Cheating

6 October 2022

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: Casinos don’t cheat.

ABBY: Except in some places but I doubt that any of the casinos almost all of us go to cheat. What’s the point since they have the edge on every game and that should be enough to make them money.

CINDY: Agreed. Casinos that go bankrupt probably have poor money management or really great competition. I haven’t heard of any of the regular casinos being caught cheating. You do occasionally read stories about slot wins that are rejected but I think that’s because the machines were out of sync or something. I think the state agencies have to check those situations. Overall, therefore, casinos do not cheat other than structuring their games to have edges over the players.

ABBY: But some players cheat or try to cheat. We’ve seen that on occasion.

CINDY: Stupid players. I’d call them stupid players.

CINDY: Our problem is that we have read books on this kind of criminality on the part of players. Maybe we read too much?

ABBY: Or reading makes for a full life, they say.

CINDY: Who says that?

ABBY: I have no idea!

CINDY: The two I remember that we actually were witnesses to were the “past poster” at roulette and the dealer/player partners cheating at blackjack.

ABBY: Yep! Those come right to the front of my memory. I still don’t know if we made the right decisions in those cases.

CINDY: I know, I know. I do not know if we did the right things then. I still don’t.

ABBY: Let’s go through them, okay?

CINDY: Past posting is putting a bet down after the decision to try to make the dealer or dealers think you had actually made that bet. This way you get paid as if you did make the bet. An example of this, say, 17 hits, you quickly reach over and put some chips on the 17.

ABBY: This has to be done at a crowded table where players are crammed in. Their hands will be all over the place and a good past poster can get his or her bet down and collect the “win.” Also having someone causing a little scene, not too much, mind you, but enough to quickly distract the dealer so the past poster can get that bet down, fast!

CINDY: This guy, who looked well-dressed and of the upper class so to speak, would place smaller bets here and there but every so often, down would come the past post as he moved his hand really, really fast. A really big win. He’d keep the “original” bet up to make it look as if he was going with that number as long as it kept winning. Obviously, it didn’t keep winning. Then he’d go through his routine again. Make a smaller bet here and there, very small bets, and then he and his partner would go for another past post. After two, he would quit and color up. A few spins later his partner would leave the table and then they would both leave the casino and vanish into the night.

ABBY: Or day.

CINDY: I don’t know if they ever hit the same casinos either. Maybe they did this all over the country. They obviously knew what they were doing.

ABBY: And what about what we did?

CINDY: Next week!