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Cheating At The Casino – Not As Easy And Profitable As It Looks?

Playing casino games can certainly be exciting, for some players that's just not enough. They want to up the ante by cheating the casino. Of course, today this is not easy. But over thirty years ago, the security technology was in its infancy, as so cheaters could go undetected for years. Some of them were only discovered because they outed themselves in books written years after the events in qestion. But for every cheater caught, there could well be others who fly completely under the radar.

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Cheating In Casinos

Since casinos first opened their doors, they have been players who have been looking for ways of bending the rules and cheating to their own advantage. If you think about any casino game then you’ll find some crafty individual has found a way to cheat. This can be with inside knowledge, sleight-of-hand, mechanical know-how, or even having an accomplice. Some of these cheats are caught almost instantly, whilst others can enjoy years and years of success. In fact, some are never caught. They only let the world know of their exploits through a book, long after the gambling events.

Of course, we must assume that for every 10 people cheating, there are 8 that we have no knowledge of. Obviously, the best cheaters are those operating under the radar who the casinos are completely oblivious to.

Cheating at Roulette

When you imagine a spinning roulette wheel and the tiny ivory ball dropped onto it, you might think it would be almost impossible to cheat. Simply because you could never predict where the ball might land. Well, that’s the theory. But in reality, there are several ways to cheat at roulette. These include wheel gaffing, sector targeting, magnetic balls and top-hatting.

Sector Targeting: This is when someone leans on one side of the wheel, thereby causing it to dip on one side
Top- Hatting: This requires an accomplice who will distract the dealer whilst the player puts the ball in a different pocket. In many cases, the dealer is actually part of the scheme. He will quietly replace the ball in the pocket of choice.
Wheel Gaffing: When someone sprays an adhesive on a pocket to ensure that the ball will land there more often.
Magnetic Balls: When the ball is magnetized and there’s a small magnet hidden behind one of the pockets within the wheel itself.

For many of the above to function as part of your jackpot winning strategies, you’ll need the croupier of the dealer to be part of the plot. The dealer is responsible for oversight for their games table. So it’s almost impossible to pull off any sort of cheating without their involvement. The never-sleeping, eye in the sky, is constantly watching the games tables. Both the pit bosses and casino security are looking on. As soon as they detect betting patterns which are unusual, they will focus their attention on both the suspicious gambler and the dealer.

Cheating at Blackjack

Just as you see in the movies, counting cards is probably the best-known method to cheat in blackjack. Though we must say that we are a little reluctant to call this “cheating.” In truth, counting cards isn’t as easy as it’s made to look in the Hollywood version. You have to be able to keep a running count based on the value of the card first dealt. And then calculate the count for each deck. In the long run, you should be able to figure out the count. Then you have to alter your wagers in order to see a profit. It’s a long term strategy that sees small profits for each hand. We hesitate to call it cheating because it’s knowledge-based and you’re making use of mathematics. As opposed to sleight of hand or any sort of physical manipulation.

Cheating at Poker

Though the game features “bluffing,” which, let’s face it, is either lying or pretending, it’s perfectly acceptable. The more regular ways in which people cheat at jackpot poker are using either peeking or slight at hand. If the dealer is in on the scam, then they will make use of sleight of hand tricks. Thus allowing the player to peek at the cards in the hands of the dealer. Dealers can also make fake deals. They replace an extra card at the top or bottom of the pack for a later advantage. Fortunately, this can’t happen when playing online. That’s one reason we recommend playing at 22Bet Casino. They have all your favourite games as well as offering all new players a great welcome bonus of 22% up to €300!

Slot Machine Cheats

One of the main reasons why slot machines are the most manipulated gaming activity in the whole casino it’s the fact that there’s no security or supervision around the slot machine gaming floor. There have been a huge number of methods discovered for manipulating these machines. These include such things as using counterfeit money or fake coins (slugs). Before 1999, when a slot machine manufacturers up the security game, it was easy for people to simply tie a coin to their finger, push it into the machine in order to trip the sensor, and then simply pull the coin back out.

EGM Cheats

On the whole, electronic game machines (EGM) require some sort of electronic work-around in order to make their payout. For this many cheats will use the combined knowledge of mechanics and electronics. For example, they might use a lock decoder to break into the machine. And then make use of an electromagnetic pulse to totally wipe the machine electronics, thereby bypassing any of the machines built-in security measures.

Cheating in Online Gambling

We like to think that trying to win the jackpot online by cheating online casinos is impossible. Many of these casinos run on reputable software from large providers who have spent considerable time, energy and funds on ensuring they are unhackable. Cheating at a physical casino is one thing, but to be able to cheat at any online game, apart from bonus abuse, means you would need to be a big brain, amazing IT genius hacker. As there’s no point in wasting your time trying to hack the online casino, simply go and play in one! We like 22Bet Casino, as they have fantastic live dealer games, with every casino table game represented.

Famous Cheaters

For many of the most famous cheaters, the cheating itself became almost an obsession and they would go back to the casino time and again to perfect their techniques. In fact, it would be fairer to describe that cheating as almost an art form. Some of them, like Monique Laurant and the MIT blackjack team, had movies made based on their exploits.

Monique Laurent

Monique Laurent probably used the most audacious, and certainly the most technically advanced method of cheating at the time. Along with her brother-in-law and a friend who happened to be a croupier at the local casino, they formed a cheating team. They put together a system whereby the ball was under remote control. Its activation was by a transmitter that was in a packet of cigarettes. Every now and again, the remote control ball would enter the game, and the cheaters were able to take some huge wins from the casinos.

The scheme was known as the “French Cigarette Pack Scandal.” What’s interesting is that nobody from the casino’s security had any idea of the technique being used. The gang was only discovered for the simple reason that Monique was very pretty. She, therefore, bought a great deal of attention to herself. Before long a manager noticed that she never smoked a single cigarette from the cigarette packet she always had with her.

Joseph Jagger

Over 100 years ago the Englishman Joseph Jagger took a trip to Monte Carlo. There he took the casino to the cleaners for $450,000. Jagger employed six clerks and had them record all the results coming up on the casino’s roulette wheel. After analysing these numbers, he saw that one number came up more often than others. This was due to a fault in the roulette wheel which caused it to become unbalanced over time. Such a scam could not work today as casinos check their wheels rigorously on a regular basis.

Charles Wells

Once again in Monte Carlo, the Englishman Charles Wells managed to win 23 out of 30 consecutive spins on a roulette wheel. During this session, he was able to win more than $70,000. In fact, so successful and legendary was his feat, that the songwriter Fred Guilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, penned a song about the incident in 1892. The famous song was, “The man who broke the bank in Monte Carlo”. It was such a popular music hall song that the singer Charles Coburn was said to have sung it over 250,000 times during the course of his career.

The Eudaemons

In order to beat the roulette wheel, a group of University of California Santa Cruz students built a tiny portable computing machine. The group called themselves the Eudaemons and had calculated that the bets should net them a 144% increase in the possibility of winning. The scheme actually worked and they made around $10,000. That was until their machine started to overheat. Within minutes it started to belch smoke on a casino floor, before finally igniting in flames.

The MIT Blackjack Team

Probably one of history’s most famous groups of cheats were a group of students from the MIT Harvard Business School at Harvard University and also other colleges in Massachusetts. They put together a number of card counting teams in order to beat the casino at the game of blackjack. There was a rather silly movie with the name of “21” which was loosely based on the scams.

The Unglamorous Part of Cheating at Casinos

Unsurprisingly, the idea of cheating at the casino, with the constant security in such a glamorous situation, has caught the eye of many Hollywood movie producers. You’ll find films from Rain Man, to Casino, to Ocean’s 11. In many Hollywood movies (apart from Casino…hammer time!), cheating looks glamorous, easy and without any consequences. But in the real world, if you try to cheat the casino, the odds are very much against you. You’ll have a greater probability of introducing yourself to the casino security handcuffs than not. Keep in mind that in most casinos, cheating is a Federal crime that will see you behind bars. We suggest that you gamble for entertainment. Don’t become so obsessed about making a profit that you would consider cheating at any of the casino jackpot games. It’s just not worth it.