Cheating at Baccarat

I've been noticing a lot of stories in the news recemtly about cheating (in casinos) at the game of baccarat. I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you what I know about the subject. Which turns out to be quite a lot.

If you are reading this blog, you probably already know how Baccarat is played. For those of you who don't, I suggest going to The Wizard of Odds website (click here) to read their excellent primer. They explain how the game is played, and some of its quirks and intricacies, much better then I could here, and with a lot less typing on my part. So if you're not already familiar with how the game is played, go and read that now, then come back.

Now on to the cheating. Unlike cheating at other card games in the casino, every case that I know of that involves baccarat cheating, is a conspiracy of two or more persons, at least one of whom is on the inside (a casino employee). The somewhat recent Phil Ivey case is an exception that we will discuss at a later time.

The players are not allowed to touch the cards in baccarat, so daubing or marking the cards is not really possible. Of course players can pinch and press a bet(s), just as in every other table game, but that's not what this post is about.

Instead we are talking about the high-risk, high-reward cases involving as many as a dozen people, with multiple dealers, money men and one ringleader who is orchestrating all of it. These types of schemes can lose the house tens of thousands of dollars in just minutes and hundreds of thousands over a few weeks or months.

The following case is one that I was personally involved with, in that I helped set up and adjust different cameras in the baccarat pit area so that video evidence could be more easily obtained, once we realized what was going on. The names of the casino and the cities that this happened in will be withheld so that no one knows exactly who am I might or might not be referring to.

Asians love to gamble. That is not meant as a mean spirited or racist statement, but simply as a matter of fact. Gambling is a deeply ingrained part of their culture and society in all parts of Asia. And Baccarat is one of their most popular games. As a result, in certain cities in the US gaming market, most if not all of the baccarat players are Asians, as are most if not all of the dealers. Again, not meaning to be racist here, but that means that they can converse with each other in their native tongues without any one in the area who isn't Asian not having any idea what they're talking about. The result is that it possible for a ringleader-type to entice and recruit other players and dealers right under our noses.

In the case I was involved in, the ringleader basically enticed a small part of the dealing crew to dump the games, and then recruited a large number of existing high limit Bacc players to make bets at the table maximum for him, under his direction.

Baccarat is dealt from a shoe, in our case it was an 8 deck shoe. the cards are delivered in a particular way, and picked up and placed in the discard tray in a particular order, the same way every time. This ring-leader, or one of his recruits, would use the casino provided pencil and paper to keep track of each card as was picked up by the dealer after a hand. The casino actually provides these blank sheets of paper to the customer when they first sit down, so you can keep track of wins losses and ties. 

But this player would use the paper to mark down the exact order in which the cards were going into the discard tray. When it came time for a shuffle, one of the other recruited player or players, would keep the Pit Boss occupied with simple small talk, while the dealer shuffled the cards. At that point the dealer, being unwatched, would execute what's called a false shuffle.

False shuffles can be done in a number of different ways, and I'm not going to go into the specifics of it here, that can be the subject of another post later.  The result here was that all of the cards would go back into the shoe in a known order. The ringleader would then use his notes to determine what cards were going to come out on the next hand, and whether the player or banker would be the winner. He would then instruct his recruits to bet accordingly. You are allowed to bet on either player or banker on each hand, of course, so the fact that players were changing their bets from one to the other did not look suspicious.

In fact, unless you were watching the false shuffle carefully, nothing look suspicious, other than the fact that everyone was guessing right on each hand and winning each time as a result. The first people to notice it were two casino shift managers, who noticed that the baccarat games had been "dumping" to the tune of $40K or $50k a night, whereas we were used to seeing them generally win $10k or more.  That kind of thing stands out like a sore thumb on a daily report spreadsheet.

To their credit, these shift managers initially kept quiet about the losses. In the old days, they would have verbally abused and berated the Pit Boss and dealers involved right on the casino floor, as if it was somehow their fault that the players were always winning. (I've seen it happen.) Instead, they went to the casino manager, who went to the gaming commission and the surveillance director and asked us to take a look.

We figured out within a few days what the problem was as the false shuffle was easily spotted, once you knew to look for it.  We then notified the state gaming agency, who then had gaming agents come in and watch the whole thing happened, live from the surveillance room. We continued to gather video evidence for a few more days with the agents there, until they were convinced that they had enough for a successful prosecution in court. Then all of the various members of the group we're either arrested or subpoenaed all on the same day.

it was really the amount of money being lost per shift that caused all the red flags to go up. If these players hadn't been so greedy they could have gotten away with it for a lot longer. I hope I haven't been too long-winded here, but I wanted to provide all of you with a real world example of what happens when someone gets a crew together and decides to take down a casino. It's not quite as elaborate and exciting as it is in the movies or on TV, but it does happen. If anyone has any further questions please leave them in the comments below and I'll answer every one.

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