Casinos cheating their members?

[TStoneMBD]

I am posting this on behalf of a friend who wanted to explore some of his developed conceptions of casino practices, that he pieced together over the years that he has played table games at several casinos.

He wanted to know if there is anything that a casino might do to cheat their members out of money. He first proposed to me that he believes there to be a good chance that casinos hire Blackjack dealers who are capable of using sleight of hand tricks to abuse the outcome of hands. At first I assumed that this was an irrational thought, however quite possible. He then went on to say that there has been times in which he began tipping a dealer well, and soon realized that the dealer was helping him win his hands. He says there is sometimes a bond between the player and a dealer in which you just know that he is helping you beat the house. For instance, he says there has been a couple of experiences in which dealers have hit for him when he did not in fact ask for a hit, or he will ask for a hit and they will decline giving it to him. he says they can certainly hear what hes saying, and his immediate reaction to them ignoring him is to protest until he sees the card. if he wants to stand on 16, they may hit him and hell get a 4. if he wants to hit on 13, versus a ten, the dealer will not allow him to hit. they will turn up their 15, and bust with the ten that would have been his.

he feels that there may have been some sort of deck abuse, and if they can abuse the deck in his favor, they can abuse the deck against him. he has told me that from his experiences, if you are up against a bright, young, intelligent kid who is on the ball, you are far more likely to get creamed than by a slow-witted old man. i argued that you are probably just getting dealt more hands per hour and therefore are losing faster, but he argues his belief that some of these intelligent dealers are actually taught by the house to use sleight of hand to beat the players.

my counterarguement for his assessments is that when a dealer has helped him the past, it is probably that one of the cards of the deck was marked. the dealer knew the card would be a 4 or ten, and therefore abused that knowledge to help the good tipper win. after hearing that, he agreed that there is a good chance that this might be the explanation. the house cannot manipulate marked cards against you, but you can manipulate marked cards against the house.

regardless, are there methods that the house uses to cheat their members out of money? for the intents of this thread, lets assume that cheat means that the house will do something that the player has no idea will happen with the intention of swaying the odds in the houses favor.

[junkmail3]

[ QUOTE ]
for the intents of this thread, lets assume that cheat means that the house will do something that the player has no idea will happen with the intention of swaying the odds in the houses favor .

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They do this by posting rules to the game.

Once you understand the rules of the game, the odds are in the houses favor.

(Edit: I don't see any reason the casino would risk getting in trouble when they're already taking your money at a healty rate)

[Kurwood Derby]

This is a gag, right? You're not serious, are you?

[Sponger15SB]

Blackjack is rigged.

The house edge for perfect play is like .05%!

BULLSHIT!

edit- anyone know what the house edge over most "average" blackjack players? ie not hitting 16 vs 7, etc?

[steveyz]

They casino figures that their advantage is about 2% over average players. That is the figure they use when calculating comps.

[Voltron87]

Casinos games are rigged by definition...

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[TStoneMBD]

again this post is not on my behalf. i was looking for a posts of a higher caliber than the ones offerred. i would actually like to see intelligent responses, rather than trolls saying i am off my rocker. if anything, at least try to dispute the arguement as if someone came to you with this theory, and you were trying to disprove it, as that is the quandry that i am in.

[canis582]

[ QUOTE ]
again this post is not on my behalf. i was looking for a posts of a higher caliber than the ones offerred. i would actually like to see intelligent responses, rather than trolls saying i am off my rocker. if anything, at least try to dispute the arguement as if someone came to you with this theory, and you were trying to disprove it, as that is the quandry that i am in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Get on the Trolley, Tstone...

But for real, is it a +EV move for the dealers to hook up the good tippers? Its a chance to loose your job vs. your base pay plus base tips plus your income from generous regulars who come to your table to tip you generously for better cards.

[bobbyi]

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if anything, at least try to dispute the arguement as if someone came to you with this theory, and you were trying to disprove it, as that is the quandry that i am in.

[/ QUOTE ]
The theory claims that casinos hire dealers who know how to cheat. And then it claims that the dealers sometimes cheat in favor of the players. If the casino had cheating dealers, wouldn't it be pretty stupid to risk getting caught by having them cheat in favor of the players? Even the cheating in favor of players is being initiated by the dealers without the casinos knowing (since it is an effort to get tips), it seems very implausible because the casino knows that the dealers know how to cheat and would almost certainly have a very strict policy against cheating in favor of players. So a dealer would do something so blatant as to give a player a card after he asked to stand so that he would win? Think of what a massive risk the dealer would be taking there in order to get a little extra tip. I can't see it. The other problem is just that casinos hire a lot of dealers and it would be very hard to keep this cheating operation under wraps. When hiring new dealers do they test all of them to see if they can manipulate cards fraudulently? Or do new dealers go through a training program where they learn how to do it? Either way, the casinos know that there are too many dealers or potential dealers who will end up knowing about it for them to keep it a secret for long. The only way it might work is if it involves only a few dealers who have worked their a long time and they have decided they trust. In that case, they would have those dealers dealing the highest limit tables. So if your friend was at something like a $15 table, I don't see how there could have been dealers there who were trained to cheat.

[Kurwood Derby]

I know, I know. You and your friend had this debate right after the one where you couldn't agree on which holiday it is that the Easter Bunny comes to your house.