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Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

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Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#271

Post by solean »

ecshafer wrote: post #61
JohnMakin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“just play better poker” like that’s an easy thing to do in a game of chance and incomplete information, with variance having years or decades long tails. not to mention it’s an unsolved game, so “better” poker doesn’t even really have a set definition and depends on tons of variables. and they literally knew what hole cards were coming - that’s vastly more of an edge than playing “better poker” than someone. Besides…

The FBI is going to take time building up the case, flipping people, getting recordings, and trying to get as many people involved to not just stop the games but hopefully take down the entire crime families involved. LA Poker pros will start talking as soon as they suspect something fishy.

Matt Berkey called out this exact game a couple years ago: https://x.com/RTNBA/status/1981433175390687603

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#272

Post by cellis »

Aurornis wrote: post #209
cattown wrote: post #37

Doesn’t sound that profitable to me. $7m is a lot of money. But not that much after building all of that custom tech, setting up a dedicated space, training and paying a whole bunch of people to run these games. Then whatever’s left over gets split between multiple crime families? Seems like a lot of work.

This is likely one part of a larger operation including blackmail opportunities, as others have mentioned. However, don't overlook the value of $7 million in cash and cryptocurrency. For an organized crime operation that's a lot more valuable than $7 million in revenue from an actual business subject to taxes, business records, and bank tracking. This was an easy way to get millions of hard to trace dollars into acco…

Whenever some group is said to have made/fined 1M out of their likely billions in revenue, someone will chime and say “that’s nothing”. But From a “department P&L perspective” yes, it is a lot of money!

Think about the crime families as making e.g. 50% money from construction corruption, 40% from drug sales, 5% from extortion… someone has to run the other smaller departments and that is a lot of money for that “Dept Head”. Also from the FBIs perspective they want to unravel conspiracies, often by yanking on one piece of yarn like this one.

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#273

Post by sigmar »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #263
MetaMalone wrote: post #35

“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 s…

Couldn't the cards have x-ray opaque ink (like with bismuth trioxide)?

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#274

Post by AceyMan »

alargemoose wrote: post #270
theturtletalks wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 https://youtube.com/watch?v=g4SEPufzG7s

Legendary variation from pro tennis between to HoF players, https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/andre-agassi-bori...

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#275

Post by CamperBob2 »

sigmar wrote: post #273
CamperBob2 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Couldn't the cards have x-ray opaque ink (like with bismuth trioxide)?

That could be a good point, I suppose. Iron-based ink could have a similar effect. I'll have to see if there's a deck of cards around here to X-ray.

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#276

Post by BertoldVdb »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #275
sigmar wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't the cards have x-ray opaque ink (like with bismuth trioxide)?

That could be a good point, I suppose. Iron-based ink could have a similar effect. I'll have to see if there's a deck of cards around here to X-ray.

We tried this long ago at a university, the cards we had were entirely invisible to the x-ray.

I think the 'x-ray' table in the article works with IR cameras and illuminators under the table, and tablecloth that is slightly IR transparent.

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#277

Post by nswest23 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #42
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #25

This 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…

“just play better poker” like that’s an easy thing to do in a game of chance and incomplete information, with variance having years or decades long tails. not to mention it’s an unsolved game, so “better” poker doesn’t even really have a set definition and depends on tons of variables. and they literally knew what hole cards were coming - that’s vastly more of an edge than playing “better poker” than someone. Besides…

Why FBI decided to act now is that they probably ripped off the wrong person...

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#278

Post by seanhunter »

jimbokun wrote: post #144
otherme123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some professional poker player told me this anecdote: he was playing at a table with a celebrity. He quickly noticed he has a tell (he did something with his chips when he had a powerful hand or was bluffing, don't remember), and half the table also noticed the same or similar tells. They proceeded to clean his stash. At the table statistics matter between pros, but if you are not aware of your flaws, you might as we…

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.

In the exact same way, in cricket there is a style of bowling called legspin and bowlers who use that style have a particular type of ball called a “googly” which turns in the opposite direction to a normal legspin ball. Because legspinners sometimes have to do weird wrist contortions to get this ball to work, batsmen practise trying to “pick” this ball by noticing these tells (mainly whether they can see the back of the bowler’s hand).

So really crafty legspinners sometimes try to develop two versions of the googly: one with a deliberate tell and one without a tell.

Here’s an example of probably the greatest legspin bowler of all time doing exactly this, although with a different ball (a “flipper” or topspin ball) not a googly https://youtu.be/DlyG5wnW7I0?si=O463NAdV6NAAB3cG

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#279

Post by croes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #239
croes wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people smoke? Reason is rarely our motive.

Reason cannot be a motive. (Reason can be how you get from a motive to a chosen action to fulfill that motive, though.)

Would that also apply to an AGI?

Re: Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

#280

Post by johnnyApplePRNG »

I vowed never to play poker in public again after watching Lennart Green play with a deck of cards. [0]

It's just not possible to trust another human being when significant money is involved in a game like that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn-m1EMBcTg

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