Unusual Action

A reader says:
I definitely believe there is some cheating at black-jack by some casinos some of the time. This is what happened to me at a single-deck game in a large northern Nevada casino. I began playing with green chips, varying my bets 1-4. There was no other big action in the casino, so three floor men watched my game. A new dealer came in, a short chubby-fingered man of about 50. The count went up and I threw out a $100 bet. The dealer made a very suspicious motion with the deck. He held it high and with his other hand apparently flipped the top of the deck, making a snapping sound. He might have been checking the number of cards to see if it was enough for another round, but there was no reason for him to do that because the discards were in a rack on the table. Then he dealt himself an ace, and I got garbage.

After the hand was over he shuffled the deck. I watched as he preserved a clump of about fifteen cards — in a single deck that is a lot! I said to the pit boss, "My nine-year-old daughter can shuffle better than that." The boss claimed the dealer shuffled well. I told him, "You should not have a poor shuffler at a quarter table
— either he is purposely clumping the cards with a poor shuffle or he is a fat-fingered klutz." The pit boss became angry. Then I said, "And how about that ace he got last hand?"

To make a long story short, I was escorted out the door by five large security guards.

I say again — the shuffle was so obviously bad that a nine-year-old could shuffle better. Either it was purposely done, or the dealer was too tired, or he did not care, or he is all thumbs. As a $100 bettor, I deserve a better shuffle!

This incident may have been cheating or it may have been harassment. I am including it because of my confidence in the writer's ability to detect actions that differ from normal casino procedures. The writer is an experienced pro who has played blackjack around the world.

Sun Palace Casino
Play for Fun or Money, you will
always going to win!!!
Sun Palace Casino


Keep your eyes on the pack at all times. Occasionally watching the pack will make a dealer nervous, but you will not lose to a particular cheater more than once. Play only in big casinos. Do not play in single-table holes in the wall. Big casinos have more to lose than to gain by cheating and consequently should not tolerate it. If you see a cheating dealer, quietly inform the pit boss. The pit boss will not believe you, but will watch the dealer closely. An honest casino owner will immediately fire a dealer caught cheating.

If you play enough and keep your eyes open, you will spot dealers with suspicious motions, and you will notice dealers using Bee cards with the unbroken pattern of dazzling diamonds. If you stick to big casinos, you will only rarely see a dealer whom you can positively identify as a cheat. This was not always true. During the 1960s several Nevada casinos, including some large ones, were closed because of cheating.

The Golden

The Golden, now defunct, was once well known to knowledgeable Reno locals as a casino in which cheating was common. One weekend in early 1968, I went to Reno with six friends. I told the six what to look for and took the group into the Golden to find a cheating dealer. A woman of about 40 with drugstore-red hair was peeking and dealing seconds whenever she wished. The five customers at her table were bemoaning their bad luck, oblivious to being cheated. My friends and I stood, full of awe, in a semicircle behind the victims. Five of my friends saw everything that the wicked witch was doing, but one friend could only see her peeking without being able to tell when she was dealing seconds. I tried unobtrusively to demonstrate the different arm motion Big Red used for seconds. Meanwhile the pit boss had wandered over to see why so many people had gathered around one table. His sharp eye caught my arm motion, and he immediately whispered something in Big Red's ear. It must not have been sweet nothings because thereafter every card came off the top of the pack, and the gallery was treated to cordial smiles by the demure dealer. The fun was over, so our group left.


Diddle the Discards

This technique comes from Mr. A., a professional blackjack player. He claims to have seen it used in Las Vegas. You may have noticed a pit boss pick up a handful of discards and examine them — the fronts, the sides, or the backs. But the boss never takes the cards out of sight, at least in my experience.

However, Mr. A. reports that one pit boss turned around with a handful of the discards, temporarily removing the cards from the view of the players! Thereafter, the count rose to the roof shuffle after shuffle. Mr. A. thinks the cards the pit boss put back on the table were not the same cards that he removed. In a game in which six decks are shuffled and less than five are dealt out, a player has difficulty knowing whether the pack has the correct proportion of each denomination. You could be playing against too many small cards and too few aces and 10s and not realize it.

Mr. A. claims a player called the Gaming Control Board and asked that it immediately seize the cards at that table. The person he talked to said it would be done, but no Gaming Control Board agent ever showed up to do it.
Dave Douglas sent a Las Vegas Sun clipping that states that State Gaming Control Board agents arrested a floorman at the Silver Saddle in Las Vegas; they saw him remove six face cards from two decks and then put the short decks in play.

This article is part of the series: Cheating by the dealer, you can read the previous article or continue with the following one.

© Copyright 2007 Gambling Central's material. It may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.