X-ray table? That can't be good for your balls or ovaries.
Nothing like a night of high profile illegal poker while getting blasted with radiation. /s
Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
261–270 of 288 posts
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#262This scheme doesn’t really make sense. Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the golden goose and doesn’t even necessarily increase total winnings, since it makes you win…
Wealthy people aren't dumb - they don't join games where the odds are tilted against them. In these high-stake private games they can usually demand and set the rules like shallow stacks (100BB), enforced straddles, raising stakes after a loss, button games etc. that remove the GTO / poker element and make the game more gambly.
Boring pros who play these games straight up and don't "give action" don't get invited back.
This is how you can have some of the best poker players like Tom Dwan get absolutely wiped out while playing against whales in Macau
If you want to see a more recent example of this - the amateur whale Monarch recently took on one of the best cash game heads up players Bjorn Lee. I won't spoil the result because it's highly entertaining and demonstrates how the game works at these stakes:
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#263“An X-ray poker machine was employed to read facedown cards and a rigged card-shuffling machine was also used in the plot, prosecutors say.” Would love to know more about such a machine, if anyone has any insight. Are these developed underground? How expensive could they be? If it can efficiently take in a deck of cards and deterministically return a rigged deck in a reasonable amount of time, I would be fascinated a…
The card-shuffling machine is an obvious vulnerability.
But I'm provisionally calling BS on the "X-ray table." Based on (admittedly limited) experience with X-ray imaging, I don't believe that X-rays can read ink on playing cards. It would have to be a backscatter machine, which is even less discriminatory than a transmissive machine. Would need to see some evidence that this is possible.
If nothing else, the sheer size and bulk of such a machine renders the concept incredible. If I could build something like that, I wouldn't use it to cheat at cards, I'd sell it to the TSA!
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rigged card-shuffling machine method is documented in this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA
Thanks for the link. So basically, you are at a private game and if everyone has their phones out (and you are also an unsuspecting idiot), you are screwed. Crazy that there is a USB port exposed outside the machine.
> you are at a private game and if everyone has their phones out
I play private games. At any reasonable stakes electronics have been banned from the room for years now.
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#265Yet another reason to not watch pro sports. Entitled and overpaid athlete criminals.
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trick isn't winning when the celebrity is at the table, it is in getting the celebrity to the table, then keepong the victim there. It's not about winning mote on each hand. It's about keeping the target happy as money drains away. And that was their aim. By controlling the whole game, they were able to psychologically manipulate the situation. The target was at tbe table with someone they respected. Saw others w…
Ooooh you use all these tools in order to _control_ the game, so that is is as fun as possible. So the victim still loses, as they would without the tools, but now they're happy as it happens.
Poker requires skill but there's still a major amount of chance involved. Removing the chance and conspiring against a single player turns the game into a show. You can set up cheap wins and expensive losses. It doesn't really matter how well the other players win or lose because they are all on the same team, you're the only one actually losing any money.
I remember as a kid, I'd play battleship with my siblings. I was really good at it, they were not. They hated when it was obvious that I let them win but also hated when I beat them badly so I found a way to make the game go longer. Often we'd play on a glass table and I'd "drop" a piece so I could peek under the table and see where their pieces were. I could get a hit and then miss many follow up shots to slowly destroy their ship and give them more time to find and destroy mine. They'd gloat over their hard-fought win but I'd just smile and beat them for real next round. I could have done this without peeking but I wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally play too well.
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#267This scheme doesn’t really make sense. Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the golden goose and doesn’t even necessarily increase total winnings, since it makes you win…
Most criminals have a specific type of cleverness, but not intelligence. If they were smart people, they wouldn't do the crimes in the first place. I dealt with a low-tech breach at one of the hospitals I worked for. The criminal worked in HIM, and used paper and pencil to note specific info about specific types of patients. Since they worked in HIM, it was expected for them to view many medical records in a day and…
The intelligent ones don't get caught, or at least find the right loopholes to make their obvious crime technically legal.
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#268This scheme doesn’t really make sense. Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the golden goose and doesn’t even necessarily increase total winnings, since it makes you win…
Sometimes the wealthy person is the shark, and you're the fish...
In Molly's Game, Tobey Maguire was the celebrity shark. (In the movie he was played by Michael Cera). He could easily have been a professional poker player, but he makes way more from acting and he prefers the easy play in private games.
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Structures, men behind, organizations involved, networks and other crimes indicated or discovered for example money laundering, betting. It takes time to build a case. Some laws need people working together and a one time event testing a new table and accidentally having lots of cash in the bags as well as so-called famous people showing up can simply happen by chance. It is complicated.
I'm not sure I believe this. It seems you can just walk into one of these places and roll the whole place, confiscate electronics, and make all the necessary connections fairly quickly. These games aren't a secret and never have been. I don't like the private (illegal) scene because it's killed action in casinos and games I used to love playing in. The risk to me of breaking the law, being robbed/scammed, or worse is…
It's all petty crimes. I've known a handful of low-level "members" and they were all morons (imo) running the most absurd scams.
Things like: "Hey I'm organizing a trip to Vegas. $1000 / head. Great hotel, meals paid, etc. etc."
Then the organizer has the great misfortune of being "robbed" of all the money he collected by a masked assailant.
Maybe the higher level guys were were brighter, but I kind of doubt it.
Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds similar to an article I read about major league pitchers, who must learn to avoid "tells" for the pitch they are about to throw, while opposing teams pour over video of their previous outings looking for those tells. Some pitchers even said they would deliberately perform a "tell" that opponents had identified then throw a different pitch.
Same thing happens in football with audibles. I wonder how many teams are feeding videos like these to AI and asking it to find patterns that might be tough for humans to see. If an AI thinks there's a pattern, verifying shouldn't be too hard either.
My personal favorite example of this in football