Thieves

18 February 2024

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: The real thievery when it comes to casinos and casino games is from certain thieving players and systems sellers. On some occasions it might even come from the casinos – those occasions are rare.

ABBY: The thieving players can be brilliant or idiotic and everything in between. The clever ones generally have a pretty good swindling business going.

CINDY: There used to be that guy in Atlantic City.

ABBY: Oh, yes, “the Russian.”

CINDY: Do you think he was really Russian? His accent seemed a little forced.

ABBY: Who knows? Maybe he used a Russian persona because people thought Russians were smart and good at gambling.

CINDY: Yeah, well, communism wasn’t such great gambling in my view was it?

ABBY: And the Russian was scamming in America in Atlantic City casinos when we saw him for a good few weeks. He did a bunch of casinos too.

CINDY: Anyway, he’d come to a craps table and offer to help players make money. He’d give you his secret technique and he wouldn’t charge you for it. If you lost, then you lost, but when you won using his method, you paid him a small bit of your won.

ABBY: I was amazed at how many players fell for this idiocy.

CINDY: They were, from what I remember, relatively new players. He was very interested in women who hadn’t played much or at all. Some of these women fell for this.

ABBY: Well, we did inform the casino manager about him and he seemed to vanish soon after at one of the casinos. I don’t know about the other casinos.

CINDY: The salesmen newsletters or pitches of fool-proof winning systems. These came for many of the games – slots too!

ABBY: Oh, yeah, you can win your own island one of them touted. I remember that one. Your own island! He had a grainy picture of himself at the shore, sipping an expensive-looking drink, and looking as content as a billionaire could be. I wonder how many people fell for this guy’s line?

CINDY: That guy probably wound up on Alcatraz island – if it was still open then. That would have been a good island for him.

ABBY: I would hope so. If a gambling system really worked to make you a billionaire, the person selling it would actually be a billionaire, wouldn’t he?

CINDY: We only know about four people who have made money against the casinos – out of the millions who have tried. They are clever and disciplined and have a winning method of play. Not an easy method either.

ABBY: Let’s leave that, shall we?

CINDY: Okay, but you do have some poker players too.

ABBY: Different situation with them. They are playing against other poker players. They aren’t playing against the casinos like a blackjack player is or against the craps games or roulette and such. The house edges on the games seem almost immutable.

CINDY: Correct.

ABBY: Now, what about casinos? Do they flim-flam as well? What do you think?

CINDY: Not really but maybe just a little with some slot machines.

ABBY: What about those huge posters on highways and inside the casinos of players who have won hundreds-of-thousands or millions of dollars on the slots? Is that a flim-flam to sell bets where the players are strict underdogs.

CINDY: Well, that is an advertisement, no different than publicizing a movie which isn’t so good. You don’t always get what you want when you go to a movie or stream a movie or television show on the Internet.

ABBY: Do you remember when big signs announced that the payback on the machines in a certain carousel paid back up to 98 percent. Not all of them mind you, just some.

CINDY: Such a payback wasn’t so hot if you ask me. You are playing a game that takes at least two percent of all the money you play in those machines.

ABBY: Interesting.

CINDY: Yes, interesting, but I do not think that is a flim-flam. Nobody has to play those machines.

ABBY: True.