How Casinos Try To Prevent Cheating Today

The house always wins, right? Wrong – not if cheating has to do with it. Back in the 90s, the MIT blackjack team made history by beating the house. And how did they do it? By counting cards, a strategy that attracted throngs of people to try blackjack. Even today, thousands of people try online casino blackjack hoping that they will be as lucky as Kaplan, who converted a $1,000 investment into a $35,000 investment! He was later to head the MIT blackjack team, a group of students who counted and gambled their way to huge payouts. But casinos learned from their experience with the MIT blackjack team and now enforce strategies to keep cheating at bay. What are these strategies, and just how effective are they?

Physical Casinos

How do physical establishments discourage cheating?

Card Shuffling

The MIT blackjack team made its money by frequenting physical casinos and relied on their card counting skills to win the games. Now, casinos control their cards, ensuring that they shuffle them randomly. They even go to the extent of having multiple dealers. So, you cannot guess the cards, and neither can you get a dealer to signal the hand to you. All you have left is your strategy.

Card Reshuffling and Changes

You might go into a casino hoping to see a specific type of card. But casinos know that many people learned card counting from the MIT team. So, what do they do?

• Use different colors than those in standard decks: Some casinos use cards whose faces are not what you would see in typical cards. It becomes hard to count if you have no idea what has been played.

• Reshuffling the deck: Counting cards requires you to track what’s been played and what is in the deck. Imagine if a casino shuffles the cards more than 20 times. How would you keep track?

These are some of the methods used to distort card counting, leaving you with no upper hand.

Securing Dice

Besides card counting, some people have also mastered altering the dice to ensure that the odds are in their favor. It’s particularly so in craps where dice play an integral role. Some gamblers would go as far as attaching adhesives on the dice or marking them. And when casinos caught on to them, they put an end to this by:

• Keeping the dice in locked quarters: The dice remain out of sight until it’s time for the game to commence.

• Monitoring the dice: It’s now possible to install tracking software in dice to ensure that casino management can track its whereabouts,

• Weighing the dice: Before starting the game, the casino employees must weigh the dice to ensure that they are not tampered with.

Where any foul play is apparent, casino employees must carry out the necessary checks to ensure that the dice are suitable for use.

Physical Monitoring

Casinos also train their staff to watch out for any signs of cheating. Moreover, they set up cameras around the games and use technology to monitor facial reactions, hand movements, etc. Thus, if anything seems out of the norm, they can zero in and assess if any cheating has occurred.

Online Casinos

Most of the techniques mentioned above can only work for physical casinos. But in online casinos, they would not be feasible. After all, how would a casino weigh virtual dice? Even so, there are numerous ways that online casino operators can hone in on cheating players. These include:

Tracking Bets

The use of technology enables casinos to watch all your moves. And because they have already established the patterns prevalent in cheating players, they can tell if you are headed down that road. For example, some people use software to help them maximize their wins by using proven strategies. But software does not play like a person. And it takes a machine to know one. So, casinos can use technology to track down players taking advantage of such solutions. Such technology can also track the activities of players who count cards or adopt any other cheating styles.

Using Random Number Generators

Do you know why it is so hard to win at casino games? They use random number generators. That means that any number can come up after the first one, and there’s no way to gauge what will be next. So, people who rely on card counting can find themselves at a loss when none of the cards they anticipate are on the deck. Oh, and they couple this with continuous reshuffling to lower the cheating odds.

Imposing Wagering Conditions

Almost all online casinos now offer bonuses to their players to attract more people to use their services. They also know that these bonuses attract cheaters who want to use the high roller bonuses for some quick cash. Some people even use software to seek these bonuses and optimize them to win free money to keep playing. So, casinos put up stringent terms and conditions to access these bonuses. And if you do not honor these requirements, you lose the bonus and could even lose your account.

Casinos also keep track of everything you do on the site – who you interact with, issues you raise with the customer service, how much money you deposit, etc. And eventually, they get an idea of the kind of player you are and how they should handle your account. If they have any reason to be suspicious, they flag your account. And if they are not happy with what they find after their investigations, they can shut it down.

So, should you cheat? While cheating might seem like an easy way to increase your earnings, the results can also be quite horrible. Some people have ended up in jail, while others have lost legitimate earnings over minor infractions. It’s always best to obey the casino rules, avoid raising suspicion, and learn the basic strategy. Even in blackjack, you can win without resorting to cheating. Good luck!

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes