Casino Enterprise Management

Many of you might glance at the title of this article and assume it does not apply to your casino. You deal all your Twenty-One games face up and either use a protective faceplate on your shoes, or train your dealers to always cover the face of the shoe with their left hand. You don’t need to waste your time reading an article about marked cards in Twenty-One because “playing paper,” as it is known by cheaters, can’t be done in your casino, right? If you strongly feel your casino is safe from marked card play, you need to read this article.

Myth #1: You Can’t Mark Cards on a Face-Up Game
Several years ago, I held the position of VP of casino operations at the Aladdin Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. I was responsible for all gaming, including the live Blackjack games. One afternoon, I got a call from my day shift manager, Mike Phillips. “Get down here. We got a team of card markers on BJ table eight,” Mike exclaimed. Realizing what game the card marking team was allegedly attacking, I replied, “Mike, BJ eight is a six-deck face-up game.”  Mike’s reply: “I know.”

When I arrived in the live game pit, I saw three male customers wagering on BJ eight.  Two were sitting at late positions (close to third base); the third was sitting at the first table position. I glanced at Mike, and he nodded at the game, indicating he wanted me to watch for a while. What I saw almost knocked my socks off. When an ace was face up in either of the last two players’ hands, the player with the ace would reach out with a $1 chip, tap the face of the ace card, and toss the chip to the dealer as a tip. The dealer, impervious to what was happening, gleefully gathered up the chip and placed it in a transparent toke box used to hold dealer tips.

At this point, most of you probably understand what happened on BJ eight. The players in the last two positions were marking the cards by denting the face of any ace they received during normal play. Though only the face of the ace card was touched by the chip, the dent transferred to the back of the card and could be seen when the card reappeared at the top of the shoe. “How long have they been marking aces?” I asked Mike. “About 40 minutes as of right now, but I doubt they will have enough aces marked to make their wagering play. Give them another ten to 20 minutes, and then I expect to see the two guys in late position stop hitting the aces. Then the guy in first position will raise his bets when a dented ace appears as the first card on the next round of the shoe. That’s when I’ll change the cards,” Mike smiled.

Mike was telling me he believed the team would need to mark enough aces to identify a majority of key cards when they appeared as the first card dealt during the next round of play. With this information, the player in first position could place a larger, if not table limit, bet (at that time, table limit was $2,000).
The time frame Mike mentioned was quite relevant. Because the average number of cards received by any player is 2.7 (Griffin 1980)¹, and considering the two card markers were each playing one hand, the cheaters had access to approximately six cards per round. With an ace appearing, on average, once every 13 cards (312 cards divided by 24 aces), we could expect the marking team to dent at least one ace every two to three rounds. Of course, this was the average, as several aces could appear at once or it could be a number of rounds before any aces appeared at all. Another obstacle the cheaters faced was the appearance of previously marked cards in subsequent rounds after the first shoe had been finished and reshuffled. Based on all this information, Mike estimated it would take 45 minutes to an hour before the cheaters could mark 90 percent of the aces.

So what happened after our heavily monitored, but unsuspecting, card markers started to use their illicit information? How sure were the cheaters the top card of the shoe was an ace, and how could they use this information to beat the game? 

Griffin shows that knowing an ace is the top card of the shoe gives the player in first position a 52 percent edge over the casino (Forte, 2004)². If the cheater positioned in the first seat wagered the Aladdin table maximum of $2,000, in theory, he could expect an average win of $1,040. If the cheaters marked approximately 90 percent of the aces, and wagered using the appropriate first card strategy, they could theoretically expect to win $5,000 to $5,400 in one hour, based on normal rounds played per hour.

If marking ten-value cards would provide the cheaters with a 13 percent return, why didn’t they mark those as well? If the cheaters marked all tens and aces, they could expect an average edge of 20.8 percent when a dented card was at the top of the shoe. Why not attack the game once every 2.6 rounds using a 21 percent edge?

In most situations, it would be optimal to mark all tens and aces, however, in this situation the act of marking the cards was so brazen, the cheaters only marked the aces to reduce their chance of detection.

This scam was pulled off on a regular basis during the mid- and late ‘90s. In many cases, the people responsible for protecting the games—from dealers to surveillance operators—failed to identify the situation as a “marked card scam” because the marking action was too blatant and did not correlate to the marking of a card’s back. I have some great video footage of similar groups marking cards in the same manner. In most cases, the scam was detected only on review after the cheaters had left the casino.

Myth #2: Marked Cards Allow the Cheater to Make Better Decisions
Most casino executives believe players mark Blackjack cards for optimal play and to vary hit/stand/double down strategy. This is simply not true (but don’t count this strategy out completely). Marking cards for a strategy play gain alone does not provide cheaters enough of an advantage to mitigate the risks of committing a felony.

In the late ‘80s, I spent some time as casino manager at the old Maxim Hotel & Casino just off the Las Vegas Strip. On one occasion, I was passing through the live game pit prior to leaving for the night when I saw something unusual happen on a hand-held double-deck Twenty-One table. The player at third base wagering a lone $5 chip “stood” on an ace-five hand.

When the dealer pointed the misplay out to the customer, he just shrugged and said, “Maybe I’ve had too much to drink.” I also noticed the player’s failure to hit his soft 16 caused the dealer to bust, as well as allowed the black chip player sitting in the middle table position, betting two hands of $500, to win. I turned to the shift manager and asked him to remove and hold those cards for me so I could analyze them for possible card marking.

I later discovered most of the nine- and ten-value cards were subtly marked with a daub so the cheater could read the card off the top of the double deck while standing at third base. His mission was to look for markings on the dealer’s hole card (during placement) and determine whether the dealer was working with a possible bust or “stiff” hand.

If the dealer had a stiff hand, the reader would try to steer, or leave a nine- or ten- value card on top of the double deck, so the dealer would bust. This technique can be accomplished through the reader’s hit/stand strategy. For example, the player at third base stood on an ace-five hand. Although the cheater tried to make the departure from basic strategy seem accidental, the soft standing was anything but. His job was to keep a high value card on top of the deck so the dealer would bust out—allowing his partner playing in the center of the table, wagering two hands of $500—to win the hand by default.
I used a hand-held, face-down card game as an example, but don’t let that fact make you think for one moment it couldn’t be used on a face-up shoe game. In fact, I believe I possess some video footage of cheaters denting the ten-value cards with intentions of busting the dealer once all the ten cards were marked.

Myth #3: Brush Faceplates, Curtains, and Slide Shields Offer Protection
Recently, I was talking to an acquaintance who mentioned a similar scam that happened many years ago. He told me a group of cheaters marked all ten-value cards on several games at a casino that used a curtain-type shield over the front of its dealing shoes. Because of the shields, the casino wrongly assumed it was safe from all types of marked cards. The casinos also wrongly assumed all the shields were working properly.

Over the course of the day, the cheaters dented the bottom edge along the length of all ten-value cards. Once the cards were marked, the cheaters used both a top card “bettor” and a third base “anchor” to win the Twenty-One games that had defective curtains, beating the casino out of a good deal of money.

Just like every other piece of gaming equipment, faceplate protectors in Twenty-One can be defeated if they are not installed or maintained correctly. At the 2006 G2E show, I was examining the brush faceplate placement on a major manufacturer’s continual shuffling machines.

After playing with the shuffling shoe for a while, I realized the top card would often stick down below the faceplate. When I asked about this condition, the exhibitor demonstrating the equipment said each shuffling shoe was pre-drilled to hold the faceplate, and the card shouldn’t stick out below the shield. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it was. No one seemed too concerned about it. Personally, I believe the brush faceplate to be a great card marking deterrent, but if it’s not installed correctly, it’s worthless.

These examples prove your equipment must be maintained and replaced if it can’t perform the required function. In the case of the damaged curtain, wear, tear, and grime collected from continual use contributed to the success of the cheaters’ scam. When curtains won’t stay down, slides get stuck, and brush faceplates don’t close completely, they are not doing the job they are intended for, which is protecting the back side of the Twenty-One cards. At the same time, they instill a false sense of security in your personnel that marked cards can’t be used to beat your casino. It’s important these devices are examined on a regular basis (not once a year) to guarantee they haven’t created a unique avenue of attack for card marking cheaters.

As you can see by these examples, card marking can be accomplished even in casinos with superb security and surveillance departments watching face-up games dealt from shielded shoes. In future articles, I’ll discuss how marked cards are used in other live casino games, hopefully giving you more insight into the scams of card markers.

Footnotes
1    Griffin, Peter (1980). The Theory of Blackjack. Las Vegas: Huntington Press.
2    Forte, Steve (2004). Casino Game Protection: A Comprehensive Guide. Las Vegas: SLF Publishing.

As a former Nevada Gaming Control agent, casino operator, professional card counter, and present gaming consultant, Bill Zender has been involved in various areas of gaming and hospitality since 1976.  He can be reached at wzender[at]lastresortconsulting.com.