Just FYI, for people who do not know about the games inside casinos, here is a link that will teach you about Blackjack. Here is a link that will tell you about Roulette. Here is a link about slot machines, and here is a link that will teach you about Poker. Now that you know, enjoy reading about people who cheated in these games.
In casinos, most people gamble.
Then there are people, who play the house.
Gamblers are everywhere. They rely on their luck to win, and most of the times they lose – that is why casinos make money. Then there is this other breed who go to the casinos with a mission – to win money.
This group of people do not bet without calculations and never, ever gamble and leave their chances of winning to luck. And that is why they play against the house.
And sometimes they have other people helping them win. That’s when they overstep the line and it is called cheating. But they are only caught after making off with a tremendous amount of money.
1. The MIT Blackjack Team – Blackjack card counters
Amount of money profited – $5 MILLION (33 Crore rupees)
If you didn’t know, university professors do not earn a lot. The same is applicable for American professors. On the other hand students are buried in debt.
Thus, a team was put together by Bill Kaplan (who was from Harvard, actually) and they set off to use strategies to win at the Blackjack tables. The strategy used to have an advantage at the game of Blackjack is called counting cards. And that is not illegal because a single person can do that. But the returns are not a lot.
But this team teamed up and swindled casinos all over Las Vegas, earning up to $400,000 (2.6 Crore rupees) on a single weekend.
They were so popular, a movie was made on them, and the players were subsequently banned from most of the casinos.
2. Tommy Glenn Carmichael – Slot machine wizard
Amount of money profited – $10,000 (6.6 lakh rupees) per day
Tommy Carmichael is no usual cheater or crook. He was an inventor and designed a mechanical device that, when inserted into slot machines would trigger a jackpot – which gave him a lot of money from one machine.
But you cannot just move from one machine to another just like that in the same casino. So he moved from one casino to another.
Then they upgraded their machines and made them electronic, and Tommy upgraded his gadgets.
Then they upgraded it to top of the line slot machine with no space to put anything inside, and Tommy took one apart in broad daylight and made off with the jackpot.
Then they had no choice but to put him behind bars.
3. Richard Marcus – Roulette table king
Amount of money profited – $5 million (33 crore rupees)
If you know how roulette works – you bet on a number on the roulette wheel and if he ball lands on the number you win.
Richard Marcus would put a lot of small money chips under which he would hide a chip of a lot of money, without the dealer’s knowledge.
If he won, he would show the high money chip and win big.
If he lost, he would slyly switch the high money chip with a small money chip, and he would not take a big loss.
Smart.
4. Ida Summers – Blackjack hustler
Amount of money profited –Â Unknown
Card counting takes brains.
Switching cards with sleight of hand takes pure guts.
But it becomes very easy when you look hot. Ida Summers did exactly that – she switched cards so that the next hand dealt will prefer her now.
Then she went another step ahead and switched a whole deck of cards – without anyone knowing. She kept doing this until the FBI came to know it and took her out of Las Vegas forever.
5. Louis Colavecchio –Â slot machine coin minter
Amount of money profited – $500,000 (3 crores) (approx.)
Picture this – you go to a gaming arcade and what if you had the exact replicas of all the coins used to play the arcade games?
That’s exactly what Colavecchio did. He made a lot of fake slot machine coins and just kept on inserting them until he hit jackpot.
A lot of fake coins = thousands of coins and a press – the kind that is used to make real coins.
6. A Frenchman used invisible ink and special contact lenses to loot Poker tables
Amount of money profited – $88,000 (58 lakh rupees) in a day
We all know what invisible ink is. And we know the importance of hiding your cards from the other players.
But what if you could mark the cards with invisible ink and then know the cards when it goes to someone else in the next round. Wouldn’t that be an advantage?
A huge one turns out. Because cheaters in France actually did that and made more than $80,000 in a day. But they were caught eventually and put behind bars.
7. Phillip Ivey Jr –Â looks at the exact shape of the card and knows what card it is.
Amount of money profited – $9.6 MILLION (64 crore rupees)
Take a deck of cards and cut it. Then shuffle. Would you know what card is where just by looking at their shapes?
How can we do that? They are all in perfect shape, right?
No. they are not. Apparently, you can see what card is where by just looking at the shapes of the cards. And yes, there are subtle differences in shapes. Phillip Ivey did just that and won millions of dollars in prize money.
8. Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo – Observation and intelligence
Amount of money profited – $1 MILLION (6.6 crore rupees)
What if you just stared at a roulette wheel and recorded where the ball lands, for the whole day?
After a few days of readings, you will realize that the ball is more probable to land on some numbers more than the rest.
That is exactly what Gonzalo did. He studied the roulette wheels for days and even used computers to analyze them, and after the whole study was done, he went and bet. And he obviously won, because now he knows on which numbers the ball falls.
9. Dominic LoRiggio –Â the man who knew what numbers will his dice show
Amount of money profited –Â Unknown
Yes, he exactly knew how to throw a dice in a way that they will land the exact numbers he wanted.
He perfected his technique by holding the dice in a certain way and moving his hand in a way that the dice will move exactly the same way he wants them to – landing the same numbers he has in mind.
Imagine if you could do this, imagine how much money you could make!
10. Bill Brennan who made off with $500,000
Amount of money profited – $500,000 (3.3 crore rupees)
Cheating casinos is cool and all that. But then it takes a lot of guts to just walk off with their money. Remember that casinos are connected to the mobs and even the FBI. Bill Brennan worked as a cashier and he just took all the money in the cash box and walked out of the door one day.
And he has been never seen since.
They seem pretty cool because they were let go alive. Most cheaters do not survive.
Also, gambling is a bad habit in itself.