Some Las Vegas casinos, according to multiple sources, have begun banning phones from being placed at table level. Many casinos have long had policies prohibiting phone use during hands, and some have even banned phones entirely in previous years, and now these efforts are becoming more widespread. However, knowing that today’s miniature cameras can be integrated into lighters, pens and other devices other than phones, is that a sufficient security measure? A true “no item on the table” rule seems more prudent, but will casinos find it too invasive for their clientele? Then there’s a completely separate conversation about placing devices on the rail, which is where players rest their elbows and which sits slightly higher than the felt itself.
“There will be guys who will want to watch the game at the table and have their phone up,” Berkey says. “That should be fine. It’s a very fine line; “It’s a gray line.”
Berkey even suggested some sort of hybrid arrangement where phones or other devices are allowed as long as they are behind chips or some other item that blocks your view of the felt. However, these solutions also do not take into account rings or other jewelry that may contain a hidden camera.
The tactic of removing the device would have run into another big problem when the arrests occurred in France: one of the suspects had nothing on the table. He allegedly hid a camera in his clothes. If that scheme worked for capturing the faces of the cards on the dealer’s shoe, it would definitely work for the traditional style of dealer presentation used in Las Vegas.
The best long-term solution, which Berkey and others in the poker world support, involves retraining dealers, a process that has already begun.
The European Poker Tour has introduced a new form of dealer presentation known as a sliding deal, where the deck remains on the table and the the dealer slides each top card individually to minimize or greatly eliminate any exposure. Toby Stone, EPT Tournament Director quoted directly Camera cheating issues are the impetus behind this change, which went into effect in recent months.
Casinos could take it even further; some have been cracking down for years. Australia’s Star casinos, for example, have used for a long time a modified version of a blackjack shoe designed for a single deck of poker, which sits in the center of the table and allows cards to slide from inside it. This apparently makes it much more difficult to capture cards than with the traditional blackjack shoe placed on the side of the table, closer to potential cameras. Anecdotally, these contraptions also seem to limit or eliminate other common risks, such as dealing from the bottom or turning over cards while dealing.
While it could take time to retrain the world’s legion of poker dealers to mitigate these schemes, that could be the end result.
“I’ve talked to some of the higher-ups (at the casinos) and it seems like everyone is open to the idea of retraining dealers,” Berkey says.
Maybe even that eventual move wouldn’t completely eliminate the mini camera deception. As the suspects in France supposedly showed us, today’s video technology is truly amazing. Would you have ever imagined that a mini camera could accurately capture which cards are dealt during the split second they are exposed when drawn from a blackjack shoe?
Anyone who bets their money at a casino, especially at the highest stakes levels, should at least be aware of the risk of bad actors, especially in a game like poker, where your opponents are other customers and not the casino itself. Yeah. Whether combating this or any other potential scheme, a dose of diligence goes a long way.
“As long as you can offer a fair game, there will be people who will try to corrupt it,” Berkey says. “The best thing we can do is continually work hard to keep the game as fair as possible.”