Inside Asian Gaming

May 2016 inside asian gaming 49 Tech Talk says Justin Keane, Director of Table Games and Utilities at Scientific Games Asia. “Anywhere in the chain where people are touching the cards is a danger point.” Take, to begin with, playing card production. In 1999 blackjack players across South Africa started getting very lucky. Takings from the game at one venue, Caesar’s Casino in Johannesburg, dropped 11 percent in three weeks. Of course it wasn’t luck. Investigators found that the pattern printed on the back of each ten, jack, queen, king and ace in the decks the casino was using was almost imperceptibly different; a tiny blank space inside a repeated floral pattern on an edge. Swindlers, it turned out, had gained access to the factory of Protea Playing Cards, the sole supplier to all 22 of the country’s casinos. Once inside, they had tampered with the printing plates. Something similar can happen if the printing on the backs of playing cards is just a fraction of a millimeter off-center. In 2012 poker player Phil Ivey used a technique called edge sorting to win US$9.6 million at baccarat at Atlantic City’s Borgata casino, and then £7.7 million more playing punto banco at Crockford’s casino in London. He was taking advantage of minute differences in the pattern along the opposite edges of each card back, caused by a misaligned factory guillotine. Certain value cards were turned one way before being discarded. Alternatively value cards were turned the other. The cards were shuffled without being rotated. Ivey was therefore able to tell what kind of card the dealer was about to give him. After production cards must be packed, checked and transported to casino tables; a journey that presents a whole new set of opportunities to cheat. In 2013 unidentified tricksters were able to steal AU$33 million after hacking into the surveillance system of Crown Casino in Melbourne. The casino has not revealed details of how the scheme worked. But security consultants reckon the hacker was probably able to view footage of pre-shuffled card blocks being verified for completeness in the back of house. It is thought the hacker then relayed the information to an accomplice via earpiece after the cards arrived at the accomplice’s table. A more common scam is “the cooler.” It involves recruiting casino workers to swap eight-deck pre-shuffled blocks of cards with pre-arranged blocks en route to a table. One dealer cheat team in Macau scored HK$46 million this way in the 1990s, after taking all 14 seats around a baccarat table. A variant in 2013 involved swapping an entire shoe at a table in a VIP room. A pit manager there did this twice for a criminal gang before he was caught; the first time for a payment of HK$2 million, and again nine months later for HK$2.9 million. Gamblers in Macau can see for themselves the last stages of the card security procedure most casinos have in place. The cards used in the city’s gaming venues are manufactured at a secure facility overseas, checked for completeness and then shuffled in blocks of eight complete decks. Each block is then packed in a cardboard packet with its own barcode and tamper-proof seal. After secure transport to the casino, every packet is placed in its own plastic vault; basically a clear plastic box with another tamper-proof seal. The barcode on each packet is scanned after delivery to its destination table. The dealer then removes the block from its packet and inserts it into her table’s shoe, without revealing any cards and in full view of players and casino cameras. When a shoe is finished, all cards are put back in the plastic vault they came in, taken away and destroyed. Stricter jurisdictions also require each used block to be checked a second time for completeness. Of course an error in the process can have serious consequences. In 2012 Atlantic City’s Golden Nugget casino initiated a lawsuit demanding 14 gamblers return over US$1.5 million in winnings from mini-baccarat. A block of cards had accidentally been delivered to their table without pre-shuffling at the factory. Once the gamblers realized this, they cranked up their bets to the table’s maximum and even made bets for others. There is also an opportunity for cheating if cards are hand- Professional poker player Phil Ivey beat casinos in Atlantic City and London out of over US$20 million using a technique called edge sorting Card security specialists break the lifecycle of a casino playing card down into a chain of events, and analyze the hazards at each stage. Most threats, unsurprisingly, come from humans.