Casino Surveillance Pro

Early Origins of Baccarat The exact origin of Baccarat remains somewhat mysterious, but several intriguing theories exist. Here are some possibilities: Chinese Influence : Some believe that Baccarat may have evolved from non-card games, such as the Chinese Pai Gow, which used tiles instead of cards. The correlation between the meaning of “Pai Gow” (meaning “make nine”) and the best score in Baccarat (also nine) adds to this theory. However, historical evidence is lacking. Ancient Roman Rituals : Another theory connects Baccarat to ancient Rome. Vestal virgins supposedly cast dice to determine their fate, with 8 or 9 signifying a high priestess’s future. While intriguing, this still doesn’t explain why Baccarat is played with cards today. Italy’s Role : Fast-forward to the late 13th century when Marco Polo returned to Italy from his expeditions. Card games were gaining popularity, thanks to the invention of the printing press. Baccarat likely emerged during this time, adapting from othe...

I had a reader ask, so here is the house rules at the single deck Blackjack game that we offer at the casino that I deal at. I've also included a basic strategy chart for those rules.You should know that our table limits are very low, usually $5 to $50 per hand. And unless there's only one player at the table we shuffle after just two rounds. A single player will be able to get in 3 rounds before a shuffle.  This low deck penetration pretty much negates any advantage play techniques that a player might use, such as card counting or tracking Aces.  But, if you know your basic strategy, and especially know how to use surrender properly, it's not a bad game. A 1.5% house advantage is actually pretty good these days. Especially in a table with only a $5 minimum bet. No I'm not going to tell you exactly where I work, but without too much trouble you should be able to figure it out. I will tell you that it's in Northern Nevada, as opposed to the Vegas area. Anyway  here ...

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.

Okay, some of you are not going to agree with everything I say here, and some of you won't think I should be saying it at all. That's fine, everyone's entitled to their opinion. And while it is not my intent to give anyone a step by step tutorial on how to get away with an armed robbery in a Vegas casino, or anywhere else for that matter, there may be some people out there who might use this information to do so, or at least attempt it. so be it. I have my reasons for saying the things I'm about to say, and those things should become clear by the time I finish with this post. First of all, I'm having trouble attaching photos to my posts using the Blogger app. They hang up while uploading, and I end up having to delete the post and start over. So I'm not going to show you the picture that was released of the white male who committed an armed robbery at the Excalibur Casino last Wednesday, the 13th.  What I am going to tell you is that it is a very poor photo (r...

I just watched another good dice setting video. You can see it by clicking here . The dice are set with a 6 and 5 on top and the threes facing you prior to throwing. The throw is made with a slow, pendulum motion and slight backspin. The main point of this video is that you need to make adjustments if you keep throwing sevens. The only adjustment he makes in the video is to move the dice, so that the one that was on the left side is now on the right. (Watch the video and you'll see what I mean.) I know it doesn't seem like much but this adjustment makes a big difference. He goes from throwing three sevens in his first 6 rolls, to throw I eat 10 straight rolls without a seven. It's a really small sample size obviously, but it might indicate a real-world difference. Now I am still not convinced that all this will work , but I am going to give it another try.  My next time out I will use the same grip set and throwing motion, along with the "Iron Cross" beting s...

2 arrested in slot burglaries at bars in Reno-Sparks area The Associated Press August 21, 2018 - 4:11 am   RENO — Police have arrested two men suspected of stealing at least $25,000 in burglaries involving slot machines at more than a dozen bars in the Reno-Sparks areas. Reno police say 37-year-old Michael Robinson and 37-year-old Matthew Wiley were arrested early Monday after they left a business they burglarized in Sparks. Police say they targeted slot machines and allegedly committed three burglaries over the past few days. Washoe County sheriff’s deputies and police in Reno and Sparks started conducting surveillance on the suspects in May because it appeared the crimes could be related. Detectives believe they are responsible for at least 14 thefts totaling between $25,000 and $30,000. It’s not clear if they have lawyers or will be appointed one at a pending court appearance.

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Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said someone found a suspicious package was found in the mailroom area of the Sands Expo Convention Center. Metro's ARMOR team responded to the scene to conduct the investigation. The building is located at Sands Avenue and Koval Lane.  The package was reported at 5:19 p.m. Thursday 8/23/18

Last week I posted a Twitter poll (@casinologger) asking readers to vote on which hand was the hardest to stick to basic strategy on. These were the four poll options, along with what percentage of votes they got: 1. Hard 12 vs dealers 2 up 34% 2. Hard 13 vs dealers 3 up 31% 3. 9,9 vs dealers 7 up  14% 4. A,6 vs dealers 6 up  21% Here is my analysis of your votes: As you can see, hands 1 and 2 together took 65% of the votes, and I'm sure I know why.  I hate when the dealer has a two or a three up and apparently you guys do too. I just know that if the dealer has a ten for a hole card, he will draw an eight. Or if he has a seven for a hole card he'll draw a 10.  I even seem to lose when I stand on a 20 in these situations. The way to play this hand is to remember that when the dealer has a two or three up you hit if you have a hard 12 and stand if you have a hard 13. Now, you can deviate from basic strategy based on the count if you want to. but if you do it to...

One of my followers on Twitter, Eddie "Mastersnake" DeSoto (@corvetteflex)  wants to know if there's any way that a slot machine can be made to pay off more often from a remote location, AKA hacking it. Here's what I know. First of all, I know of no documented case in the United States where that is happened. I have heard about it happening in Europe, particularly Eastern Europe. But first, a little background. There are two types of slot machines being used currently, 1 used all over the world and the other only found in North American casinos. The first type is a stand-alone slot machine like you would find in Nevada, or anywhere in the world that there's a corporate-owned casino. What designates them as 'stand alone" is that they have a random number generator chip embedded on their motherboard, and every time you press the spin or play button that RNG provides a number which corresponds with a game result. Everything that happens on the screen, the ...

I came across a very good article called "Do Today's Legitimate Brick and Mortar Casinos Cheat Their Players?" I don't want to plagiarize it, it's too long for that, and besides the example he cites is somewhat rare and doesn't really apply to the US mainland casinos. But if you frequent casinos in Nevada or elsewhere, you should read it. Click here to read the article. And here is a reminder about my Patron page. Click here to become a Patron and support my blogging. And  here is the link to my Amazon affiliate page and some  Good books about Casino gambling and surveillance.  You can also get a free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime by clicking on this link here . I also sell advertising sponsorships on this blog. I can devote an entire blog post to your product, service or anything else gaming-related. Click on this link here to go to my eBay listing  and read all about it.

I went out for a second dice session, where I would be testing my dice setting and throwing skills. As you might recall from my first post about this I won around $65 the first time I tried it. Didn't have that kind of luck this time. I was back to the Club Cal-Neva in downtown Reno, at the same $3 minimum table. As before I bought in with $60, but this time I had  inconsistent results. I set the dice the same way as before with the five and the one touching each other in the center of the of the two dice stack. I sevened out immediately after getting my first point. I was never up at any time during the session. I was the only one at the table, so of course I was the only shooter. I played for about half an hour, occasionally having a decent run, hitting some points, but then I'd seven out and lose it all. I finally walked away from the table with around $20, making me a $40 loser. Oh well. I'm still not convinced that this dice setting/controlling thing is real.  Of co...

I found another great craps video on YouTube, this one talks about the different pay off amounts on place bets. It's really pretty goofd. Click Here to view it.   I also came across an article in Cigar Aficionado magazine recently. It's about the leader of a group of advantage players, who have taken a large amount of money, if they are to be believed, out of a lot of different casinos. Click here to go to the article. I also want to mention some Android apps that I use on a pretty regular basis. (If you're an iPhone user, sorry you're on your own.) For craps, I use an app called Craps Trainer Pro, by E7systems.com. I use the paid version, I think it was about four or five dollars. It's a fun little Sam, that will not let you make play sore by bets or take off odds unless you bet the right amount of money. And the payoffs are accurate. I used two different apps for training on blackjack. The first is called Blackjack Strategy Trainer by Aeon Apps. it shows yo...

I had one of my local readers, here in Reno too, ask me why I don't talk about slot machines more often. So I'll cover that in this post Quite frankly, slot machines not that interesting to me. I rarely play them and when I do play machines it's either penny or nickel video poker or a Keno game. I never, evet play the reel type slots. They just hold no interest for me. As a surveillance professional, they don't hold a lot of interest in me anymore either. It used to be slots were a common target of cheaters. And there were dozens of different ways to shape the machines. You could feed slugs instead of real coins into the machine. You could use a device called a "monkey's paw" to block the optics and cause a machine to pay out more than it should. In yhr real old days, when slot machines were mechanical instead of electrical, you could pop the handle at certain times to cause the reals to stop in a payoff position. None of that can be done anymore. All ...

Two Employees Charged with Armed Robbery at Their Own Casino Now in Federal Custody Cort Smith 3 days ago Two Mazatzal Casino workers in Arizona who moved in on the cage of their own employers on July 17 shortly after midnight, brandishing firearms and shooting multiple rounds, are now in federal custody. Miraculously, no one was hurt in the attack. The two men alleged to be involved were tracked down and arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Of the $650,000 taken, according to federal court records, some $480,000 has now been recovered, with no word on the status of the remaining dough. FBI agents arrested 31-year-old Ryan Pearson and 32-year old Armando Ochoa this week for their alleged roles in the robbery. Officials say the pair fired several rounds from their weapons as they tried to intimidate casino employees — their own co-workers — into handing over cash. Both men have been charged with Hobbs Act Robbery and Use of a Weapon in a Crime of Violence. “Hobb...

 The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that  MGM Resorts will implement a 20 percent service charge at all spas and salons inside the company’s Strip properties.The company said the added service charge essentially replaces tips. Five MGM properties — The  Mirage,   Excalibur,   Luxor,   MGM Grand  and New York-New York — already have a service charge at their spas and salons.   Aria, Bellagio,   Vdara,   Mandalay Bay and  Delano Las Vegas  will be joining, with the charge in place by the end of August. David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV, said it’s unclear how  this decision will affect MGM Resorts ; it could bring in additional revenue in the short term, but it could also affect customers’ goodwill. Visitors to Las Vegas “have become increasingly outspoken in their disapproval of add-on charges and fees, and it is hard to imagine that customers will be happy with a new service charge,...

Hi everybody, before we start 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 Okay, so it's Hot August Nights week here in Reno and all of the casinos are packed during dinner time hours. So I went out late last night to my favorite place to play blackjack and craps in Reno, the Bonanza Casino on North Virginia Street. Click here for their website. I like this place because of their low limit tables. They go up to $5 minimum tables after 4 p. M. But late night and early morning you can play at a $3 blackjack table or $2 craps table, which is about as low as you can get in Reno. Or anywhere, for that matter. I did my hit-and-run thing, buying in for $100 and leaving after about half-an-hour up 45. It was a $5 minimum table, single-deck, 3/2 table with the standard Reno rules. There were usually two or three other people at the table with me througho...