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Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
- Mistletoe 1y agoBetween all these recent gambling stories with coaches and players and the Kawhi thing I think I’m done with the NBA. The NBA’s gambling push has done nothing but gross me out. Greed unbridled. They saw the 1919 World Series and said “Let’s bet on this shit.”
- prodigycorp 1y agoThis plus a lot of the soft greed. The insistence on a foul-centric game that leads to over 50% longer games, the ridiculous lack of investment on its own broadcast infra, the refusal to shorten the season (which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's season, despite being less than half the games), and the consultant-driven management decisions - I have so much contempt for Adam Silver for making me hate the game I love most. Everything Silver did grew revenue fourfold. By every metric, he’s a good commissioner. And yet I don’t know a single person in real life who actually likes the NBA. People I talk to find the NBA anywhere from inaccessible to an outright turnoff, due to load management (and player pay), tanking, a glacial pace of play, and so on. And so the only way I can engage the game is by listening to podcasts about it. Podcasts that now belch gambling ads at me constantly.
- codyb 1y agoThat is _nuts_ that the basketball season is longer than the MLB season. I never would have guessed that. Let's go Jays! Looking forward to this World Series. Also not a fan of the constant inundation with gambling ads even if they have literally no interest to me. Just seems like a net negative for a society that realized cigarette ads are bad, but can't seem to figure that out for alcohol or gambling. At least the public education campaigns have started earlier, I definitely see ads talking about where to get help if you're having an issue fairly frequently.
- whycome 1y agoPublic education is one thing. But kids aren't protected from the ads and can't even have reasonable discussions about it. They're just being brainwashed around it. They see superstars and celebrities endorsing it all. Then all the language around it is "play" and "game" and "fun" and "win" which has very specific appeal to children. The prominence also makes it seem vetted and okay in a kids eyes (if it were bad, it wouldn't be in these places). I'd legitimately rather my kids see ads for smoking cigarettes. The conversations to be had around it are much much easier. Gambling and other psychological addictions are tougher to convey, but potentially very damaging nonetheless.
- codyb 1y agoI understand, and am against the constant advertising of it. But it's also important to remember just how successful the smoking psa campaign has been. Especially given the cost! Rates have fallen dramatically, just by telling people to "watch out!" in public spaces that reach young folks ears.
- whycome 1y agoI don't think it's easy to attribute it to any specific part of the 'campaign' -- it's multifaceted. Making it illegal to smoke in public spaces may be the single most important part of reducing smoking in subsequent generations. There's also taxes. And removing it from media (we hardly see people smoke on camera unless it's for a 'period piece'). And just straight up treating it like a health issue. We could be doing equivalent things for gambling (and we have in the past) so this erosion will have consequences for decades.
- codyb 11mo agoWhere is it illegal to smoke in public spaces? NYers are out here smokin' bogeys and joints on our streets all day, and when I went to Florida the tables had ashtrays, even occasionally inside. Certainly was the same in Lisbon and France. Also, taxes have increased on gambling recently, although prediction markets appear to be a loophole. And I dunno, I guess people are gambling on the screen a lot but I completely missed it. I'm not sure, do people think gambling is cool? I definitely missed that one. But I can see people getting hooked on the fun part if that high is their thing I believe, although I'm not going to look it up for you, that the public health campaign against smoking is well documented as exceedingly effective for dollars spent. But hey, in today's day and age, we all gotta do our own research!
- svachalek 1y agoI stopped watching a couple of years ago but I assume they're still doing this: dealing out every game to a different network. You needed like 4 sports subscriptions just to be able to watch the season, sometimes even to watch the championship. For me that was the bridge too far.
- bluedino 1y agoNFL isn't far behind NFL Network, ESPN, Prime, Peacock, YouTube...
- rkomorn 1y agoAll that mainly because some streaming services are willing to pay a more competitive amount of money for single (albeit national) weekly game broadcasts to sweeten their offering and get more subscribers. Of course the NFL isn't gonna turn down $1B per year from Amazon for TNF. They get ~$2B from CBS and Fox each for the combined 10 Sunday games, then another couple billion from NBC for one Sunday night game, and another couple billion from ESPN for Monday night. I think it's unlikely a single broadcaster would spend $12+B/year for exclusive rights to all games.
- prodigycorp 1y agoA large portion of NFL games can be viewed on network TV. The same cannot be said for the NBA.
- rkomorn 1y ago"for now" seems like a reasonable thing to add to that sentence. The number of games you can watch on network TV is decreasing slowly but steadily.
- typpilol 1y agoThere was over 90 free throws shot in 1 game yesterday It was crazy
- drdec 1y ago> which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's season, despite being less than half the games You are clearly referring to calendar time, in which case the NHL season is longer
- deelowe 1y agoIt's been like that forever. Makes it very hard to take the NBA seriously.
- sojournerc 1y agoThis interview with a former Turkish NBA player who protested things happening in China with simple statements on his shoes convinced me the NBA has no morals whatsoever. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LUPh7waoWtydoiwjEgP16?si=-WIMZFq3Qaefht3ubl8oxQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LUPh7waoWtydoiwjEgP16?si=-...
- tclancy 1y agoEh, even as a Celtics fan I would be cautious of taking what Enes Freedom has to say as gospel. He definitely has a narrative he’s pushing
- sojournerc 1y agoWhat's the narrative? Human rights abuse is bad, speaking out about it got him fired? I have a hard time seeing some nafarious angle to what he talked about other than China doesn't want their shit called out.
- xbar 1y agoNBA stopped being an interesting sports entertainment product to me by the year 2004. It has generated a handful of interesting narratives since, but not really enough to keep me engaged in the face of its enshitification.
- ClarityJones 1y agoThis is silly. People used to play poker, and cheat, and the whole thing was illegal. Now, people play poker, and cheat, and they want the government to police their poker games and make sure they're fair. Complete waste of resources.
- bbstats 1y ago"previously people could cheat, now they can't" ?? how is that bad.
- f1shy 1y agoI think the comment goes more in the direction: “previously playing poker was a totally private thing, didn’t cost me a dime, now part of my taxes is used for that”
- ClarityJones 1y agoThat's not the part that's bad. I don't care whether they cheat or not. I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in a poker / NBA / etc game. I think arresting people for cheating legitimizes backroom / mafia gambling. All the other rings (and those left from this one) can say "Look, those other guys got arrested. The law protects you. We don't want that to happen to us. Our game is definitely fair." Of course, they too are cheating. The only reason the FBI cares here is probably because one of the victims had pull. If you or I get cheated, the FBI won't care about that.
- Aurornis 1y ago> I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in a poker / NBA / etc game. Operating a business that defrauds people is the domain of government enforcement. I think you’re trying to reduce this to some sort of small scale friendly poker game between friends. It was not. It was an organized crime business operation that was systematically committing fraud. Fraud is illegal and within scope of government enforcement.
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- y-curious 1y agoI can’t help but think this recent Wired video[1] has some accidental overlap with how they cheated. 1: https://youtu.be/JQ20ilE5DtA?si=_MHmhjKGMKk4sobB https://youtu.be/JQ20ilE5DtA?si=_MHmhjKGMKk4sobB
- mckirk 1y agoSorry to be completely off-topic, but: I'm really reluctant to click on anything with these 'share IDs' and usually remove them from any link I share with anyone. I don't want to make it even easier for the platforms to build networks of associated accounts.
- hsuduebc2 1y agoI do the same thing!
- throwaway314155 1y agoI believe the Firefox extension CleanURLs helps with this.
- daveevad 1y agoSorry to be pedantic but if you're clicking the link, YT gets the referer header even without the share id url parameter.
- comrade1234 1y agoX-ray table? That can't be good for your balls or ovaries.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jackric 1y agoNext podcast sponsor fad: lead-lined underwear. PbUndies
- breckenedge 1y agoGotta call them “Weighted Undies”
- brianbreslin 1y agowasn't tim ferris promoting one of these products years ago? was like a faraday cage for your nether region.
- Arrath 1y agoMy cousin (submarine nuke plant operator) has stories of his compatriots using lead foil to line their pants.
- The_President 1y agoBundies! Mascot should be Al Bundy.
- consp 1y agoLooks like near-IR of some sort but media calls everything x-ray since it's what people know. X-Rays would go through cards anyway. But you'd get nice pictures of peoples hands though, and cataracts after a night of play. edit: now I think of it: if the cloth is thin enough you don't even need near-IR. Old fashioned IR camera's (those without any fancy filter) from the '00 showed though some relatively thin opaque synthetic material with a tiny IR source so ...
- QuadmasterXLII 1y agoThis 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 faster but doesn’t increase the amount the fish are willing to lose to have a good time.
- prodigycorp 1y agoI think it's revealing of how diminished the la costa nostra is. This is such trivial work and, yet, this was a multi-family operation.
- mschuster91 1y agoDiminished? More like, matured into white collar crime. There's no need to murder people on the street any more, that kind of dirty work is left to some random Southern American cartels, and the white collar crime brings in more than enough profit while also being way less risky should the feds catch up on it.
- cool_man_bob 1y ago> More like, matured into white collar crime. Honestly this is the first “advanced” mafia scheme I’ve heard of in a while. Last time I heard about a mafia crime it was a very sloppy hit that sounded more like what you hear from teenagers in Chicago shooting at each other. Though tbf it could easily have always been like that and I’m just blinded my media bias about a group of people I’ve never known form a time I’ve never known.
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- MetaMalone 1y ago“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 at how they solved that problem.
- mikkupikku 1y agoMaybe it doesn't return rigged orders, but records the order of the output deck with high speed cameras.
- ogig 1y agoThe rigged card-shuffling machine method is documented in this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA
- MetaMalone 1y agoThanks 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.
- nikcub 1y ago> 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.
- 8organicbits 1y agoSlight of hand? You put the deck to be sorted at the "in" side, the machine shuffles it, then it ejects a different rigged deck.
- jjmarr 1y ago
- cattown 1y agoDoesn’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.
- mattmaroon 1y agoWell it’s kind of an annuity. A million a year ain’t nothing for a small operation. But yeah they surely make much more selling fentanyl.
- ranadomo 1y agoas others have speculated, the real money was probably in blackmail and rigged sports betting.
- dec0dedab0de 1y agoThat was my first thought, especially because they could get similar results with a marked deck. To me, this leads more credibility to it being part of a bigger operation.
- Aurornis 1y agoThis 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 accounts they could use.
- cellis 1y agoWhenever 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.
- Noaidi 1y agoSeems like Trump is going after his old enemies in New York. Also, they spelled "Bonnano" wrong in that article. It is Bonanno. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonanno_crime_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonanno_crime_family Bon Anno = Good Year
- dudeinjapan 1y agoBon Nano = Good Text Editor
- Noaidi 1y agoNo idea why people are disagreeing with this, you are not from NY and you do not know the history here. You do not do big business in NY with out the mob. https://www.gao.gov/products/t-osi-88-7 https://www.gao.gov/products/t-osi-88-7 https://www.amny.com/news/the-mob-is-making-a-comeback-in-construction-as-demand-for-new-housing-grows-in-nyc/ https://www.amny.com/news/the-mob-is-making-a-comeback-in-co... And... https://www.americanprogress.org/article/donald-trump-criminal-conspiracy-law/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/donald-trump-crimin... "One of the key figures involved in these deals has been the Russian-born, mob-linked businessman Felix Sater, who plead guilty to racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the Genovese and Bonanno crime families49 and was convicted of stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass in New York." "Despite their long association, Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about Sater’s criminal past, notwithstanding the fact that Sater widely represented himself as a Trump associate in business deals."
- chidog99 1y agoChauncey Billups was mentioned by name 2 years ago for running scam high stakes poker games [26:41] https://www.youtube.com/live/G-TKR5ca5jI?si=TBsKcTi2ZG1-h1G0&t=1601 https://www.youtube.com/live/G-TKR5ca5jI?si=TBsKcTi2ZG1-h1G0...
- jfengel 1y agoThat seems like a lot of work. TFA said that they arrested 30 people, and got $7 million out of it. The fancy tech involved must have taken a good chunk of that. It sounds like each of them could get at most a six-figure payday out of this. Which is no chump change, to be sure, but it sounds like many of them could have made as much money without the risk of going to jail just by getting a desk job. Plus, there's no way a conspiracy that big is going to remain secret for long. Maybe the expected to get away with it for longer and get a bigger payoff. But wow, it seems like a ton of effort.
- codyb 1y agoAll these comments assume that 30 million is _all_ the mob has made with these machines, and that the tech must be very expensive. Usually when they pull out the big piles of drugs for the TVs, I assume that's the tip of the iceberg. So why is it that here, with four families involved, we think the only money they've made is what's been shown to us? Also, x-ray tables, rigged card shufflers, and funny glasses don't necessarily sound like they're the most expensive things in the world. So my guess is... Combined with these fellas other hustles this was probably a nice chunk of change to bring in for a relatively low amount of work post initial set up. I mean, you're sitting around playing rigged poker with a bunch of millionaires and basketball players or whatever. Probably having some drinks, I'd imagine there's pretty ladies around, cigars, cocaine. Whatever. Sounds more relaxing than extorting deli owners block by block like all those movies about the 70s show. And the best part? The people you're robbing are probably much less likely to resort to violence as recourse.
- empath75 1y agoThe card shufflers and the phone app that reads marked cards would probably put them back a few thousand at the most.
- iambateman 1y agoIf these folks had used this level of creativity and determination to make something useful…I bet their results would’ve been fantastic.
- ranadomo 1y agoThis is a common fallacy. Criminals often turn to crime because they're not very good at honest endeavors. Having failed to succeed on a fair playing field (hard), they victimize the weak and take advantage of others' naivety and trust (easy). Almost nothing about crime is indicative of an intelligent mind that could be put to good use. It's a lot of lowlife midwits who are bitter they have no chance to compete or associate with real players.
- dboreham 1y agoAnd then they run for office..
- breakpointalpha 1y agoOr they were raised with terrible and predatory culture. Screwing other people to get ahead is something that is frequently taught in childhood by parents and older role models that were also taught that mentality. We've all seen the Mafia movies and shows, these are family organizations where everyone's Aunts, Cousins, etc. is somehow "connected". There's a big uphill battle for a kid to come up in that environment and turn out like a model citizen. No excuses...
- cyrialize 1y agoThe story behind how Chauncey got his coaching job is kind of sketchy as well! The blazers didn't really listen to Dame at all, and the GM has known Chauncey for more than 30 years. At the time of Chauncey being hired, his only coaching experience was ~1 year of being an assistant coach.
- beoberha 1y agoFormer players being hired as head coaches without much other coaching experience is fairly common in the NBA.
- cyrialize 1y agoYes, but in this case the blazers head office said they were going to search for a coach, and they also took input from Dame on what coaches he thought would be good for the team. They didn't do any search at all, and just went straight to hiring Chauncey. This partially contributed to Dame leaving - it also didn't help that Chauncey and Dame didn't quite get along (and also deciding to bench him in the last 10 games of the season to tank). I'm honestly fine with players being hired as head coaches. Before looking into it I thought it was totally fine with Chauncey, especially given his track record as a leader on the Pistons and being a phenomenal classic point guard. The main issue for me is just telling people you're going to do a search... and then not doing it.
- everdrive 1y agoThis is probably a very HN comment, but I cannot imagine why people actually like gambling and poker: - high likelihood you lose money - the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers - you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours - the only victory condition is that you take money from other people
- pavel_lishin 1y ago> - high likelihood you lose money When I play games like this, I don't bet more than I can afford to lose - and paying $20 to sit at a table with friends playing poker is actually cheaper than going out to a bar with them. > - the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers Are there any games with hidden information that you find interesting? Or any competitive games at all? Things like Werewolf, or Go Fish, or Settlers of Catan? For that matter, even in a game without hidden information, like chess, you're still trying to outwit your opponents. > - you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours I mean, you can leave if you're not having fun. > - the only victory condition is that you take money from other people But you also spend time with friends.
- q3k 1y agobecause it's very fun
- empath75 1y agoTexas hold 'em is quite fun for casuals under these conditions: The amount of money involved is small compared to the incomes of those playing, where most players have the expectation that they won't get money back and that is fine for the enjoyment they get out of the game, and the pot isn't big enough to be worth cheating about. Everyone puts in the same amount of money. You play texas hold 'em no limit with escalating blinds starting with a pretty big stack of chips, just like a real tournament. When people are out, they can't buy back in. You play until everyone is out, and the Top N players get some money back. Lots of fun games involve lying, but you can play all night long and never tell a single lie and still win. Your only necessary verbs in a game of poker are "Call, raise, fold". Everything else is optional. If you bet big on a hand, you aren't saying anything about what is in your hand, lie or not. All the interpretation of what that means is in your opponents head. Lots of very good poker players don't talk about the hands at all. My family quite commonly plays Texas Hold 'em for _no money at all_, everyone just gets a stack of chips.
- logtrees 1y agoThis one would be an amazing film exploring both the intersection of tech and the NBA and the families involved too. It would be a stunning production if done with high quality in mind.
- mastazi 1y ago> including members of La Cosa Nostra crime families, I'm not sure if this reflects common usage in English but in Italian, Cosa Nostra is just a synonym for Mafia, not the name of a specific family. Also, in Italian it's never preceded by the article "La".
- Lucasoato 1y agoCosa Nostra is a well defined organization operating in Sicily, that term isn’t used for other Mafias around Italy or other Sicilian criminal organizations. Among its past leaders you can find Bernardo Provenzano and Matteo Messina Denaro.
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- mastazi 11mo agoMy point was that in Italy Cosa Nostra refers to all Sicilian mafia and not a single family. I should have been more specific.
- croes 1y agoMafia nowadays is used as a synonym for organized crime so Cosa Nostra makes it clear it means the original Mafia.
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- mastazi 11mo ago> it means the original Mafia. not in this case, sibling comment explains why. TL;DR: "La Cosa Nostra" indicates the American offshoot and not the original Sicilian Mafia.
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- iandanforth 1y agoIsn't legal gambling default profitable? The house is allowed to remove players who are good at games that involve skill and set the win ratio on games that don't (as specified in regulations). Is this a case of bureaucracy forcing people into illegality?
- debo_ 1y agoThis is like starting a YC company with fewer steps.
- zwog 1y agoSemi related: A couple of years ago a waste facility in Berlin measured increased levels of radio activity and traced it back to a restaurant where 13 cards laced with radioactive Iodine-125 were found: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42157129 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42157129 I couldn't find anything about how the cheat actually worked, though. In Mongolia they found radioactive dice at an airport: https://conferences.iaea.org/event/16/contributions/7187/attachments/3111/3731/Poster_I-109_-_ORLOKH_Dorjkhaidav.pdf https://conferences.iaea.org/event/16/contributions/7187/att...
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684548
- whycome 1y agoYessss. "Earlier" or "Other Discussions" are good ways of framing it. 'Dupe' isn't apt. Thank you.
- bobafett-9902 1y agoAll this potential jail time and reputation lost for $7 mil stolen over multiple years total??? And how many criminals split those winnings?? So the take home pay for an NBA HOF was like under $1 mil? Billups just signed an extension as an NBA head coach making well over that amount EVERY YEAR. Just sad imo
- Nifty3929 1y agoI think what happens is that many of these professional athletes grow up in communities and circumstances where it's just normal and expected to be "hustling," getting away with things, and avoiding the law. Wrong, but maybe understandable under those circumstances (poverty primarily). But then you take that person out of the "hood," and give him a $1M/yr sports contract, and the mentality doesn't necessarily go away. It's still about the hustle. They might not stop to consider that they don't NEED to hustle anymore. And they're probably also surrounded now by grifters/"friends"/family who do still need/want to hustle, and essentially using these guys. It is sad.
- dopamean 1y agoI can tell you right now that the kinds of dudes who play high level college ball and then go on to play professional ball were not hustling as kids. Many did grow up in unfortunate circumstances (this is less true as the years go on) however their talents generally were identified early and the track they were on was pretty clear. I think the simpler answer is that some people are especially poor at risk vs reward analysis. Others enjoy the thrill of getting away with something. It's been 30+ years since Chauncey Billups has had to worry about money. I think your point about friends around them is very fair though. Lots of these guys have hangers on with their hands out and despite making lots of money in their careers they cant just give cash to everyone. So I can imagine them thinking "hey place a bet on my under for the next game because I'm going to go out early" seems like a low risk, not so evil way to put a few dollars in a friend's pocket.
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- smallstepforman 1y agoThis can be done with no tech at legit casinos. Just have a group of people with a predetermined “tell” system so that only the best hand in the group competes against the fish. In a 4 player game, with 3 teamplayers and 1 fish, thats 75% of games you’ll win. With zero tech.
- metabagel 1y agoWouldn't this be discovered and get you banned by the casino?
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoAnd get your hand smashed by a hammer in the back room
- rufus_foreman 1y agoWhich hand?
- awb 1y agoA few issues: * The casino takes a rake, so you lose money every hand, but you only win when the fish bets and loses. You’re also expected to tip the dealer * Everything is on camera and dealers remember players, so there will be a lot of witnesses and evidence * Seats often open one at a time, so you’d potentially lose money at other tables waiting to play together. Or, you all show up at once and ask to start a new table together, which would get suspicious. * If you don’t know the fish’s cards, there’s still a chance you lose and lose big
- breakpointalpha 1y agoCollusion in live casinos is a real thing for sure, but it's not exactly easy to pull off. 1) Most card rooms these days are 8 or 9 players, so your team would need to be at least 3, maybe 4 to really swing the odds in your favor. 2) You need a subtle but effective way to signal to your team the relative strength of your hand. Think baseball signals, but way more low key. "If I touch my watch, I have an Ace" etc. You'll probably want to mix these up across the hours or days of play. 3) Seats typically do open one at a time, and you want to trickle in your team to avoid suspicion. Higher stakes games, like $5-10, where there are thousands of dollars in front of most players are your goal, and good news is that these are typically more rare so there may be only one table running. Your teammates will have to wait it out, but once at the table, they can stay for hours. 4) You'll never know exactly what your targets are holding, but knowing that your teammates folded a flush draw for example can help you narrow your opponents cards to a smaller range of possibilities. You'll want to position your teammates around the table to create "squeeze" situations where two of the team can trap a target in between. It takes some creative subtlety, but it can be very hard to impossible to detect collusion in live games.
- anxman 1y agohttps://www.markedcardsshop.com https://www.markedcardsshop.com This appears to be the / a source for the devices in question. It's worth reading over the technical details of how it all works. It's both terrifying and impressive. Cards can be identified using a barcode encoded on their thin edge from meters away.
- I_dream_of_Geni 1y agoX-Ray tables?? Seriously? Why are the feds looking at the gambling, and NOT the uncontrolled beaming of raw x-rays into a room full of people. There's GOT to be a law covering that...
- exabrial 1y agoWhere they actual X-Rays? Exposing people to ionizing radiation? Or was is this used in a figurative sense
- silexia 1y agoYet another reason to not watch pro sports. Entitled and overpaid athlete criminals.
- johnnyApplePRNG 1y agoI 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn-m1EMBcTg