I got another good question last week, from a reader wanting to know what a surveillance room is like, how it is laid out and how it is staffed and run. So here goes. I have worked in surveillance departments at six different casinos in the last 25 years. Some very small (300 slots, 6 blackjack tables) and some very big (3000 slots, 60-70 table games of all kinds). When I started in the early 90's it was all VCRs and not all cameras were recorded all the time. We used a lot of "multi-plexers" and "quad screens". A multi-plexer used one VCR to display and record up to 16 screens on one monitor. Since the VCR still records at 30 frames per second, that meant that if you did a review on any one of those 16 screens you would be looking at a "freeze frame" effect, where you only got 1.8 frames per second of the shot you were looking at. A quad would record all four screens at 30 fps, but the size of the picture on the screen was 1/4 (obviously) of the to...
A 25 year casino surveillance veteran will peel back the curtain of "the eye in the sky". I will let you know what they look for, what they don't and how you can use my knowledge to help you win more, and more often at your next trip to Vegas or Reno.