a good peek, and my growing curiosity, which was rapidly turning into fascination, was not disappointed. In that split second, and I mean split, the man and woman exchanged a card. It was one of the deftest movements I had ever seen, and, believe me, I had seen many. With a bare minimum of shoulder and arm movement, the man using his right hand, the woman her left, each palmed one of their cards and slid it down underneath his wrist along the inside of the arm to the other. The length of their arms also served to hide the action from the dealer and everyone else at the table. It simply blocked their view. And for added protection, they used their crooked free arms to create a barrier against anyone who might have a side view. It took a few more episodes of this to see how truly gifted they were, but I surely enjoyed the show.

I wanted to see more of it and eventually got a seat at their table, the first seat to the dealer’s left. I was directly across from the cheaters, a prime spot for viewing. The first hand I watched them play closeup, they both threw their cards in the muck. I took that to mean that even with all four cards they couldn’t make a single playable hand. At the same time, I realized how powerful their scam was. Say, for instance, the man was dealt A-7 offsuit and the woman A-6 offsuit. Neither of these is really a playable hand, especially from early position. But if the man were able to slip the woman his ace in exchange for her 6, she would then have the A-A monster that poker players like to call "American Airlines." The man could then fold his 7-6 and the woman could take her shot with the beneficiary of the switch. The same could be done to create nut flush and straight draws. If between their four cards they could find an A-K suited or better, they would have much the best of the game.

The next hand they went into action. I timed my glance at them so it would pick up their move without lingering. I watched the woman receive her second card and the man his a split second later. There was a tiny hesitation before their shoulders bobbed and their hands and arms jerked ever so slightly. By moving their heads a bit while shifting backward, they stole a glance at each other’s cards. Then they made an instantaneous decision as to which cards to switch, and followed through. It was all lightning quick.

The flop came K-9-8 with flush possibilities. However, when the woman raised the initial bettor, I doubted she was chasing a flush. I secretly put her on at least a pair of kings and maybe even trips. Her partner folded his hand and lightly feigned disgust. I folded mine as well. A queen came on the turn, followed by a 4 on the river. There were no possible straights or flushes. The woman bet out, got called and won the pot. What did she reveal at showdown? You guessed it: a black pair of kings to form a set.

I watched the couple really clean up the game, $1,500 profit between them in two hours. And I’m sure they practiced restraint; they simply could not show strong pocket pairs every time they entered a pot for fear of drawing suspicion. I saw the same couple three more times over the years and was always amazed by their skills. I did see other card-swapping teams working poker rooms across the world and never did I witness one of them take heat. Card-swapping is also being done in the "carnival" poker-based casinos games such as three- and four-card poker, where the convivial atmosphere around these games supplies card-swappers with many opportunities to work unhindered and with great camouflage.

How do you spot card-swappers at your game? Well, if they´re good, you would have to be extremely lucky. Their moves are virtually undetectable. If you want to read more on this scam, check out the article on my magazine page entitled "Poker Pro Magazine Article on Card Swappers."

> Railing is one casino scam that takes lots of balls. On craps tables running hot with a lot of action, there are usually several players gathered around them with chips swelling in their table racks on the rail. These players are always bending down to place their bets and pick up their chips from the layout. Their movements are in unison. When a shooter rolls a winner, the players bend down harmoniously to collect their winnings. On a loser they do the same, replacing the swept-away chips on the layout. During these movements many of the players leave their racks exposed. Their chips could be picked away at by an agile chip-thief with quick hands willing to stick his hand into neighboring chip racks along the rail of the table. These thieves became known as “railbirds,” long before the same term was given to bust-out poker players gone broke watching poker games from the rails outside poker rooms.

 

Players drinking heavily as they gambled made the best targets. One aspect of stealing other players' chips that delights many railbirds is that railing other players’ chips is not ripping off the casinos; you couldn't take casino steam. Your principal danger was getting caught by the victim himself. True, there was the chance of being seen by a surveillance camera above, but that risk was minimal because surveillance operators are rarely watching out for craps players’ chips in the table racks.

The first known successful professional railing team was an offshoot of the Classon Pastposting Team, consisting of the notorious brothers Henry and Joe Classon. Cruising the old Las Vegas Sands casino in search of a potential victim one night in the late 1950s, Joe came across a tall wobbling craps player underneath a Stetson hat who seemed to never put his whiskey in the glass-holder built into the rail. He constantly held it in his left hand, handling his chips with his right. His chip rack on the rail was filled with black $100 chips.

Joe had wanted to be the first “railbird” and pass whatever chips he could pick off to his brother standing behind him, but Henry vetoed that idea and told Joe to stand behind him.

He squeezed in between the mark and another player while Joe stood behind. He already had a fistful of green $25 chips when he approached the table, avoiding the contact with the dealer and boxman that would have been necessary had he bought chips at the table. Henry knew that early chip preparation was essential, just like it was for all casino cheating scams.

The Art:

The first nuance of railing was to make your mark feel comfortable with your presence. If he became nervous or fidgety, his natural move was to excessively protect his chips. More important than talking to your mark was ingratiating yourself by your movements. The key was to follow him, keep the same rhythm. When he bent over to make his bet, you made yours. When he bent over to pick up his chips, you did likewise. A little chit-chat didn't hurt but wasn't mandatory. Not all gambling drunkards were open to conversation. You had to feel your mark's vibes.

Henry bet two green chips next to the mark's black chips. He had to be careful about the placement of his chips because if the mark wasn't comfortable with them, the occasion could be blown. In the same manner that you didn't want to crowd the mark with your presence, you didn't want to crowd him with your chips either. If you bet your chips too close to his, he might feel the encroachment. If you bet too far away, he might also be disturbed for one reason or another, though too close was definitely worse than too far.

A final precondition the railbird needed to victimize his mark was a table that stayed hot. When a table went cold, it was the casino getting all his chips. Soon there was nothing left in his rack for you to peck away at. A table could go from hot to cold extremely fast.

Henry got into the guy's rhythm after just a couple of rolls. They exchanged a little small talk about how the table was running good. The guy laughed, even patted Henry on the back. He was going to be plump for the pickings.

When the mark reached down to pick up the black chips the dealer had just paid him, Henry reached down with him to pick up his greens. While they were both bent over the rail, Henry's left hand picked up his own chips off the layout while his right hand slid underneath his left outstretched arm into his neighbor's chip rack. Then with a pinching movement of his thumb, index and middle finger, he plucked three black chips from the end of the lined-up chips closest to him, and in the same motion passed them subtly behind his back to Joe, who put them in his jacket pocket. This chip pass-off was necessary to protect Henry in the event the mark caught him in the act, or accused him afterward. If that happened, Joe would instantly leave the table. Since Henry had been betting only green chips, he could defend against any accusations by asserting that he didn't have a single black chip on him. How could he be guilty of stealing this man's black chips? If casino security searched him, they'd find no black chips at all, not in his pockets, not on his person. The pass-off to Joe was their cover and had to be done in the "dark."

Henry picked away at the mark for the hour that the table ran good. It was important not to be greedy. You chose your moments for picking. If you took too much at once, the mark was bound to notice. If the table was choppy you held back. The old saying about getting your fingers caught in the cookie jar was every bit as applicable to railing craps tables. When the table finally went cold and busted out the mark, Henry and Joe met outside the casino to count up their profits. Joe emptied out his jacket pocket. There were fourteen black chips inside, $1,400.

Over the years, the Classons railed craps tables whenever their pastposting operations were taking heat and had to be put on hold. At opportune times, they were able to rail $500 chips from high-rolling craps players, making scores above $20,000. One laughable incident occurred in the late 1970s when Joe Classon snuggled up to a gorgeous and even wealthier Texas Oil Baroness at a craps table who was playing purple $500 chips. He charmed her, cajoled her and railed her—to the tune of $22,500. But the grand prix came a week later when she invited him down to her Dallas ranch and showed him some Southern hospitality he never forgot!

Today, railing is still quite prevalent in the world’s casinos, if it is little known or talked about. The modern railbird always passes off the chips he picks to his or her cohort standing behind. Notice that “his or her” is used to portray railbirds. This is because more than half of today’s craps chip thieves are women! And usually pretty women, who use their seductive charm to divert men high rollers’ attention from the chips in their table racks to the tits in their neighbors’ racks!

The Baccarat False Shuffle scam has been one of the most devastating inside dealer-collusion scams to hit casinos worldwide since the inception of public gambling. The last major case of it resulted in the biggest casino cheating bust in the history of legalized gambling. The US FBI and Canadian National Police, in conjunction with gaming regulatory and enforcement agencies from both sides of the border, busted a multi-national casino cheating ring that recruited dozens of casino baccarat dealers working in dozens of casinos and was headed by a criminal enterprise known as the Tran Organization, a tightly knit clan of hardcore Vietnamese criminals.

The scam itself is relatively simple and usually occurs on a mini-baccarat table because only one crooked dealer is needed to perform what the scam is called: a false shuffle. It begins when a group of cheaters playing at a baccarat table record a group or slug of cards during the play of a card shoe containing six or eight decks. This slug will contain between forty and sixty cards that are recorded in the order they are played and picked up by the dealer and placed in the discard rack. After the shoe is finished, the dealer working with the cheaters will perform the false shuffle, protecting the forty-plus card slug in its original, unmixed order. The process involves a series of false shuffles and false washes (mixing cards in a swirling motion before shuffling) depending on the house's shuffling procedure. After the cards have been false-shuffled, cut and put back into play, the cheaters use the previously recorded list of cards to identify and locate the reappearance of the un-shuffled forty to sixty card slug. Once this slug is identified the cheaters can determine the outcome of the next eight to ten hands, and will use this information to bet on either the player's or banker's hand, as well as any tie hands, with perfect accuracy. By wagering a $10,000 or more table limit on eight to ten guaranteed winning hands, the cheating group can make major scores into the millions of dollars before the casino knows what hit it.

There are several elements that need to come together to make this scam successful for the cheaters, and each one of these elements must be carried out flawlessly.

Recording the cards on the previously played hands

In each situation someone on the table records a specific group of cards as they are played and picked up by the dealer. This is usually done by one player marking down the cards on one of the baccarat score cards that are provided as a convenience for the players. The best thing about this for the cheaters is that the casino itself not only supplies scorecards for the players but also actually encourages them to keep track of the winning hands, goading them to believe that they can develop some kind of betting system to beat the game, based on the outcome of the previous hands. Well, this backfires on the casino because the cheaters are keeping track not of the winning hands but of the exact order of the cards. They do this in a variety of ways so they look like they’re simply keeping score like the rest of the legitimate players.

Location of card group or slug

The cheaters will usually choose a group of cards that are played at the beginning or at the very end of the shoe. This technique makes it easier for the illegally recruited dealer to locate the slug before performing the false shuffle and easier to protect it during the process. If the dealer screws up the location of a single card, the whole scam is blown!

The false shuffle

Dealers recruited for this scam are not magicians nor do they need special skills. They simply spend many hours practicing their false shuffle technique before they are put on a table to perform the real scam. When they become efficient at it, their false shuffles go undetected by floor supervisors and surveillance operators. Some cheaters go out of their way to distract floor personnel during the false shuffle phase so they can better elude detection, but good cheating teams don’t need to do that.

Identifying the slug coming back into play

Usually at this point the cheater who recorded the slug during the previous shoe will be seated at the table with his score card in front of him. At the very least he will be standing somewhere in the vicinity with a clear view of the cards being played on the table. Once he has spotted the reappearance of the slug, he will check his score card and determine the outcome of the next hand, remembering that the cards should come out in the exact reverse order that they were played in the previous shoe. For instance if he had recorded the following sequence of cards: A, 10, 7, 9, he knows that those four cards coming out of the new shoe would be: 9, 7, 10, A, and that sequence would make a natural-9 winner for the Player hand, which he could bet and win accordingly.

In most situations, the cheater doing the recording plays only a minor part in wagering and exploiting the information. Wagering into the slug is done by one or more other cheaters positioned at the table who make maximum bets or whatever their bankroll allows. Naturally they will all be betting the same side, either Player or Banker. If they know the outcome of the hand will be a tie hand, when neither Player nor Banker wins, then they can all either bet the tie hand or let it go because it would be too obvious that they ALL knew that a tie hand would come out at odds of 8 to 1. This “fixed” play will usually last between six to ten hands, ultimately depending on how successful the dealer was at maintaining the slug and how quickly the tracking player identified the false shuffled slug of cards. Once the slug is played out, the wagering by the cheaters will often change into an “offsetting” procedure where they equally distribute their bets between Player and Banker, still betting the table maximum in order to give the impression they’re still gambling big, but in fact they’re risking nothing more than the 5% commission on Banker winning hands. When it is all said and properly done, the false shuffle scam is the closest thing to the perfect casino scam—but it usually comes apart because of other factors such as greed, infighting between the scammers and jealous girlfriends!

The Cheating career of Richard Marcus began with this scam

The year 1989 was a very eventful year in my life. First, my casino-cheating mentor Joe Classon retired—just like that.
I was dining on my new apartment’s terrace when Joe arrived unexpectedly and gave me the news.
"I'm fifty-six years old," he said. "I've been in these goddamned casinos since I got back from Korea. I think I had enough."
Though I had expected that one day Joe Classon would abandon the road, hearing it so sudden like that was a shocker. We'd been together in the casinos for twelve years—longer than the Beatles—and now he was leaving, breaking up the team. At least it wasn't because of a woman.
"You guys will have no problem going down the road without me, provided you don't squabble over who's boss. Personally, I feel you're the most qualified; you have the best leadership qualities of the three of you, but Duke and Jerry will never go for it. There can't be a leader anymore. If I was the general, now you three are all colonels...I'm going to call Duke and Jerry in California tonight and tell them to fly into Vegas this weekend. We're going to have a final sit-down...Sorry for interrupting you dinner."
The last time Joe, Duke, Jerry and I were all together was at Joe's apartment on Sunday afternoon that weekend in March, 1989. The night before we'd been barbecuing lobsters when Joe said, "Guys, I'm going out with a bang. Tonight at Caesars Palace I am going to do my last move—the rainbow." He was smiling mischievously.
Duke, Jerry and I were all looking at each other puzzled. You never knew what Joe Classon had in mind.
"That's right," Joe confirmed. "The rainbow. It's my final tribute to all of you..." He looked at Jerry..."It may be the most special for you because you invented the blackjack move."
"What exactly is the rainbow?" I ventured.
"Exactly that—a rainbow. I'm going to bet five red chips on a blackjack table at Caesars Palace—I wouldn't think of doing it anywhere else, considering how classy Caesars has been all these years. When I win the hand I'm going to do a five-chip switch. But instead of doing a normal move with the purples, I'm going to do an insane one. The five chips I'm going to switch in will be a yellow, a purple, a black, a green and a red. Instead of calling that move a sixteen-thirty ($1,630-total value of the five chips Joe proposed switching in), why not just call it the "rainbow."
Duke nearly fell off his chair laughing. It was infectious; we all started laughing—Joe, too. But he was dead serious. If Joe Classon told you he was going to walk naked through the Everglades, you had better warn the alligators.
"Joe," I said with affected deference, "I have never respected anyone else in my life the way I do you...but you are a fucking nut job."
We finished our lobsters, toasted the rainbow with our champagne glasses, then headed over to the Caesars Palace casino, that was now filling up rapidly as the doors to the Circus Maximus Showroom had swung open and begun spilling out people onto the checkered carpeting in the main pit.

Joe wasted no time. He found a blackjack table, bet five $5 red chips, won the first hand, and after the dealer paid him $25 in red chips did the monster switch. The floorman who came up to Joe's blackjack table, after being called in by the dealer, took a look at the chip-rainbow sitting in the betting circle and shook his head exaggeratedly, as though he were trying to dismiss the possibility that he had just seen a multicolored UFO. He then removed a pen from his shirt pocket and softly pushed the chips into a collapsed heap, and restacked them.
"How on heaven's earth did you miss that?" he asked the smiling Latino dealer named Eduardo.
"I don't know," Eduardo answered with a shrug. "I must not have slept too good last night."
The floorman left the table to get the pit boss. Not because he was steamed up but only because he wanted the pit boss to have a good laugh. The pit boss did have a good laugh and said to the dealer, "Eduardo, if you took that for a twenty-five-dollar bet, that Tequila you've been drinking must be pretty strong." He laughed, shook his head and walked away with the floorman, neither one wanting to get over it.
I had watched the whole thing in amazement. That Joe's rainbow got paid was not exactly stupefying. What I found incredible was that they didn't even question it; there wasn't the slightest iota of doubt in the heads of three Caesars Palace casino employees. In spite of the more than a decade's worth of experience I already had at casino trickery, I would have hardly believed that the rainbow could be put over on them so easily—had I not seen it with my own eyes. I wondered how long Joe had that little move in his head.
Over more champagne back at Joe's apartment, he explained it to me. "It's all psychology, my boy..." Joe was feeling good. "Why do you think all this crap works in the first place?...Besides the straight-up roulette moves under the piece, all our moves are easy; anybody can do them. It's not the moves that knock them dead, it's the psychological effect. It's a progression of influencing people's thought patterns, making them believe what you want them to. The set-ups, the back-ups, the mix-ups...they're all part of the act...So I go and do a ridiculous move—the rainbow—and it gets paid easier than anything you've ever seen...Why?...because it is so ridiculous. No one in his right mind would do something so insane—and the casinos know that. Whatever doubts they have are squelched when they ask themselves, ‘Would anyone really try to slip in something like that?’”
Joe raised his glass and the three of us followed. "To the rainbow, to the road...to my guys." We clinked glasses and drank. Toward the end of the night we all got a little emotional. Joe was hugging all of us and everybody had a supply of tears welling up. The next day we had breakfast together at Joe's apartment, then went to the airport to see off Duke and Jerry. On Monday Joe and I spent a final day together, mostly reminiscing aloud about all the adventures we’d experienced together. On Tuesday, Joe flew to Miami where he eventually bought himself a condominium near his mother’s on the beach.
Joe Classon never came back to Las Vegas.
And I never saw him again.

This is the best scam of all-time for one simple reason: I was the victim!

One night twenty years ago while getting drunk in a New York Irish pub, the conversation turned to gambling and card playing. I was there with a girl I had met hours before in another pub that might also have been an Irish one; I can’t remember. There were twenty or so people engaged in this conversation and it was quite lively. Two Irish guys—I mean real Irish guys from Ireland with red hair, white skin and freckles— had everyone cracking up with their little gambling anecdotes leading to one catastrophe or another. Then a woman who was plainly Italian pulled a deck of cards and slapped them on the bar.
“Anyone want to see a great card trick?” she beamed, probably at least as sauced as I was.
Everyone pitched in with encouraging laughter to say how thrilled everyone else would be to see her card trick. She then proceeded to do that classic dopey poker-hand trick everyone has seen performed by at least four generations of his family: the one with the four hands of seven-stud ending up four jacks, four queens, four kings and, of course, four aces for the dealer.
Everybody applauded her, anyway, and then another schmuck took the cards and began shuffling. When he’d finished, he dealt three columns of seven cards face up. He said to the girl who’d just finished her crummy trick, “Pick a card, but don’t tell me what it is. Keep it in your head.”
The girl was either stupid enough or drunk enough to blurt, “Does it have to be one of the cards you dealt on the bar?” The rest of the deck was lying off to the side.
The guy indulged her with a smiling nod. She was kind of hot and had big tits, so obviously he didn’t care how dumb she was.
The girl’s drunken eyes passed over the twenty-one cards. “Okay, I chose a card.”
I recognized the trick as soon as the guy started dealing out the columns. It was one of those mathematical numbers that could never go wrong if you didn’t fuck up the procedure. The version he was doing was the one with the petals and the flowers, goading the victim to pick this petal then that one after she’d already picked the two columns that didn’t contain the card. I think the first time I saw the trick done was in kindergarten.
The woman, ever so drunk as she was, managed to play along and finished by affirming that the card the guy flicked over at the end was indeed hers.
I’d just about had my share of card tricks when one of the two redheaded Irish guys clamored, “Those tricks are for bloody boobheads!” Anyone here want to see a real good one?”
For some reason I volunteered, surely hoping it would be better than the previous two and the last of the night.
He picked up the deck off the bar and fanned them face up in front of me. “Pick any card,” he said.
I looked at him. “Just like that, face up?”
The other Irish guy piped in behind him. “Yeah, mate, just like that.”
I slid out the 9♠ without hesitation. I looked up waiting for one of them to do something.
The one next to me spoke. “What would you say if I told you I know someone back in Ireland whom I could call right now, hand him the phone without saying a word, and he’ll tell you that the card you picked was the nine of spades?”
I looked at my watch. It was eleven o’clock at night in New York, which meant it was four o’clock the next morning in Ireland.
“I’d say the guy either goes to bed late or gets up early.”
They laughed heartily, then the one behind suggested slyly, “Care to make a little wager on that, mate?”
I looked at the girl I was with. I could see she knew as much about cards as I did about the theory of relativity, which was zero.
“Come on, mate,” the one who’d spread the cards said. “Why not put a little fun in the evening. Soon it’ll be the top of the mornin’.”
“Okay,” I said pulling out my wallet. “I’ll go twenty bucks saying you’re friend in Ireland can’t tell me my card if you don’t tip him off.”
“Twenty bucks!” they exclaimed in unison. Then they took turns telling me I insulted their chivalrous play. The one behind finished off with, “The phone call over there will hardly be covered for twenty bucks, mate.”
Well, whatever their gig was, it was clear they knew I’d lose the bet. And this in spite of the fact they didn’t know whom they were trying to hustle. But I was curious about their trick, plus I was in a good mood knowing I was going to get laid once I got out of there.
“So how much do I have to do this for?” I asked them.
“You got fifty.”
“Sure.” I laid the fifty on the bar. They did not hesitate to lay theirs alongside it. “Now let’s make that call.”
You have to remember that twenty years ago there were no cell phones. There was just a cranky old pay phone near the entrance. The front guy asked the bartender, “Pat, gimme ten bucks in quarters, would ya?”
“It’s okay,” Pat chimed, you can use the bar phone.” He reached underneath the bar, pulled it out and slapped it on the surface next to the nine of spades. “Who you calling, anyway?”
“Some bloke in Ireland.”
The phone slid off the bar and disappeared faster than you could say “Dublin.”
I followed the two Irishmen to the pay phone. At least ten people followed me, everyone with either a drink or cigarette in his hand. As the one dropped a load of quarters into the phone’s slot, he piped at me, “Are you ready, mate?”
I nodded.
“I’m not going to say a word to my buddy on the phone about your card. I’ll just see if he’s home and pass you the phone when he comes on. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He dialed a number, then after a few seconds said into the receiver, “Is Mr. O’Leary there?” Then he said, “Hold on,” and passed me the phone.
I put the receiver to my ear. “Mr. O’Leary?”
The cheery voice on the other end was indeed Irish. “That’s me, mate. Your card is the nine of spades.”
At first I thought it no big deal that he knew my card, but when it finally hit me that he knew my card I was flabbergasted. For some reason I thanked him before hanging up.
When I turned back to the two Irishman, they were already at the bar scooping up my fifty-dollar bill. Everyone else was asking if the guy on the phone guessed my card.
“He didn’t guess it,” I informed the crowd with a bit of thespian delight. “He knew it.”
The two Irish guys were laughing as I came over. “You want to do it again, mate?” one of them asked.
“Yeah,” I answered immediately, “but how ‘bout for less money.” I knew that I was outhustled but I wanted to see this again, figure out how they did it. I knew they wouldn’t give it up for nothing.
“Okay,” the second one said as he picked up the cards and gave them a quick shuffle with a fancy bridge. He spread them and told me to pick a card. I fingered the width of the fanned cards and slipped out the 4♣. Then the first Irishman put a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and told me to match it.
I laid the bill on the bar and followed them back to the phone. Evidently enough quarters remained in the Irishman’s pocket to make the second call. He dialed and again asked for Mr. O’Leary. When O’Leary came on the line, he told him to hold on and passed me the receiver. I bid the familiar voice hello and he answered with “Your card is the four of clubs.”
“Wanna go again, mate?” The Irish guys were having a ball with me.
“How the fuck did you guys do that?” I demanded.
The first one gave me a peppered shrug and said, “You know magicians don’t give away their secrets.”
“It’s not magic,” I protested. “It’s a goddamn card trick.”
The second one had a great retort for that. “It’s not a trick. O’Leary just read your mind. He knows you’re thinking of your card when you get on the phone. So he just hones in on your brain and finds the part of it thinking of the card.”
“You guys got a good line of shit,” I said, and they got off laughing at me. The whole bar was getting in on it, including the bartender who seemed to have already borne witness to their little gag. I approached the bartender and asked him how they did it. He just chuckled and said in an Irish accent, “I haven’t the foggiest idea, mate?”
How the hell did they do it? That thought prevented me from both getting laid and sleeping that night. I lay awake for hours in the girl’s apartment, in her bed with her lovely body sprawled naked in the same spot where she’d finally given up on me and fallen asleep.
Not only am I a fairly intelligent person but I know how to navigate pretty well around logic. The first thing I was sure of was that somehow that Irish guy in the bar told Mr. O’Leary what my card was. The only way that certainty would not be true was if there had been another unseen phone extension inside the bar and somebody else told Mr. O’Leary the card. But after being led on a tour of the place by the bartender, during which I felt like an idiot, I had to accept the fact that there was no other phone there.
So then how did the Irish guy tell O’Leary which card I’d selected? I had been right by his side when they spoke. Twice. Each time, the Irish guy said nothing more than “Is Mr. O’Leary there?” and “hold on.” Neither utterance contained words that would indicate the nine of spades and the four of clubs. But somehow those words did indicate those cards. And it was killing me to find out.
I racked my brains. Somewhere in those lines was a hidden code that told Mr. O’Leary what my cards were. But how could the same exact lines give him the correct information for two different cards? I even asked myself if it were possible that the inflection in the caller’s voice tipped off O’Leary. But if that were the case then O’Leary would have to be sensitive to fifty-two different inflections. Impossible.
The unknown solution ate at me an entire week. Then finally, not being able to take it anymore, I returned to the pub on a busy Saturday night. The place was packed, and sure enough the two Irish guys were hustling another customer with their trick. Only this time the bills on the bar were hundreds and the guy getting taken was sweating and did not look happy.
I watched all this from a distance. The Irish guys either didn’t see me or didn’t recognize me. The victim followed them to the phone, probably for the second or third time, and upon hanging up came walking back toward the bar in disbelief, then did an about-face toward the exit. The second he was out the door, I saw one of the Irish guys pass a bill off to the bartender, who promptly stuck it in his pocket.
So the bartender was in on it as well. They were working a major scam with this trick, or whatever the hell it was.
I came back the next night determined to crack the case. Irish pubs in Manhattan usually drew crowds every night of the week. Sunday night at this one was no exception. The Irish guys were flirting with a couple of women by the bar. I decided to wait patiently until they went into the routine. I knew they would eventually because these guys were not there for just booze and women. The place was their livelihood.
At midnight, just before I was about to pack it in, two slick looking black dudes walked inside the bar. They had that instant air of loose cash, either pro athletes or musicians. The Irish pair adroitly got them into conversation and within a half hour the bartop was crawling with hundred-dollar bills. I was thinking to myself that the scammers had better be careful with these black guys. They looked like the kind you didn’t want to fuck with. But obviously the Irish duo was very well rounded and knew how to handle whatever situation arose during the working of the scam.
Well, we’ll see about that, I said to myself.
After it happened, I realized I’d been destined to do it. But at the crucial moment I still had to make sure not to blow it. Bad timing could have blown the whole thing, and I would’ve been in a lot of pain for nothing.
As soon as the Irish guy dropped the quarters into the phone’s slot, I made my way through the thinning crowd toward him. I watched him dial and waited until I knew instinctively that the moment had arrived to make my move. I charged the pay phone and grabbed the receiver from the guy’s hand. He protested but I quickly knocked him out of the way. I then put the receiver to my ear without uttering a sound. What I heard at first made no sense. It was indeed O’Leary’s voice and it was counting…“two, three four, five, six…” The Irish guy made a lunge at me but I knocked him out of the way again. His buddy was coming after me too, but one of the black dudes stuck out a big arm and held him at bay. By that time O’Leary had reached “king.” And then his voice rasped in my ear, “What’s the fucking card, mate! Did I miss it?”
“You sure did, scumbag!” and I hung up the phone.
There’s an old New York joke about asking a bartender what time his Irish pub closes. He doesn’t answer you with a time; rather he says, “As soon as the first fistfight breaks out.”
Well, that meant that this Irish pub would be closing real soon. In the ensuing brawl I got whacked with a few good shots that drew blood from my mouth. The poor Irish guys, whose names turned out to be Arnold and Donald Lorrigan and who were currently on their way to the hospital ward at the Rikers’ Island jail, got the shit kicked out of them. The arresting cops asked me what it was all about, and when I told them, one of the coppers, who was also Irish, quipped, “Musta been a pretty good card trick.”
It was simply the best card trick I had ever seen. The way it worked was in reversal. It was true that the caller was transmitting the information to O’Leary, but he was doing it in reverse. That’s why virtually no one can figure it out. The key to deciphering it is that you have to know it was O’Leary speaking first, not the Irish guy. The first words I had heard from the caller were “Is Mr. O’leary there?” Upon hearing those words you naturally assume that whoever answered on the other end had picked up with a “hello” or something to that effect. Then when the Irish guy says “Hold on” and passes the phone off to the victim, you naturally think that O’Leary had just come to the phone after having been summoned by the person who had picked it up.
But it is really O’Leary who answers the phone. And instead of saying hello, he goes right into a recital of counting the cards…“ace, two, three, four…” Then when he arrives at the card you had chosen, the caller says “Is Mr. O’Leary there?” That stops O’Leary’s counting dead in its tracks. For if the last card O’Leary said was “jack,” then he knows it’s a jack.
Next only the correct suit needs to be transmitted. Once O’Leary receives the signal that the card is a jack, he begins reciting the four suits…“spades, clubs, hearts, diamonds.” As soon as he hits the correct one, the caller says “Hold on,” which tells O’Leary he just said the right suit, and passes the phone to the victim who’s about to be stunned.
What makes this trick so unbelievable is how natural the talking sounds. The set-up guy just dials a number, asks to speak with someone and then asks that person to hold on while he passes the phone to the victim. I had never been so impressed by a card trick or phone trick, whatever you want to call it. Learning it was well worth the seventy bucks I lost and the busted lip.
Over the years I’ve done that trick dozens of times, though never for profit. The most fun performing it is at parties or anyplace with large gatherings of people. Listening to people trying to figure it out is as funny as any comedy routine you’ll ever see. The ridiculous theories people put forth to solve the puzzle are as unreal as they are hilarious. You hear everything from high-tech satellites eavesdropping on the room to infrared lenses spying on the deck of cards from another galaxy.
One time at a party while doing the trick, a cute girl made me come with her into the bathroom with the lights off. She said she wanted to be sure that no one else could see which card she chose. I wondered if it was a pretext to jump my bones, but when she struck a match to create a small light while she picked the card, I realized how nuts this trick drove everybody, as it had once done to me.

We have all heard about roulette computers, scanners and cell phones used to predict with great accuracy in which groups of six or so numbers the ball will land in a roulette wheel. Well, those scams, including the most well-known one at the London Ritz Casino in 2004, are great, but how 'bout the ideal scam where you not only predict where the roulette ball will land but actually take control of the ball and make it land there!

There have been five major instances of this scam in the annals of lawful casino gaming. Here is the best one. Enjoy it thoroughly, as it is my own personal favorite casino scam of all-time. And I had absolutely nothing to do with it!

The most spectacular French casino scam ever took place in the summer of 1973. A ham radio buff employed as a roulette dealer at the Casino Deauville on the Atlantic coast built a radio transmitter into a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, embedding the tiny weightless receiver into a roulette ball made by a sculptor friend that he snuck into play. His brother-in-law placed the bets while his sister, a sexy raven-haired temptress, softly pressed an invisible button on the cigarette pack as the ball was spinning, sending it into a controlled dive which resulted in the ball’s landing in groups of six numbers with ninety percent accuracy. In a week the Casino Deauville was beat for five million francs ($1 million at the time).
The owners of the casino could not figure out what was hitting them. First they thought the wheel itself was defective and that somebody had measured it. They had experts come in and completely dismantle the wheel, examine every working piece integral to the ball's spinning around the disk and the wheel's revolutions in the opposite direction. When the astonished owners were told that the wheel was in perfect balance, and that there was not even the slightest imperfection which could produce biased outcomes, they began suspecting the dealer. They watched him secretively from above, but his motion was the same every time; he was doing nothing out of the ordinary to control the movement of the ball. It always made the same number of revolutions before going into its descent.
The scam was truly a marvel, and neither the ball nor the cigarette pack ever malfunctioned. Like most ingenious scams do, it came apart for a reason that had nothing to do with the scam. The problem was that the dealer's sexy raven-haired sister was a bit too sexy and drew the attention of the principal casino owner who wanted to make her his mistress. He had subtly approached her in the casino several times while she was working the gadget. Being a chain smoker, he was often asking her for a cigarette with his apologies. The raven-haired beauty was cool and able to operate despite the man's presence. She told her husband about his advances, but he replied that the owner's libido couldn't hurt the scam, so they continued.

Finally, the owner—realizing he was going nowhere fast with the temptress—began watching her from a different eye. Why was she so often in the casino, apparently alone? Why did she always stand by the same roulette table without making more than an occasional bet? And most of all, what was the connection between her and that table losing so much money whenever she was in the casino? All the answers came when the owners, at last suspecting some kind of radio interference with the roulette wheel, had an expert debugging crew come in and sweep the casino while the wheel was in action. The next time the principal casino owner asked the temptress for a cigarette, the chief of the Deauville Police Force was there at his side to confiscate the pack and put the lovely raven-haired beauty in handcuffs.

This scam was decades ahead of its time, and there was a 1984 movie made about it called “Les Tricheurs,” which means “The Cheaters.” It certainly was a precursor to all today’s roulette scams involving computers and cell phones.

The only negative about the scam: the cigarettes were not really French. They were Marlboros!

This is one of the most simply ingenious scams of all-time. It has happened dozens of times across the world since its invention in the early 1970s. The most well known incident of the Chip Cup Scam occurred in the 80s in the giant Sun City Casino in what was then Bophuthatswana, South Africa. More than 30 individuals were involved, both casino employees and outside players. The method used to steal was a clever, but old-time device known as the "Las Vegas Chip Cup." It's nothing more than a hollow tube painted and designed to look like a stack of small denomination casino chips. The Chip Cup is made slightly larger than a standard 39 millimeter casino chip so that it can easily slide over a stack of standard casino chips. The casino chips then become hidden inside the hollowed cup. A real casino chip of small value is glued to the top of the aluminum cup, which is painted and speckled to look like a stack of five small denomination chips. In Sun City, the Chip Cup was painted to resemble a stack of five 10-Rand chips (South African currency). The beauty of the chip cup is that a player introduces the cup into play and also takes it out. The dealer and player work the scam together. In American casinos, the Chip Cup scam is normally done on a craps table. This is because the dealers stack chips straight up in front of them on a crap table, as opposed to laying them down horizontally in a table rack, as in a 21 game. Chips stacked straight up in front of a dealer make it easier for the chip cup to be placed over the chips, though it can be done without much difficulty in chips lying horizontally in table chip racks. In 1980s South Africa, craps was not popular in casinos, being mainly an American game. The big-money game in Sun City was "Punto-Banco", basically the same game as American Baccarat. In this game, unlike the Las Vegas Baccarat games, chips are stacked straight up in front of the dealers.

The scam works like this: The player/cheater, known as an "agent," sits next to the dealer who is standing. The agent places the hollowed empty Chip Cup on the layout as a bet. It looks like a 50-Rand bet, a stack of five 10-Rand chips. There were other legitimate bettors wagering 100-Rand chips on the game. If the bet wins, the dealer/cheater simply pays the bet as he would any legitimate bet, by stacking five 10-Rand chips next to the Chip Cup. What the cheaters really want is for the bet to lose. When the bet loses the dealer/cheater picks up the empty chip cup and in the process of picking up losing 100-Rand chips, he secretly slips the Chip Cup over four 100-Rand chips, so that there are four 100-Rand chips hidden inside the Chip Cup. If there are no 100-Rand chips in play, the dealer can momentarily place the Chip Cup on top of the stack of 100-Rand chips in his working well, and suck up four of them. By gently squeezing the Chip Cup, the hidden chips inside are held in place.

After the dealer finishes putting the losing chips collected from the table into his working well, he makes sure the Chip Cup sits on top of the stack of 10-Rand chips. Then the agent simply "buys" the loaded chip cup back from the dealer. He throws 50-Rand cash on the table. The dealer simply hands the loaded Chip Cup back to the agent as change. The cheaters have thus netted 350 Rand, the 400 Rand loaded inside the Chip Cup minus the 50-Rand cost to buy it. The real strength of the transaction with the chip cup is that the house has just won big bets from the legitimate players. The process then continues in accordance with the camouflaging action on the table.

A key element in the success of the Chip Cup scam at the Sun City casino was the involvement of bit bosses (known as "inspectors" there). They were key to the scam because they coordinated the dealers' schedules, designating which games the crooked dealers would deal on, how their breaks would be patterned and everything else needed to put the crooked dealers at the tables with the best opportunities to put the Chip Cups into play. The inspectors often sent a crew of three cheating dealers to one game, preferably games where the house was winning. This practice helped disguise the cheating activity, as the inspectors who were not involved and surveillance personnel would be watching the Punto-Banco games where the house was losing money. Crooked floormen were also in on the scam, and could easily alert the cheating crews if a boss not involved approached a table where the Chip Cup was in use.

Another key element to the scam was the involvement of a cage employee. This senior cage cashier allowed the agents to cash out considerable sums of chips without being questioned. At the time, South Africa had strict currency transaction policies. Large cash-outs should have been recorded and brought to the attention of upper management. Finally, it would be the currency transactions outside the casino that proved to be the downfall of the scam and its perpetrators. Many involved in the scam, mainly dealers and inspectors, were noticed spending large amounts of cash around town on various luxury items, which eventually drew suspicion as to where they were getting that money.

Over the course of several months, the cheating group was estimated to have taken the equivalent of $3 million dollars from the Punto-Banco tables.