Some Vegas casinos, per multiple sources, have begun banning phones from being set down at felt level on tables. Many casinos have long had policies prohibiting phone use during hands, and some have even banned phones entirely in prior years, and now these efforts are growing more widespread. However, with the knowledge that today’s miniature cameras can be built into lighters, pens, and other non-phone devices, is that enough of a safety measure? A true “no items on the table whatsoever” rule feels more prudent, but will casinos view that as too invasive toward their clientele? Then there’s a whole 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 want to watch the game at the table and have their phone propped up,” Berkey says. “That should just be fine. It’s a fine line; it’s a gray line.”
Berkey even suggested some sort of hybrid arrangement where phones or other devices are allowed so long as they sit behind chips or some other item that blocks their view of the felt. These solutions, though, also fail to account for rings or other jewelry that may contain a concealed camera.
The device removal tactic would have run into another big snag when the arrests in France took place: One of the suspects had nothing on the table at all. He allegedly concealed a camera in his clothing. If that scheme worked to capture card faces out of a dealer’s shoe, it would definitely work for the traditional dealer-pitch style used in Vegas.
The better long-term solution, one Berkey and others in the poker world support, involves retraining the dealers—a process that’s already begun.
The European Poker Tour has introduced a new form of dealer pitch known as slide dealing, where the deck remains on the table and the dealer slides each top card off individually to greatly minimize or eliminate any exposure. EPT tournament director Toby Stone directly cited issues of camera cheating as the impetus behind this change, which took effect within the past couple of months.
Casinos could take it even further; some have been cracking down for years. The Star casinos in Australia, for instance, have long used a modified version of a blackjack shoe meant for a single poker deck, which sits at the center of the table and allows cards to slide out from within it. This ostensibly makes it much harder to capture cards than from the traditional blackjack shoe placed at the very side of the table, closer to potential cameras. Anecdotally, these contraptions also seem to limit or eliminate other common risks like bottom-dealing or cards flipping over while being dealt.
While it might take time to retrain the world’s legion of poker dealers to mitigate these schemes, that could be the eventual outcome here.
“I’ve spoken to a few of the [casino] higher-ups, and it seems they’re all open to the idea of retraining dealers,” Berkey says.
Maybe even that eventual move wouldn’t completely eliminate mini camera cheating. As the suspects in France allegedly showed us, today’s video technology is truly amazing. Would you ever have guessed a mini camera could accurately capture which cards are being dealt during the split second they’re exposed as they’re pulled from a blackjack shoe?
Anyone putting their money down at a casino, particularly higher up the stakes spectrum, should at least be aware of the risk of bad actors—particularly in a game like poker, where your opponents are other patrons rather than the casino itself. Whether to combat this or any other potential scheme, a dose of diligence goes a long way.
“As long as there’s a fair game to be offered, there will be people who will try to corrupt it,” Berkey says. “The best we can do is continually work hard to keep the game as fair as possible.”
