Mike Caro - on cheating at poker

In this letter to the rec.gambling.poker newsgroup Mike Caro discusses cheating at poker. It was originally posted on RB by a member who is no longer here and had his blogs deleted. I copied this from another site but since it's from a public newsgroup and there for the taking (if I really wanted to spend hours hunting it down I could probably find it there...but I'm lazy) and in the public domain I feel there is no ethical dilemma in reprinting it. I have edited a few minor spelling errors but other than that it is identical the posts I found in several places online.

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From: Mike Caro (c...@caro.com)
Subject: Poker Cheating
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
View: Complete Thread (37 articles) | Original Format
Date: 1997/11/29


To Ed "HitTheFlop" (and ALL my RGP family) --


Please excuse the length of this post, but this topic is very
important to me, and it should be important to Ed and every poker
player who has integrity.

In another current thread about cheating at poker and the lack of
perceived interest exhibited by management and industry publications,

Barbara Yoon wrote: "And do you really believe some 'establishment
dictates to the likes of Mike Caro and others what to write and not to
write?!"

And you responded: "I have great respect for Mike Caro but in all the
tens of thousands of words I've read, he has avoided the topic. I
would be anxious to see an article in Card Player but I know that won't
happen."


My reply was:
[BEGIN ABBREVIATED REPLY]

I was hoping someone would set the record
straight on this, but I guess I'll have to do it myself. I appreciate
your concerns about cheating in poker. I agree with you that not
nearly enough is done to combat cheating, especially partnerships.

I certainly don't expect you to have read everything I wrote, so it's
just my bad luck that you've missed the many times I've written
candidly on this very topic.

Because this is such an important subject to me, and because I've
devoted so much time to it, I'm going to continue this message in a
new thread so more people will see it. You may be surprised about what
I'm going to say. The new thread will be "Poker Cheating."

[END ABBREVIATED REPLY]


[REPLY NOW CONTINUES IN THIS NEW THREAD]

I believe cheating is very destructive to poker and is much more
common than most players suspect. There are relatively few cheating
incidents that have ever been proven or documented in major poker
casinos. How many? I don't know for sure, but I'd guess fewer than 100
in all the years I've been associated with the industry.

But for every incident that is discovered, there are almost certainly
a whole lot more that are never discovered. Worse, the ones that are
undiscovered may tend to continue for very long times and are likely
to be the most sophisticated and most harmful to honest players. This
is only speculation on my part, but perhaps I have some special feel
for what goes on, based on my long obsession with the integrity of the
game of poker.

Let me explain. I have been cheated many times at poker. So has every
world-class pro who ever lived. So have the cheaters themselves. I
first became aware of this in the old days in Gardena, California.
Going back 25 years, Gardena was billing itself as "the poker capitol
of the world." It probably was a deserved title. The small city (a
suburb of Los Angeles) had six casinos, each limited to 35 tables.
There was nowhere else in the world where you could find as many poker
games. Back then, however, only two flavors of poker were allowed --
both five-card draw games -- jacks-or-better draw and ace-to-five
lowball.

There were no professional dealers. You passed the deal, just as you
would in most home games, and -- as you can imagine -- this led to all
kinds of problems. A little less than 20 years ago, I began writing a
"Caro On Gambling" column for Gambling Times magazine, the definitive
gambling publication of its day.

Here's what I've done, Ed, to try to keep poker games honest:

1. I have made it clear to everyone that I will not tolerate cheating.
That live-and-let-live-but-don't-do-anything-to-me-personally attitude
often fostered by honest pros who want to coexist with cheaters is not
acceptable to me. It shouldn't be to RGPers, either.

2. In Gambling Times magazine, almost 20 years ago, I launched my
Cheater Monitoring Service and invited incident reports, which would
be (and were and are) kept in strict confidence.

3. I worked with cardroom management to try to stem cheating.

4. When an anonymous phone caller said I was messing with the wrong
people and threatened my life if I didn't back off my campaign against
cheaters, I reported this in my GT column and threatened to spread
their body parts all over America. Never heard back from them, and I'm
still alive (but not exactly normal).

5. Ten or so years ago, as Editor-In-Chief of Poker Player newspaper
(the leading poker publication of its day), I was given papers
outlining a cheating syndicate, in the cheater's own handwriting. I
promptly photographed and published this for the world to see.

6. When the Bicycle Club Casino opened in 1984 (at that time the
largest cardroom in history with over 100 poker tables), I was invited
to have an independent office on premises to continue my work with the
Cheater Monitoring Service. Management banned everyone with a bad
reputation. Suddenly, players that I thought were honest were popping
into my office to confidentially confess and swear they had reformed.
The insights I gained from that experience have been, I hope,
indirectly useful to the community of honest poker players.

7. I have discussed cheating several times in Card Player magazine
(maybe someone who collects back issues will verify this -- permission
to post granted), and I even remember once saying that the problem was
so serious that just barring or even arresting cheaters was not good
enough -- they should be "boiled and eaten." And I remember at least
one other columnist re-quoting that in Card Player. And if you think
I'm only joking, well, you boil and I eat.

8. Earlier this year, I addressed the 2nd Annual World Poker
Conference warning owners and managers that poker partnerships were a
"plague on our industry," no matter how widespread they may be, and
asking them to join with me to put our heads together and see what we
can do about it. My point was that when thieves take money in a poker
game, they aren't stealing only from opponents. They are also stealing
from the casinos, because when honest players can't survive they
aren't around to supply profits anymore. In truth, the cheaters get
the money that the casinos and other honest players would be entitled
to in a fair game. In this very important sense, partnerships steal
directly from the casino. My address was warmly applauded, but so far
NO major casino has contacted me -- as requested -- to carry on the
battle.

9. In fact (see item 8), at an industry surveillance conference a few
months later, I was cornered in confidence by six (count 'em, six) top
managers from a large casino. They expressed concern over my address,
because they thought law enforcement and legislators would take my
words as fodder to enact laws that would be to the detriment of both
players and cardrooms. I felt like I was suddenly tossed into the
boxing ring and they were six on one, but I'm proud to report to RGP
that they never laid a glove on me. One key point they made was that
all the main scandals and team play incidents that they knew about
happened in the bad old days. They challenged me to name something
that was going on right now. My response was that they could have made
the very same argument anytime in the past, just before a scam was
discovered. Obviously, neither they nor I knew for sure of anything
that was going on right that minute or we would do something about it.
But, catching partnerships is very difficult -- especially
sophisticated ones -- and I believe much more can be done to make
partners fear being discovered.

By the way, everyone who participated in this discussion with me has
high integrity, and as a group they have done many excellent things
for poker, but we do NOT see eye-to-eye on this. Not then, not now.

10. In Card Player, I DID (quite prominently in a box atop my regular
column) take a stand against the buying of poker championships, in
response to this year's controversy at the WSOP. In fact, I think
someone quoted the material here, and anyone has my permission to
quote it again. (I have since talked personally with both parties
involved.)

11. I have dealt privately with the management of at least a dozen
casinos, and I've analyzed schemes and scams with surveillance
experts. I know that there are many good people in the industry who
are trying very hard to keep games honest, and they often succeed in
dynamic ways that casual players will never know about. For instance,
I've just finished a confidential conversation with one high-profile
surveillance expert who broke a hard-to-crack partnership. It's
difficult to figure out signals when you're playing poker, because at
the showdown, you're unlikely to remember all the subtle moves that
led up to the outcome. His surveillance team simply identified key
winning hands involving one of the suspected cheaters. Then they would
back up the video tape from that point and carefully examine all the
gestures and maneuvers that led up to it. I'm passing this along as a
recommended method for smaller cardrooms who may not be aware of this
crime-fighting technique. Simply stated: Don't look for the signals
and then flow to what follows; Look at the important milestones and
then go back in the video to see what led up to it. It's much, much
easier to detect signals that way.

Anyway, in answer to Ed's well-meaning comment about not having seen
much on the topic of cheating from me, I humbly submit the previous in
my own defense.

OK, now I'm going to list things I think, but cannot prove.

1. I think, but cannot prove, that casinos are much more likely to
catch card hold-outs, players marking cards, and dealers manipulating
cards than they are to catch skillful partnerships.

2. I think, but cannot prove, that any partnership of two or three
players -- intelligently engineered -- could go into any big-limit
game anywhere and steal hundreds of thousands of dollars without any
reasonable possibility of being detected.

3. I think, but cannot prove, that any two players following a game
plan of my design would do better than three of THEIR guys in the same
game, because they usually are not making the correct plays all the
time.

4. I think, but cannot prove, that three is the optimal number of
partners to scam a game and that this is most likely what you're
against when you are being so scammed.

5. I think, but cannot prove, that poker is fundamentally flawed. As
in the case of all known games involving decision making where
cumulative wagers go to a single person, the money can basically go to
any dishonest players who want it and are careful enough not to be
detected.

6. I think, but cannot prove, that cheating at poker is a far worse
crime than bank robbery. The reason I think so is that when you sit
down to play poker, you are making a tacit commitment with everyone
else. You are admitting (whether you realize it or not) that you are
basically defenseless against a sophisticated partnership, but you
agree that everyone is going to play in his own best interest. If
anyone violates this unspoken agreement, it is morally repugnant
beyond almost anything that I can think of. Why? Because when you rob
a bank, everyone can see that you're the bad guy with the gun. That's
terrible, but it isn't the same degree of offense as giving your word
to play honestly and not keeping it, thus leaving everyone else
defenseless, not knowing they are being robbed.

7. I think, but cannot prove, that there is some kind of cheating
going on in most medium and big-limit poker games today. Sometimes the
cheating is mild or even impromptu and has only moderate effect on
your profit. Sometimes it is an insurmountable obstacle.

8. I think, but cannot prove, that when I play, say, $75/$150 stud for
a month and average $181 an hour that I should have averaged $392 an
hour, had the game been always honest. (Figures posted for
illustration only and may not be exact.)

9. I think, but cannot prove, that the average amount of money stolen
from an average honest player in an average $50/$100 poker game is
$86.14 an hour. Ridiculous number? You're right, I just made it up
because it feels accurate to me at the moment. If the god of poker
came down with an envelope containing the answer and you made the line
$86.14, booking the action, and asked me to lay 11-to-10 either way,
over or under, guess what? I wouldn't bet.

10. I think, but cannot prove, that laws specifically defining poker
partnerships as a major criminal offense, punishable by at least five
years in prison and ranging way, way up would dramatically decrease
the instances of partnerships. Why? Didn't I say these are hard to
detect? Yes, but players would be more cautious entering into
conspiracies where somebody might turn them in later. Further, such
laws would give casinos the motivation to try much harder to catch
partners. As it is now, partners rarely get barred from the casino
permanently, sometimes get told to go home for two days and never do
it again, and sometimes meet no punishment whatsoever. My friends,
where is the justice here?

11. I think, but cannot prove, that thousands of players have lost
businesses and families to poker partnerships, marked cards, and
cheating scams. Hardly anyone has been punished for this. Management
has traditionally played Ostrich in regard to the partnership angle.

Finally, I believe that it is not good enough to tell customers that
you don't know of any partnerships going on in games. You must be able
to tell customers what you are doing right now to prevent anyone who
wants the money in a poker game from taking the money.

That's such a tough issue that some managers probably will not even
wrestle with the question out of frustration. But you, as a player,
deserve to know how you're being protected from partnerships and why
you're safe. And that's exactly the problem I asked casinos -- at the
World Poker Conference -- to join with me to help resolve.

Oh, yes, one more thing (I thought I was done, but I wasn't). I'm
going to take a whole lot of heat for this post. Most of you don't
know it, but the majority of my work is done on the management side,
usually as a consultant, and not on the player side. I've have spent
many years building the trust of both casinos and players. I am often
asked to bridge the gulf between these two groups. But, ultimately,
these sides are the same. What's good for casinos is good for players
-- even if that's a hard concept to grasp sometimes. Anyway, this will
be a diplomatic setback, but this post needs to happen.

I've taken this opportunity to go public with these feelings because I
simply haven't gotten the support from my friends in casino management
that I was hoping for. Lots of praise, lots of handshakes, lots of
encouragement. No support. I think many bankrolls are in jeopardy, and
that's very wrong. I cannot in good conscience do research and write
books defining strategy to beat honest games if games are not honest.

Wait, there's still one more thing. About Card Player. Ed is right.
Card Player is dependent on advertising. It is not primarily
subscription based, although it does have a large number of
subscribers. To some extent, it is at the mercy of its advertisers,
being freely distributed at the casino's whim and winning ad contracts
at the casino's pleasure. Despite this, Linda Johnson IS enormously
concerned about cheating. In fact, when I learned of the WSOP title
purchase, I phoned her and said, "Linda, what are we going to do about
this. We need to jointly make a strong statement immediately." Those
may not be my exact words, but I like the look of the quotation marks.
Guess what? She already had her column prepared on the topic -- I was
a little late to that party.

And, yes, Barbara, I can probably say things that casinos don't like
and get away with it, whereas lesser known writers may not be able to.
Management may grumble, but they are less likely to make an issue of
it if I say it, because of our past relationships and potential future
dealings. However, that's a tenuous status and one that could vanish.
A post like this probably puts that status in great danger.
Nevertheless, I needed to say it, so we'll see what happens.

So, RPG, you're the jury: Have I been candid enough with you about
this?

Straight Flushes,
Mike Caro