Casino Surveillance Pro

So last month I posted about some questions that I get from people when they find out what my job is. This is the follow-up to that post and it’s mostly going to be about what cheating from the inside, or cheating by the dealer, would look like if it was going on. The easiest way for a dealer to cheat, on the player’s behalf, would be simply to dump the game. Dumping the game is when you pay the player for a losing hand or overpay the player on a winning hand. If you’re in surveillance and you happen to see this happen oh, the best thing you can do is keep quiet at least for a moment or two and see if it continues. It’s possible that the dealer just made a mistake and paid a losing Hand by mistake. If you continue to watch you’ll see if he’s doing it on a regular basis and if so if he’s doing it to a specific player. This would indicate collusion, or a conspiracy between the player and one or more players to do so. It’s always best to have plenty of information and evidence before movi...

OK, so i havent been blogging as much for the last month or so. Here’s why.  I am back to dealing blackjack and it is taking up a lot of my time. I got a new job at a small, northern Nevada casino (you could track me down without too much trouble, but i am not going to just come out an tell you which one) as a dual rate Manager on Duty and Dealer. Having not dealt cards for over three decades, I have had to do some on the job training to get back in shape.  It’s not quite like riding a bike, in that you never forget how to do it, but it is close. Having spent many of those years in surveillance I still have the mental chops to do it, but the muscle memory is long gone. Throw in some arthritis in my knees (plus chronic leukemia) and standing at a table for 40-60 minutes at a time has been a challenge also.  But enough about my troubles, what I really want to talk about is the “typical” blackjack player that I have been running in to. If I were going to describe them in jus...

I found an awesome house edge calculating webpage online. Click  here  to go to it. If you have a smartphone you should consider placing a link to it on your desktop for quick reference. I’m going to use it to calculate the house advantage at the casino that I deal cards at. Here is the breakdown of our single deck ($5 to $50) Royal Match game rules: Dealer peeks. DD on any first 2 cards. Split Ace’s get one card only. Double after split allowed. Split up to 4 hands. Early surrender. BJ pays 6 to 5 (sorry). 6 card Charlie (6 cards w/o busting wins automatically). Add it all up and you come to a house advantage of 1.121%. the only really disadvantageous role is the 6 to 5 payout on a blackjack. Is it was a standard 3 to 2 payout the house advantage will be down to 0.239%, which on a single-deck game is about as close to even as you can get. At any rate, please use this blackjack House advantage calculator to your advantage, no pun intended. It’s important to know just how much ...

OK, here is how I would go about masking the fact that I am counting cards like a madman.

This is a reprint of a previous post on advantage play. Before I begin, I want to remind you about my Patreon page. If you enjoy my content, and would like to see more of it more often, please consider becoming a patron. Click here to go to my page. Whenever I meet people and tell them what my profession has been for the last 25 years, I always come away with the feeling that they equate card counting and advantage play as cheating. It is not, of course, as most of the readers of this blog undoubtedly know. It is just against the policy of most casinos to allow it. As a legally licensed, privately owned business located on private property, all casinos have the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason they choose. Most of the time, card counting, or ace/shuffle tracking, or anything else that casino management considers "advantage play" wont even get you thrown out, just politely asked to not play blackjack anymore. Management would love to have you go play slots...