Inside Asian Gaming

scam was about to meet its demise, one of the scammers was in the process of raking in a huge pot. Sweeping piles of gold-flecked $500 chips and $5,000 packets of cash, the winner gave his cohort a surreptitious glance with a barely perceptible smile. In the room next-door, the second pair of scammers smiled deliciously as they watched their cohort on the screen stack the regal chips and packets of cash into a tower- ing fortress on the table in front of him. But suddenly their smiles disappeared.There was the click of the keycard opening the lock to their room from the corridor. It took them a second or two to comprehend, and in the next second they realized with desperate relief that they had bolted the security lock shut. No way could anyone come crashing through the door. But that’s exactly what happened. The security lock collapsed under the prying of a special tool. In poured a dozen New Jersey State police officers and Borgata security men, some with guns drawn. Before the first wave entered the room and got a gander at all the electronic equipment, the security lock on the next-door suite’s double-doors gave way, and into the living room crashed a dozen more cops and guards waving their guns. Busted The high-tech cheating quartet was busted.They hadn’t realized that one of their marks was not really a mark at all.Yes, he was a poker player and had plans to enter the Borgata’s Summer Open tournament, but he also had recognized the mastermind be- forehand and knew that he’d been busted in that same casino town two decades earlier. His crime that time had been switching in a “cooler” on a blackjack game, which meant switching in a shoe filled with prearranged cards to take off the casino. The dealer had been in on that scam and testified.The mas- termind ended up doing a two-month stint in the slammer, then managed to turn his misfortune into a successful career as the world’s numero-uno casino anti-cheating consultant. He has since conducted numer- ous seminars for casino surveillance execu- tives eager for his lessons on how to protect their casinos from cheaters and thieves. The alleged mastermind’s name is Steve Forte and I know him quite well. I was cer- tainly shocked to learn that he had been ac- cused of being at the helm of this ultra-tech poker scam.It made headlines the world over, and descriptions of it evoked the exploits of James Bond and Ocean’s Eleven. Only difference is that Bond and Ocean got away with it. Richard Marcus, a former baccarat dealer and recognized authority on numerous aspects of Asian gambling and cheating, now offers detailed training and seminars to casino staff, including dealers, floor personnel and surveil- lance. His engaging and authoritative insights have been featured at The World Game Protec- tion Conference, the Asian Casino Executives Summit, the Peru Gaming Show as well as many international TV segments about casino surveillance and the armies of cheaters who battle against it. http://www.richardmarcus- books.com/protection.htm Hold ‘Em Heads-Up 22 Texas Hold ‘Em is the most popular form of poker world- wide, at both casinos and on the Internet.The game has been brought to Macau casino players for the first time by Galaxy Entertainment Group at its flagship StarWorld Casino. Hold ‘Em at the StarWorld is available on the third floor at four PokerPro™ tables—the world’s first fully automatd poker tables, manufactured by PokerTek™ and distributed by Aristocrat Leisure. The 10-seat PokerPro™ tables feature a touchscreen at each seat for players to see their chip stacks and hole cards, and to make their bets.There is an additional, larger, touchscreen in the middle for all players to see the pot and community cards. The PokerPro™ tables are completely chip free, so players need not worry about their chips being misplaced or pilfered. Players flip the edges of their digital hole cards by touching the screen at their seat, and can use their palms to shield their cards from prying eyes.The poker scam detailed above, involving cam- eras spying on hole cards held up by players could likely not have been perpetrated if the players were sat at a PokerPro™ table, with the only viewof the cards available from above the individual players’seats. PokerPro™ also protects the money in players’ accounts with a personalized 4-digit PIN and photo identification. If a player ever loses their card, no one else has access to their deposited funds and the player simply visits the cashier desk, provides identification, and a new card will be instantly printed.The advantages for casino operators using the PokerPro™ tables include faster play (50-60% faster, according to Aristocrat)—and hence more revenue—and re- duced labor costs because human dealers are not needed. A full poker room system PokerPro™ offers casinos a full poker room system in- corporating a waitlist system, extensive reporting and player tracking utilities, a customer management system, and wire- less floor manager’s tablet controlling all tables. Inaddition toTexashold‘Em,a rangeof other games canbeplayedatPokerPro™tables,includ- ing Omaha Hi/Lo and Omaha Hi. No limit,Pot Limit and Limit variantsareavailablefor each,as are single-ta- ble and multi-table tournaments. A two - seat variant of the table, dubbed Pok- erPro Heads-Up™, is also available, offering players a fast paced head-to-head alternative to the 10-seat game. StarWorld also has two PokerPro Heads-Up™ tables, with one cur- rently in use on the first floor, offering tutorials to players in “free play” mode.