Help me understand this cheating... (1 Viewer)

brains613

brains613

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I was reading an article about a ring of people cheating at roulette, and maybe it's the infection I'm currently battling, but I'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around what exactly they're doing. Here's the text from the article:

"...said the scam artists get in the game low -- for example, $1 per chip -- then pocket the chips while dealers are distracted. They then head to restrooms or other areas that are away from surveillance and pass the chips to accomplices who go to the table, buy extras at higher amounts and eventually cash out all of the chips at that rate."

What? I know roulettes are usually not marked with a denomination, but I thought they were assigned by color and letter? What am I missing here?

Link of article for those curious:

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/10/four_face_sentencing_in_casino.html
 
Roulette chips are not denominated and are assigned different values at different tables (or at different times of the day - limits are higher during high traffic times). At one table it could be worth $1, at another it could be worth $5, etc. Some casinos try to counter this by putting table numbers on the chips.

Here, what's likely happening is that the value of the roulette chip is determined by the person who buys in at the table. You can buy in for say $1 for the green chips, pocket a few, then later pass it to someone who buys in the green chips for $5/chip.

This is a well known scam, BTW. There are rings of people who do this.
 
Yes the dealer (or someone else helping the dealer, i dont know what they are called) are supposed to keep track. Craps is even harder to keep track of. You need a couple of people there to make sure things are done right.
 
sleepypiggly said:
Yes the dealer (or someone else helping the dealer, i dont know what they are called) are supposed to keep track. Craps is even harder to keep track of. You need a couple of people there to make sure things are done right.
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Yes, this is correct in my experience (both times I've played roulette...lol). When I bought in they asked me how much I wanted each chip to be worth, I told them $1, and they put a marker/lammer/small button with a "$1" on a same colored chip near the wheel. I don't understand the appeal of roulette (maybe I'm doing it wrong) but that's okay. I'm happy as a clam at the craps table.
 
I know Roulette chips are non-denominated, but if this is such an easy crime, the casinos must lose ass-loads of cash because of it. If you were a casino owner, how long would it be before you broke tradition and put denominations on your roulette chips?
 
Perhaps conceptually easy - but doing this, making a significant score and not getting caught is likely far tougher.

Cheating a casino generally has high punishments even for small infractions. Risking years in jail for a few bucks seems like a dumb way to lead a life of crime. But criminals are often dumb.

The house will know they are short five greens for example and will avoid using them for high value chips, so maybe they lose a few bucks a chip at worst. I doubt they will lose much sleep over that. The house edge in "American" roulette (two zeros on the wheel) is over 5% for every possible bet.

I think it makes a lurid story but likely has a trivial impact on casino operations.

DrStrange
 
In my entire life I've probably only spent a total of a few hours in casinos, of which none was playing or watching roulette, so I have zero attachment to any traditions or practices that others may consider part of the experience. Would people be up in arms if a casino were to do away with non denominated roulette chips and just use the regular house chips? Is there a reason for it that the casino calculates into their strategy? Like are people more likely to bet more with roulette chips than cash chip?. I think the notion that its done this way because it's always been done this way is a bit silly (not that anyone actually said that.) Even if losses to cheating are minimal, why take the losses?
 
I was thinking like Dr, really how many chips can you squirrel away without much notice, add in the fact that you have to be playing for it to not be extremely suspicious so more than likely probably going to be losing there too. It's not like you're going to cash in 100 NCV chips and take them over to the higher value table without playing a few spins, and I know that whenever you leave you have to color up. But I always enjoy reading these things of how a criminal mind works.
 
QuiQuog said:
In my entire life I've probably only spent a total of a few hours in casinos, of which none was playing or watching roulette, so I have zero attachment to any traditions or practices that others may consider part of the experience. Would people be up in arms if a casino were to do away with non denominated roulette chips and just use the regular house chips? Is there a reason for it that the casino calculates into their strategy? Like are people more likely to bet more with roulette chips than cash chip?. I think the notion that its done this way because it's always been done this way is a bit silly (not that anyone actually said that.) Even if losses to cheating are minimal, why take the losses?
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Not an expert but I think there a many reasons. One is you have the different colors to identify the individual making the bets. Could you imagine if five people were there playing with red and white chips trying to keep straight who bet what? But if you put a denomination on the roulette chips what would you do when the person who wants to bet in increments of $1 wants his lucky orange chips but those are stamped for $5. I'm sure there are more reasons but I haven't spent much time at that table to really know. I know there are former dealers who can share more insight.
 
We're not talking criminal masterminds here. The first I was reading, which linked to the one I posted, referenced that they made up to $2000, but they were more often in the $1000 range. So we're probably only talking a few chips at a time.
 
Re using house chips, I can imagine the ball landing on 39, one $25 chip is on the space for 39, and all eight players are claiming that they placed that bet. I've seen some electronic games where a live dealer spins the wheel and drops the ball, but the players place their bets and collect their winnings electronically.

The variable denominations assigned to roulette chips is exactly why roulette chips are sought after by collectors -- they're freaking hard to harvest.
 
brains613 said:
We're not talking criminal masterminds here. The first I was reading, which linked to the one I posted, referenced that they made up to $2000, but they were more often in the $1000 range. So we're probably only talking a few chips at a time.
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I didn't read the article but that is way more than I thought they would get. Guess they were smarter and were betting $1 on one table at $100 on the other, which makes the total more obtainable.
 
I've spent some time at roulette. Enough to know that it sucks your funds at a pretty consistent rate - 5.26% of every bet (save one bet that is a bit worse but nobody makes). Since Vegas tends toward $10 minimums, that's a 52¢-53¢ drop per player every spin. I would have to time how long it takes between spins to figure the cost per hour, and I've never spent that much time at roulette. It's just a way to kill a few minutes wooing bachelorettes, or as I get older, to use up coupons.

Abby nailed it with the fact that you cannot allow house chips to play (though they will allow a single player to play cash), because it would get as confusing as all get-out. But if the house used solids for denoms below $5, and single spots for mid range bets, and 2 pips for higher amounts, that would seem to avoid the problems - or at least take a chunk out of the scammer's possible returns.

Plus, my solution = more chips available :)
 
There are gamblers who bet using a "sprinkle" method. They just toss chips on the betting area and let them fall as they will (which is mathematically equal to any other method). Imagine trying to sort out who bet what with regular chips.

DrStrange
 
Poker Zombie said:
But if the house used solids for denoms below $5, and single spots for mid range bets, and 2 pips for higher amounts, that would seem to avoid the problems - or at least take a chunk out of the scammer's possible returns
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Wouldn't work... there is only so much real estate to work with and there are already 300+ chips each of seven different colors squeezed in. 99% of the time players are using the standard value (normally $1), taking a couple colors out to make room for dedicated higher denom chips wouldn't fly. And if you did what would happen when you have multiple people wanting to play nickels or quarters?

It's really not that big of an issue, I can count on one hand the number of times any chips disappeared from one of my wheels (and yes, we know when it happens).
 
DrStrange said:
There are gamblers who bet using a "sprinkle" method. They just toss chips on the betting area and let them fall as they will (which is mathematically equal to any other method). Imagine trying to sort out who bet what with regular chips.

DrStrange
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Ah, that may explain one of our local mysteries....

Long ago, a player in our group used to make his poker bets by taking a stack of chips and 'sprinkling' them into a wide random pile on the felt while saying "I bet this many greens" (or blacks, or whatever) in a funny voice. Nobody ever understood why he did it that way, but it was hilarious, and eventually became legendary and is still occasionally discussed today. Not being a roulette player myself, I never made the connection.....

Thanks, DrStrange - your wisdom and knowledge has once again sprinkled down on me.
 
Couple of notes:

Part of the reason for the high house vig at roulette is because of the high variance the house has to face. 36:1 adds up pretty quick if someone is on a roll.

This is relevant to the thieves: They probably do something like the following;

Buy in for a lot of chips of low value, pocket a few.
Confederate buys in later for the same chips, but with high value, washes the stolen chips into play at high value.

If they lose the high-value chips, they call it a wash - "free play."
If they hit some numbers and have a lot of chips, they call it a win of whatever amount they hit for... in other words, they're probably calling their gambling winnings the amount they "stole."

So if they buy a chip for $1, and play it as a $10 chip, and the number hits, they just stole $360! (Well, $359.)

This makes the routine safer than just buying in and out and not playing much... harder to track. Also, rather than frequently cashing out a couple of ill-gotten $9 gains, they wait for variance to strike and cash out one big payoff.

But you can bet your patootie that the croupiers are noticing when their roulettes are up or down after a player cashes out, and that the floor has the eye tag the tape (or mark the file, today), and that they watch for the patterns to connect the gang doing the job until they get caught. They don't get too far down the line before they're caught.
 
DrStrange said:
The house edge in "American" roulette (two zeros on the wheel) is over 5% for every possible bet.
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Yeah, 36 red/black spots with odd/even number, but also two spots - 0 and 00 - which are green and not odd or even. So your apparently 50/50 bets - odd/even, red/black, high/low - lose 2 times out of 38, or 5.26% of the time.

But, at least in Atlantic City, they use the French rule of only taking down half the bet from those even-odds bets when the green zero/es comes up, so the vig is only 2.6% on those bets.

Lower variance, lower house edge. People are willing to pay more for the big-variance payoffs. Meanwhile, the even-odds bets are easier on the house, so they're happy to charge less for them, and the action goes round and round...

On playing house checks (value chips) at roulette - most houses will let one (and only one) player play house singles or house fives, and they'll often limit it to the outside bets (not the numbers on the inside.) If you let one person start playing house checks on the inside, someone else will walk up and toss a couple checks on the board, and then a fight will break out over who won... Not worth it.
 
Mental Nomad said:
So if they buy a chip for $1, and play it as a $10 chip, and the number hits, they just stole $360! (Well, $359.)
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Quick threadjack to ask... you work in AC yeah? Do they allow chips to be $10 each? I lived and worked in Vegas for seven years and all we allowed were standard 5/25/100. Just thought it was interesting that you used $10 as an example and curious if it was a real life example or just to make the example math easy :)
 
Ronoh said:
Quick threadjack to ask... you work in AC yeah? Do they allow chips to be $10 each? I lived and worked in Vegas for seven years and all we allowed were standard 5/25/100. Just thought it was interesting that you used $10 as an example and curious if it was a real life example or just to make the example math easy :)
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I was trying to make the math simple, but now that you mention it... i don't remember if there were $10 buttons... I only mucked roulette. Also, it was 25 years ago, when I was working my way through college, so my memory was fixed more on the buffet and racks other than chips.
 
Ronoh said:
Wouldn't work... there is only so much real estate to work with and there are already 300+ chips each of seven different colors squeezed in. 99% of the time players are using the standard value (normally $1), taking a couple colors out to make room for dedicated higher denom chips wouldn't fly. And if you did what would happen when you have multiple people wanting to play nickels or quarters?

It's really not that big of an issue, I can count on one hand the number of times any chips disappeared from one of my wheels (and yes, we know when it happens).
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How? rfids?
 
CHP TD said:
How? rfids?
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Not quite that hi tech... same way you'd know if a rack was short. If you swipe five chips we end up with full barrels and a stack of 15 when you leave. Tokes are converted to house checks before being dropped, nowhere else for them to go. Swiping exactly 20 would buy you a bit of time but it's not going unnoticed for long.
 
I've seen people try this scam

They got arrested

The house knows how many of the roulette chips are on the table so if any are missing they watch for its return

We had 400 "Yellow 5" chips to start and only 399 when player A Finished $1 value

We had 399 "Yellow 5" chips to start and 400 when player B Finished $10 value

Roll the tape... Game Over
 
I did swipe a barrel from Cleveland on opening day during my harvesting a couple years ago... employees were all new and nervous and may not have noticed if I walked off with a rack of them. Plan at the time was to end up with a barrel of every color throughout the day... seemed like a good idea at the time but I lost interest in playing the wheel pretty quickly.

photo.JPG
 
if roulette checks are so difficult to "harvest," why are their values so low in the chip collecting world? Is it because the chips are not as pretty?
 
Craig D said:
I've seen people try this scam

They got arrested

The house knows how many of the roulette chips are on the table so if any are missing they watch for its return

We had 400 "Yellow 5" chips to start and only 399 when player A Finished $1 value

We had 399 "Yellow 5" chips to start and 400 when player B Finished $10 value

Roll the tape... Game Over
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Aha i see how it works. thanks for that.
 

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