Latest / Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker / Card Sharks with USB Sticks: Cheating at Cards in the Modern Age

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Card Sharks with USB Sticks: Cheating at Cards in the Modern Age · Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker

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Welcome to Nonsense Season 3, Episode 63, our big story on our
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second show of the week, our last show before the
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Thanksgiving break. I'm Jeff Parker.
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I'm still This time we're looking at card sharks and USB
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sticks cheating at cards in the modern age.
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That's up next. Take notes real quick.
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Let me just say, yeah, since we're gone next week, we're
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gonna let this particular conversation go as long as we
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want it to go. So feel free to give us the
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details. I'm not running a clock on this.
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Oh, that's your first mistake. We're gonna run a battery and
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tape. So we're gonna record right
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through Thanksgiving, aren't we? Which is just gonna be a live
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stream. Just gonna be 1 long Twitch live
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stream until the L tryptophan kicks in.
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I apologize in advance. I didn't know it was card sharks
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with USB sticks. I thought it was card sharks
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with beef sticks so I was expecting.
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A snack. The TV show.
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It's the TV. Show though, isn't it where like
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I you what you say a number and I have to guess higher or lower,
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is that the? Plan.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. The world's most complicated
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game is. Terrible.
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It is probably the only show that I think was easier than
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Press Your Luck where all you had to do was mash a button.
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This was like 9. You're like higher Bob.
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Like what? How?
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No. Listen, I'm excited about this
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show not because I gamble, I have 0 interest in playing cards
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or gambling or any of that sort of stuff.
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But I was a huge fan of magicians who did fantastic card
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was magic. What did?
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What happened? What did the Magicians do to
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you? Well, how come you are no longer
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a fan? Well, many of them have passed
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away. You could.
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Still be fans of their work. I'm fans of their work and what
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remains of their work. Yes, sure.
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Die Vernon, Charlie Miller, Ricky J Absolutely sensational.
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There's a guy named Richard Turner who does some of the most
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amazing card mechanics I've ever seen.
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He literally contrasts, he's shuffling and they keep complete
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control of where everything is in the deck as he like says pick
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a number from 1:00 to 10:00 and you say 14 and he deal, deal,
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deal, deal doing card 14 is the ace of spades.
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Picks them up, shuffles them randomly, shuffles rarely.
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What would you like to be card number 3?
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OK, 123 and there's yeah. And he's not like bottom dealing
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or anything like that. He has manipulated the entire
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amazing. It's absolutely mind blowing.
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And then? Yeah, Wait, hold on.
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There's a That's Richard Turner. Richard Turner, there's a great
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documentary about him called Dealt, Dealt.
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And then about, yeah, 30 minutes into the movie, they reveal the
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fact I'm gonna give this away, sure, 'cause not a new movie.
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They reveal the fact that Richard Turner is legally blind.
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Oh wow, really? Yeah, he doesn't know eyes.
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So he's doing all of yes, whoa, he is doing all of this without
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being able to see. Well that makes me not want to
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use my joke saying he's the younger, lesser successful
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brother of Ted. Ted Turner, yeah.
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OK, I feel like I need to kick the blind guy.
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I feel like I'm gonna go ahead and skip that step before
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Thanksgiving. Excellent plan cards, cons,
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cheats and crossroaders. How to cheat at cards in 2025
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Let's. Go.
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I can barely shuffle and I have my.
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Eyes. Yeah, it's impressive you got to
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see this movie. It's amazing.
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Dealt. All right, Yeah, check it out.
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I have to show everybody. Party the recommendation part.
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Now push this button quick. Do not pass go press this one
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OK? I am excited to talk about
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cheating at cards. Of course you are, because you
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love, you actually love playing cards, you love gambling and
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that sort of, it's not, well, it's not my game.
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It's not my thing. I don't.
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Like gambling, I like, I like winning.
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Yeah. I don't want to go into a game
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where I have a disadvantage, to be clear here.
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I want to know how other people cheat so that I can be aware of
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it. I don't actually want to cheat.
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I want to. I want to win the game fair and
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square. It is not fun to win when
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cheating. So I want to just know how to
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cheat so that I know what to look for.
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That's why I'm interested in cheating.
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I much prefer games like Bridge where the entire card deck has
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been dealt out. Sure, you can sort of go, well I
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know I have these cards and therefore you don't have these
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cards and my partner has is playing with his cards face up.
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So I know what we have now. I know it's either in your hand
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or in your hand. Yeah, that kind of thing is much
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more interesting to me. The actual, sure, 2 cards, Black
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Jack or whatever card. I don't really.
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Yeah, I don't know Bridge, but I'm assuming I will be 71 day
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and then I will get to. Know you'll love it.
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You'll absolutely love it. Yeah, I can't.
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I can't wait. It's.
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Sucks. You in to bridge and watching
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prices right rerun. What are some standard ways you
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see people eking out an advantage in card games?
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Oh, boy, there's a lot. I mean, yeah, you've got folks
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that just take sort of the mathy, nerdy route, right?
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The game theory optimization where they're just like a
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calculator in their head. And I think that's that's fun.
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But man, it becomes kind of rote after a while.
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Like once you know every hand and what to play in blackjack,
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now you can just be a drunken monkey.
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And it's not, you know, it's not hard.
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But most of the back to the other side, the house, yeah, has
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a slight advantage just by the way they set up the game.
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Of course. I mean, it's literally can be
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half a percent point or even a full percentage point.
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Yeah. And that's all they need now.
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They play hundreds of games and they just eventually rake in the
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money. It's like when you go to Vegas
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and they'll be like an advertisement for slot machines
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and they're like 99% payout and I'm like, that's terrible, like.
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Pretty clear how that. Works.
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I don't understand people like, well, you just got to play
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longer and I'm like, no. No, that's the.
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Opposite of what you want to do. So I see people do that
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certainly game like poker, right?
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There is no real house advantage per SE.
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You're all playing sure the same hand.
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Oh, there is a house advantage. You have to tip the dealer.
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Well, there's a there could be a rake or they could, yeah, Yeah.
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Well, we're going to get to that.
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We're. Gonna get to that's a huge.
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Advantage, sure. And then there's just
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understanding the math, right? So understanding the probability
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behind it there, there is an advantage to that.
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It's not illegal. There's nothing cheating about
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it, but just knowing odds and percentages.
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And I have some friends that are very good at this at craps.
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I've never bothered. I don't enjoy throwing dice.
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I enjoy being there when people are throwing this.
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I enjoy the the energy but just knowing the odds and being like
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this is going to be the outcome of dice, this is not.
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An Apple kerosene. I enjoy watching it in movies
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when there's something high stake thing on the line and it
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goes the way you want it to go. Of course, of course that is
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fun. Of course.
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I mean, I think that's been part of the allure of, what, 20 years
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or so that poker has gotten popular on on television.
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Yeah, is really for that, right? You can see these sort of
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situations and fear what they're going to do.
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Is high stakes situations, Totally.
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And some games, can't you just play the people?
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People have tells, people have different gestures and things.
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You can sort of see what's going on with them emotionally, Maybe
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not obviously, but sure. Consistency, I mean.
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That's not gonna work in blackjack.
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I don't think you're gonna see the tell on the dealer.
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In theory, the dealer shouldn't even know what their whole card
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is, right? Carson theory.
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Although if they did, please let me know what your tell is.
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That would be lovely. That's an option or not.
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I don't know how good I am at reading tells.
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Some folks have really obvious tells.
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But I don't, you know, some people are very good at picking
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this up like, oh, they're, they're left eye twitches twice
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when they have it. Well, I see, like in the World
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Series of Poker, I see an enormous amount of players who
5:59
play with sunglasses on. Yeah.
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So you can't see what their eyes are.
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Doing I had this idea, if I ever made a World Series event and
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went to World Series with I would I would just bring like a
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like a like a brown paper bag and just cut holes in it.
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Just go for full obfuscation. Just cut hold.
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Everything but your eyes. Exactly.
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Like that's all I actually want you to see.
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I think it's ridiculous, guys, you know, put on sunglasses and
6:20
hoods and whatnot. But but sure if it helps
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minimize what? Do the hoods do?
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I don't know what the hoods do. I don't know.
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They get rid of all the facial tics when your ear twitches.
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I have no idea. I mean, you, you fidget with
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things, with your fingers and whatnot.
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I mean, I have one tell that I know of that I can't control,
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but it doesn't come out when I'm playing poker.
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Yeah, it only comes out in other situations.
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The only one I know where I'm like I catch myself not being
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able to control it. Otherwise, I don't know.
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Yeah, I'm sure I got a bunch. I have one when I get DD happy
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card and I just go and they can. A lot of times they can tell
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what that means. Yeah, sure.
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It's weird. It's weird how they know, yeah,
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they've cracked your code. Yeah.
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What I enjoy more about the people playing the people is
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being able to sort of manipulate and misdirect the people.
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That's fun to me, right? And I don't consider that
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cheating at. All How do you do that?
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What does that do? How do you?
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Play like like how you play your cards, maybe trying to build on
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some fake tell or acting one way when you have a set of cards and
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then acting that same way when you have a different set of
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cards. Oh I see.
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I like trying to do that. It throws folks off, especially
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when you're in a like, if you're in a tournament style game where
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I shouldn't give away all of my secrets here too late.
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Like when you're in a tournament style game and and your, your
7:20
bot, your, your blind rate's going to increase over time.
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Screw around when the blinds are lower, that's your time to sort
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of screw about. And then there's some things
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that I do that are very consistent and, and you can
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build off that. So that's the more fun part to
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me. Again, not cheating.
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This is just ways you can sort of find the advantage in.
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Games and sometimes you'll see people who bend the rules to
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their advantage. Oh yeah.
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I mean, I like to try to partake in some of that, but I think
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first of all, just you, just a little.
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I mean, first of all, to know the rules, right?
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And and every now and again, I'll find myself in a situation
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where someone clearly doesn't know the rules.
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And it's like, no, man, this would have slid had you not had
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the video replay. But I'm the video replay guy
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here. Like I'm 100% sure I'm right
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about that. I've been wrong on one or two
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occasions, but you learn. But for the most part, knowing
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the rules I think is the most important thing.
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It does, man, it does rub people the wrong way.
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And this is what drives me crazy about there's like this whole
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genre of of home games where the dealer picks the game to play.
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Sure, I hate those because I never know the rules.
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They're like, Oh no, you were dealt the the the second three.
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Therefore you can't BLOB like I don't know the rules.
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I just. Don't.
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Well, you got a state what the rules are going to be ahead of
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time. We're playing this game and
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Joker's are this, you know, you have to put all that up front.
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Yeah, yeah. But they'll usually be like,
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everybody here knows upside down nighttime baseball, right?
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And I'm like, no. And then they'll like explain
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three of the 12 bullets. I don't know the other 9
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bullets. And then I'm anyway, the ones
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that are a little more devious. We knowing the rules, just
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knowing the rules, right? There's nothing, nothing wrong
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about that. The ones that are more devious
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are when you're like picking the people you want to play with or
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you're going to a poker room and you're picking the table you
8:45
want to sit at because you're like, well, those those folks
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all look like noobs. So I'm gonna.
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Say, look like tourists. Yeah, and I mean, and in theory,
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you can pick your position in some of those games to where you
8:54
want to sit. A lot of those games have have
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rules around that. If you're playing in a in a
8:57
house game, like you're playing in like a little local
8:59
tournament or something, you're drawing, you should be drawing
9:01
cards for. If you're not drawing cards for
9:03
something's wrong, you should have some, you know, automated
9:05
process. It's a little harder to to
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quote. Sit in the good seat.
9:07
If you will, I'm not a poker player by any stretch of the
9:10
imagination, doesn't even interest me.
9:11
But I have been told you have an advantage if you can play with a
9:13
level head. Oh yeah, you can stay
9:15
unemotional. I did play one time at a school
9:18
poker game where I didn't look at the cards.
9:19
Never looked at the cards. Blind the whole time.
9:21
Played blind the whole time so sometimes I'd be bluffing.
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Of course I wouldn't know I was bluffing and the other person
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would have no nothing to read off of me.
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I made it to the the third, the last three players.
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I was going to say before I was knocked.
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Out And you won six years straight.
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Yeah. No, I was knocked out, but I
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made it really high. You are the kind of person that
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no one ever wants to play against because it's impossible
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to know what you have when you don't know what you have.
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Right. I can't tell you how this
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angered people. The setness.
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Oh, with me not looking at my cards, yes.
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I will every now and again play a hand blind and just doing one
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of those will drive people bananas sure, because they don't
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know what to do right. Sure there's another move you
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can do that a lot of times gets me gets me yelled at, but you
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can straddle, which is basically where you take the big blind
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over If you're sitting ahead of the big blind and people hate it
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when you do that and you're still look at your cards, you
10:09
don't look at your heart, your cards pre flop drives people
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bananas. Sure, sure, sure.
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I can only like I have a friend that I've played poker with who
10:16
is a listener to this show. I will leave them nameless who
10:19
looks at at their cards and I'm pretty sure has no idea what's
10:23
on them. And it's impossible to play that
10:25
person because they are playing in such a way that they don't
10:28
know what they have or what's coming.
10:29
And you're just right. You are just playing a clean
10:31
sheet of paper every time and you never know.
10:34
And every now and then you'll be like you went all in on like a
10:36
ace high. And then other times you'll be
10:38
like you called but you have a straight flush like you.
10:41
Never know, of course, because how would they know?
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How would they know? Sure.
10:43
So. But I think the lesson to be
10:44
learned there is if you have endurance, if you have some
10:47
focus, if you are not emotional. Say, if you are actually playing
10:51
and looking at your cards and seriously like an actual card
10:53
player, you want to play it like it's a marathon.
10:54
Not a Sprint marathon, not a Sprint, exactly.
10:56
You don't want to be emotional. We call that, you know, you
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know, especially when someone's steaming, right?
11:00
They they lose a hand and now they got to come back in.
11:02
Like you want to catch that person because bad decisions
11:04
come in and make terrible decisions.
11:06
Yeah, yeah. So.
11:07
And again, you can also, if you can play dirt duration, right,
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if you have that endurance, if you have that sort of marathon
11:13
mindset. I, I don't think I've ever done
11:15
this, but I've seen people that will, they act like they're
11:17
tired and I'm like, really Like I see you acting all time.
11:20
They're like, oh, I'm making mistakes.
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It's like, no, you're not, No, you're not.
11:24
I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing.
11:25
So yeah, it's emotional warfare, basically.
11:27
I get about two hands in and I actually am tired because it
11:29
just bores me to bores me tears not even.
11:32
Looking at your cards though, what are you What?
11:33
Are you tired about how do I get, How do I get out of this?
11:35
How can I? How can I get away?
11:36
I'll say two things here. 1, I think you'd be a very good poker
11:39
player. 2, I really think if you don't play the cards but you
11:42
play the people, it gets a lot more fun.
11:43
I do. I think you would enjoy that,
11:45
Yeah. I don't want to play you in
11:45
poker. That's for.
11:46
Sure. Well, I was, it was like a
11:47
school, yeah, fundraiser thing. I couldn't go home.
11:49
I couldn't leave. That was the problem And and I I
11:52
could have found. Our door.
11:53
Why couldn't you go? If I could have found a way to
11:55
leave. I would have done it.
11:56
Push the button, let. Me out.
11:58
So I was stuck. And so I just was like, all
12:00
right, I'm, I'm playing until I get knocked out and I'm not.
12:02
Only a mad Do any of those people in that room still talk
12:04
to you 'cause they must have been so grumpy with you?
12:06
Well, one of them was my wife, who actually plays poker, who
12:09
actually understands poker. She was as annoyed as anyone
12:12
else. There, she had to be more
12:13
annoyed. You had to be the most annoying.
12:14
Yeah, sure. Oh yeah.
12:16
No, that's you. You, you have successfully found
12:18
a way to troll people with doing the least amount of work.
12:21
That's that's you should get a star.
12:22
All right, so there's other ways, bankroll management.
12:25
Well, yeah, of course, if you just, you know that again,
12:26
that's patience, that's endurance.
12:28
Just just keep your keep your stack.
12:29
Yeah, and, and, and think about the long haul.
12:32
That's complicated though, because sometimes you want to,
12:35
you want to go in more early to try to get some of the what
12:39
we'll call the weaker links on the chain.
12:41
So yeah, it's hard. The low hanging fruit.
12:44
Yeah, exactly. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say
12:46
I'm good at bankroll management, especially in tournaments where
12:48
they have a thing called, I think it's it's a French word
12:51
called rebuys. And that's where I get into
12:53
trouble because again, I'm a rule guy.
12:55
So tell me the rules. And if the rules are like, yeah,
12:57
typically in something is like, OK, no more rebuys after 10:30.
12:59
Well, sure, I will buy right up until 10:29 PM because why not?
13:03
I'm here for fun and I'll have guys try to cut me off the book
13:05
you've already bought in five times.
13:06
And I'm like, so we're going for six.
13:08
Like why not? Let's.
13:08
Just keep going. There's no rule against buying
13:10
more than five times and you can buy all the way till 10:30.
13:13
My for my obsessive compulsiveness is what they're
13:15
doing. They're they're trying to save
13:17
me from myself. And as it turns out, nobody can.
13:20
No, but you have deep pockets so it doesn't really matter.
13:22
Yeah, why not? Let's empty them out.
13:24
Here, but you're also a notorious card counter if I
13:27
remember correct. No, you're thinking of some
13:29
other JC. I've been, I've been with you in
13:32
Las Vegas. I have memories of this.
13:34
Oh boy. Let's let's just say
13:37
theoretically there's a Wikipedia page that you could
13:41
read about counting cards. I've read it, but I mean, I
13:43
would, yeah. I wouldn't know anything about
13:45
the face. You've memorized it.
13:47
You've committed all the footnotes to memory.
13:49
Counting cards is one of the most fascinating things to me.
13:52
Not because it's hard or magical, because damn near
13:56
everyone thinks it's illegal and they think if you do it you're
13:58
going to get thrown in jail. How?
14:00
Tell me how that can be illegal? I mean, if you're just sitting
14:01
there counting cards in your head, how would anybody know?
14:04
They can't read your thoughts. No, I but but people go like all
14:06
of you count cards. You're gonna go to prison.
14:09
I'm like, no. Oh, really?
14:10
You're not counting cards in your head.
14:13
Not to be clear here, you if you count cards with a mechanical
14:15
device, at least in Las Vegas, that is illegal.
14:17
Sure, that is a crime. However, doing in your head is
14:20
not a crime. What it does is give you an
14:22
understanding, a knowledge. Again, in theory I've I've read
14:25
this in the past of of the proportion of cards that are
14:29
left in the in the shoe in the deck.
14:31
What's coming up? Yeah.
14:32
And then depending on what's left in the deck, you may be in
14:36
a favorable position theoretically to play more
14:38
aggressively. They call that playing the
14:40
count. If you play the count and you
14:42
raise your bet, you have a more likely chance of winning.
14:44
Sure. So this is something that is
14:46
very easy to do. It's not hard.
14:47
You can you can train anybody to do it.
14:49
I mean, once you kind of see how to do it, theoretically a monkey
14:52
can do it. The catch is you got to figure
14:54
how to play the count. If you can't actually play it,
14:56
then it doesn't matter. It's no good.
14:58
Right, If you just, if you can't adjust your betting strategy.
15:01
Yeah. And as soon as you adjust your
15:02
betting strategy a couple times, typically the house frowns upon
15:05
this because you've shifted their advantage.
15:07
So typically the house's advantage is anywhere from half
15:10
a percent to a percent. It depends on how crappy the
15:12
rules are at that particular blackjack.
15:14
Now in Vegas, man, it's gross. You can't.
15:16
It's hard to find a three to two table anymore.
15:18
Now it's all six to five. They hit on soft 17.
15:21
All these things take away sure little bits of your advantage.
15:24
So your advantages are going to. Be closer to 1%, yeah, closer to
15:27
1%. If you run a reasonable betting
15:29
strategy with account, you can flip that around and get
15:32
somewhere between A1 to 2% advantage in your.
15:34
Favor. No, no, you can.
15:35
I can't. Yeah, it's an 8 deck shoe and
15:37
I'm not sitting there that long. I'm going to go to the before.
15:40
I'm going to go upstairs to the hotel and take a nap.
15:42
Why not do months? I am not.
15:44
I mean, look, I can tell you again.
15:45
Shoe. Theoretically, if you sit with
15:47
enough money, they'll bring the buffet to you.
15:48
They don't care. They want you to stay there.
15:50
So I'm just saying, I've had many a meal at a table before,
15:53
theoretically. So you flip this advantage, run.
15:54
Here's the catch. Once you play this for a while
15:58
and you've adequately annoyed them that you're going to take a
16:00
bunch of their money, they're going to ask you to leave.
16:03
And they're not really asking you to leave.
16:05
They're telling you to leave. They'll pay you out.
16:07
They're gonna, they're not gonna not pay you out.
16:09
The days of the mob breaking your knees and Vegas is are
16:12
almost over. Almost over.
16:14
They are 30 years away from being over.
16:16
They're gonna pay you and they're gonna tell you not to
16:18
come back. And if you come back, it's
16:20
trespassing. And that, as it turns out, is
16:22
illegal. So card counting, not illegal,
16:24
trespassing illegal. So, yeah, you don't want that.
16:26
You know, you, you want the casinos to, to still like you.
16:28
So that's why they do this. The best place to read about
16:31
this, at least the, the, the best thing I've ever read about
16:33
this was the 2003 book Bringing Down the House.
16:35
Yeah, which is fantastic. It's a great.
16:37
MIT guys, Yeah, count the cards. Yeah.
16:40
So those guys, it wasn't the card counting that was really
16:43
exciting to me about that book because again, counting cards is
16:45
relatively easy. It's the the way they
16:47
communicated the count and they have these sort of elaborate
16:49
characters that they created. And then they put a bunch of
16:52
plants at at the tables that would count cards.
16:54
And then you'd be the, you know, Scrooge Mcduck that would roll
16:57
up with all the money. You're the guy who was the
16:59
coffee importer from Costa Rica or whatever, you some back story
17:03
and you'd roll up with a bunch of money.
17:04
But you, you didn't have to sit there to establish the count.
17:06
They would tell the count to you.
17:07
And it's a really fun story. It's written as nonfiction.
17:10
My understanding is he took a little bit of embellishment in
17:12
spots there, but but it is rooted in a, in a very true to
17:15
life story. And then ultimately all of those
17:17
guys got banned. They they took millions of
17:19
dollars out of casinos and then ultimately all got banned.
17:21
And now with special facial wreck technology.
17:23
Good luck. Oh, it's facial wreck is so
17:25
good. You're it's it's over.
17:26
Used to be you could go to just go to a different casino and
17:28
they wouldn't necessarily have the image of your face.
17:30
It's all the companies now share cross all me up, but share them
17:33
all. So again, to be clear, this was
17:34
lots and lots of collusion. None of that was illegal.
17:37
Yeah, none of it was illegal. It was all legal.
17:39
None of this is what we wanted to talk about on this episode.
17:42
No, today's episode is not about any of this.
17:44
Today we were going to talk about how to grow roses.
17:47
Yes, something I also hate. Yeah.
17:50
Today we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about
17:51
ways to actually, yes, sheet illegal things that are not in
17:54
the Shades of Grey, but are in the actual no doubt, yes,
17:57
cheatery category. Yeah, I'm going to be clear, no
18:00
jokes here. I've never actually cheated at
18:02
cards. I have heard stories.
18:03
I don't think I've ever been in a room where I've caught
18:05
somebody legitimately cheating. I've caught people do things
18:07
that I think are questionable, but not like the stuff that's
18:10
going to get your knees broken or your fingers cut off.
18:12
Like, not that kind of cheatery, but there is stuff that I think
18:15
goes into that bucket, right? The most obvious one to me is
18:17
the sleight of hand stuff, like all the card magician things.
18:21
I don't know how Ricky J would ever be allowed to go into a
18:23
casino and literally even touch a card.
18:26
I know he's just touching the two blackjack cards that he's
18:29
been dealt, but the minute you let him touch a card it seems
18:31
like, oh, you're in trouble already.
18:32
So when you get face down single deck blackjack, which is the
18:34
only place in Vegas that I know you're slow to touch cards, I
18:37
actually greatly dislike it. I don't even want to touch the
18:39
cards. There's no advantage to you in
18:41
touching the cards. The reason they do it is it
18:43
makes it a little harder. Account.
18:44
Yeah, but I don't want to touch them.
18:46
I don't I just there's too much room for somebody to be like,
18:49
you're doing something terrible. And I'm like, I just I just have
18:51
a twitch like, like leave me alone.
18:53
Sure, But when you get into poker, you are touching the
18:55
cards, right? You have to touch the cards.
18:56
There's no way around it. I'm not even thinking so much
18:58
about the player, right? Like the example you just gave
19:01
the player playing the cards. I'm thinking more about the
19:02
dealers and the especially if you're in a home game where
19:05
everybody deals or if you've got dealers that are that are called
19:08
in. Those folks, man, they can do
19:09
things that you can be staring at from three feet away and not
19:12
see right second deal where you're pulling the card that's
19:15
below the top card or bottom dealing, dealing off the bottom,
19:18
doing false shuffles and false cuts to preserve the order of
19:21
the deck or just palming cards. Like all of this stuff.
19:24
They do so masterfully that you'll just never catch it.
19:27
I will. Confess to having done some some
19:29
of those moves in my lifetime, but only as a sort of a magic
19:33
trick and only in a card game. We used to play Uno OK when my
19:36
son was very young. Yeah.
19:38
And I would bottom deal him all the wild cards so that he would.
19:42
He could change this. That's awesome.
19:44
And he would pick up his cards at six years old and he would be
19:47
shocked and surprised that he had every single a handful of
19:49
wild cards. There's no way he can lose the
19:51
game. Yeah, no, that's great.
19:52
I mean, look, I think when you're doing the things like
19:54
that and of course card tricks, magic tricks here for sure, that
19:57
that makes sense. But I'd argue even worse than
19:59
sleight of hand are folks that mark cards.
20:02
Oh yeah, sure. That is bananas to me.
20:04
And I've read a little bit about this again, and certainly I've
20:06
never done it, but they have the quote UN quote tech they have
20:09
around this where they'll put like a little tiny micro scratch
20:12
or they'll yeah, they'll use some.
20:14
Invisible ink that they can rub on the card that will, you know,
20:17
they can see with their special glasses or whatever that stuff
20:20
is, is mine not boggling. You're getting into the Chauncey
20:23
Billup story with It was in the news, Yeah, NBA players who were
20:26
involved in card games where they were manipulating the odds
20:30
in their favor and they were looking at marked cards, so they
20:33
knew what the the mark had. Yes, Yeah, well and well then.
20:36
Otherwise they were cheating too, which is even more.
20:38
We'll come to, we'll come to me. Yeah, for sure.
20:40
Calming bottom dealing, middle dealing effectively.
20:43
These are card trick sings magicians do all the time.
20:45
Similarly, cold decking. You're switching deck.
20:47
That thing where you actually switch the entire deck, you swap
20:50
out the entire deck. One that's stacked.
20:51
Incredible the way. 52 cards. Sleight of hand, yeah.
20:55
But you stack, swap the deck for one that's stacked the way you
20:57
want it to be. And then there's also, there's
20:59
also a whole other class where you have multiple people in on
21:01
the cheating. Yeah.
21:02
It's a whole new ball game. Then you know the gloves are off
21:05
and you can really go to the races with some.
21:06
That's what was happening with the NBA cheating scandal was
21:09
more than one of the people in the room were in on the.
21:11
Cheat including the house, right, which makes it even
21:14
harder. I mean, once you get once you
21:15
get the house involved, right and the dealer is involved sort
21:18
of thing of the dealer in the house synonymously, then it gets
21:21
really hard to know what's going on, right?
21:24
And that could be? Oh yeah.
21:25
Like they're stacking the deck, they might need to swap out the
21:27
deck you're talking about. In cold decking, they can just
21:29
stack the deck and have the deck in some order so a certain
21:31
player is known to win. Or like stealing off the bottom.
21:34
Again, the dealer could be doing that, you don't know.
21:36
Sure, showing cards like flashing cards to people that
21:39
they want to have a better chance of winning.
21:42
Or moving chips or pots around in such a way that it's favoring
21:46
one person or another, or even just being pushed to one person
21:48
or another. I mean, it's, it's terrible,
21:50
right? Those are all things that make
21:51
me in. Oh, another one that I see every
21:53
now and again is, you know, communication or you got, you're
21:56
tugging on your earlobe. Like you said earlier, this
21:58
means I have chills or whatever. Or I'm holding 2 chips in my
22:01
hand. Or one chip in my hand.
22:02
If I'm holding 1, you got the winning hand.
22:04
If I'm holding 2 you. Don't even just talking in any
22:06
other language at the table. The the line from rounders is no
22:10
Sputnik at the table and I say that all the time like we should
22:12
all be on the same page. No communicating information
22:15
that all players have an equal access to.
22:17
That really pisses people off when I say.
22:19
That well that's what we talk about the actual shuffling
22:21
machine that casinos use that should be on the table wherever
22:24
100% and see it and it should be encased in glass so we can all
22:27
see exactly what we're. Dealing.
22:29
I mean, this is the argument I've made about those machines
22:31
for years. If if you were forget about
22:33
machines, human dealers. If human dealers took the cards
22:36
and went into a backroom and shuffled them and then came
22:38
back, that would not be OK. And the machine's not better.
22:41
Nobody would be OK with that. No, it's arguably worse.
22:44
Yeah, that's what the machine is doing.
22:46
So tell me some more mechanical devices, other ways that you can
22:48
have table based sheets. Oh man, you could have.
22:50
They call them, I think, hold out devices like where you've
22:52
got a way to sneak a card into your hand from either like below
22:56
the table or from up your sleeve.
22:58
They're these things called, they call them gaffed tables
23:00
where you'll have like certain reflective surfaces or mirrors,
23:04
like things that allow one player in a certain seat to have
23:06
an advantage. There are dealing shoes, you
23:09
know, the shoes that they put the whole, the multiple decks
23:11
in. This is like especially on.
23:12
Black decks of cards in. Yeah, and you can pull a card
23:15
out from a place that's not in the shoe, like underneath the
23:18
shoe sort of thing. OK.
23:20
Oh yeah, stuff is sure stuff that is nuts, like, and all of
23:23
these things, these aren't, these aren't like assumed to
23:25
exist. These all exist.
23:26
These are always people have cheated at cards in various
23:29
games. Well, that's the dealer, because
23:30
the dealer is the only one touching the shoe, so obviously.
23:32
He's once the dealer's in on it. Yeah, good luck either working
23:35
against the casino or working or the the house.
23:39
Yeah, you're in trouble either way.
23:40
Yeah. Typically I'm going to assume
23:41
the dealer is always working for the house because they.
23:43
Are well, no, not necessarily. They might have a friend, they
23:45
might have a friend who comes in and they want that friend to be
23:47
able to win and they so they deal from underneath the shoe.
23:50
That's totally, totally possible.
23:52
OK, those all sound like pretty low tech things, but there are
23:55
more modern high tech ways that you can cheat.
23:58
Well, you know, modern problems require modern solutions.
24:01
There's no doubt about that. Yeah, to my knowledge there is
24:03
no AI cheat for poker. That's.
24:05
Most standby, standby exactly. Exactly.
24:08
I'm pretty sure there's a startup that's raised 30 million
24:10
bucks for Andreessen Horowitz that's working on this problem
24:13
right now. We have seen smartphone apps
24:15
that can read marked cards, which is fascinating to me.
24:19
Yeah, you, of course, you have communication devices, whether
24:21
it's micro, you know, earpieces that nobody can see.
24:24
So it doesn't just look like there's an Airpod hanging out of
24:26
your ear, or the haptics on phones and smartwatches.
24:30
The buzzing, the the little buzzing, the vibrating.
24:32
Yeah. I mean, these have been found in
24:34
the wild, right? There have been players that
24:36
have been using like observation from afar and they've
24:39
communicated the card holdings of other folks and then it's
24:42
like you're looking at your watch and it's showing you that
24:45
your neighbor has Ace of Hearts. They're communicating it via via
24:47
haptics and I find that absolutely mind bending they can
24:51
do. This Give me one vibration.
24:52
If I'm going to win, give me two vibrations.
24:54
Yeah, right. SOS for the wind.
24:56
But I think before we get too deep into the technology behind
24:59
some of the most recent approaches on cheating, the one
25:01
that that you and I really want to talk about, I think we first
25:03
need to talk about your good old standard 52 card French suited
25:06
deck. Yeah, right.
25:07
So that's like this is the deck that we all, when you say deck
25:10
of cards, we're talking about a 52 card deck that has 13 ranks,
25:14
SO4 suits. Yep, 4 suits.
25:15
Like that's the when I say deck of cards, I think that's what
25:17
everyone sort of universally, internationally knows.
25:20
How many ways are there to configure that deck?
25:23
How many different orders can you put it in?
25:24
So if I shuffle the deck. How many ways?
25:26
I think there's seven or eight, depends on how good of a
25:29
shuffler you are. And or 52 factorial.
25:32
So 52 factorial is the right answer.
25:34
So 52 factorial means the number 52 multiplied by every number
25:38
less than it except 0 or, you know, greater. 52 * 51 * 50 *
25:42
49. So that is a giant number.
25:45
The problem is it's very hard for us as humans, even me as a
25:49
math guy, you know, self-proclaimed math guy, to
25:51
really know how big 52 factorial.
25:54
Is it's virtually infinite. I can just tell you right now
25:58
that is for all intent and purposes, it's infinite.
26:02
I'm going to say a lot more words here, but really all you
26:04
need to know is what Jeff just said.
26:06
You should think of 52 Factorial as infinite because it
26:09
effectively. Ways that snowflakes can be
26:11
identical. That's how unlikely.
26:13
Let me break this down just just to put this in some form of
26:16
perspective that that maybe us as mere humans can understand.
26:19
52 factorial is the #8 followed by 67 zeros, 8 by 67 zeros.
26:26
The only number that I know of that we would communicate that
26:29
is larger than that is a Google, and a Google is A1 followed by
26:32
100 zeros. Yeah, so this is an 8 followed
26:34
by 67 zeros. For perspective, that is more
26:37
than all the atoms on Earth. All of the people named Adam.
26:40
All of the people named Adam with either spelling on Earth.
26:44
No, all of the atoms on Earth. And I don't just mean like on
26:47
the surface of Earth. I mean in Earth all like, yeah,
26:50
that number is bigger than all of the atoms in and on Earth
26:54
more so that number is bigger than all of the atoms in the
26:56
Milky Way, which is still a massive number.
26:59
But I wasn't. That doesn't really tell me how
27:01
big it is. It tells me it's really big, but
27:03
it's only how big enough so how big it is.
27:05
So follow me for a minute here. I think you're going to love
27:06
this. Let's just just say we were to
27:08
set a clock to that number of seconds, 8 * * 10 to the 67th.
27:13
So an 8 followed by 67 zeros. Yes, we're going to put the
27:16
number of seconds on a clock. And now you and I are going to
27:18
go to the equator. Oh, I like that.
27:20
Yeah, we should actually do that.
27:21
We're going to get to the equator, you and I together, and
27:23
the first thing we're going to do is we're going to wait 1
27:25
billion years. Oh, no, no, yes.
27:27
First thing we're going to do is we're going to order the.
27:28
Tacos. OK, We order the tacos and then
27:30
we wait 1 billion years. OK, 25% the age of the earth.
27:33
And then we take one step. Yeah, after that, we're going to
27:35
wait a billion years and take another.
27:37
Step Yeah, this is the worst dance I've ever been to.
27:40
Well, it's about to get worse. We're going to do this all the
27:42
way around the Earth, OK? So roughly speaking, that is
27:46
going to be about 57,000,000 steps.
27:50
In between every step, we're going to wait a billion years.
27:53
Now, when we get back to our starting point, we get all the
27:56
way back. We're going to take one drop of
27:58
water out of the Pacific Ocean and we're going to set it aside.
28:01
And then we're going to repeat the process of waiting a billion
28:04
years in between steps to go all the way around the.
28:06
Planet to get another drop of water.
28:07
Take another drop of water. Yeah.
28:09
And we're going to keep doing that until the Pacific Ocean is
28:12
empty. Yeah.
28:13
Now, once that's all done, so we've we've done this, this
28:15
trip, we go around. OK, one drop of water.
28:17
Once that's all done, we're going to take a piece of paper
28:19
and we're going to set it on the ground next to us.
28:20
And then we're going to do it all again.
28:21
We're going to wait a billion years between each step.
28:24
When we come all the way around, after a billion years between
28:26
each step, we're going to take a drop of water.
28:27
We're going to do this. And then we're going to put a
28:29
second sheet of paper on. OK.
28:30
And we're going to keep going. And we're going to keep going
28:32
until that stack of paper reaches the sun.
28:35
A billion years between each step, all the way to take out
28:37
one drop of water. You know the top part's gonna
28:38
burn. Very resistant paper.
28:40
OK, we're gonna keep doing this until we stack papers all the
28:42
way to reach the sun. And now, after this is all done,
28:45
we're gonna look at the clock. That clock, when we started, it
28:47
had 8.07 * 10 to the 67th number of seconds.
28:50
Yeah, you know what it's gonna read now.
28:51
No 8.06 * 10 to the 67 number of seconds.
28:55
Yeah, that's about how long it feels like this story's been
28:57
going. If we did this, listen, if we
28:59
did this whole trip, yes, right. The Walking around the earth,
29:02
the drop of water out of the ocean, the stack of the paper to
29:04
the sun. If we did this whole thing 1000
29:06
times, yeah, we would have only taken a third of the time off
29:09
the clock. That's how big this number is.
29:11
And this was the explanation I saw where I went Oh, that's how
29:14
big it is. A billion years between steps.
29:17
Yeah, just like it blows my mind.
29:18
This is the weirdest survivor challenge I've ever heard.
29:21
Of got to start filming it now and I'm sure Dick Wolf someone's
29:23
got we got rights on this thing. I'm sure the reason I tell you
29:26
all of this is because if you shuffle the deck in front of you
29:29
reasonably so typically we say you got to riff it about 7
29:32
times, You got to riff it the deck, then you with almost
29:35
perfect certainty have a deck of cards that has never been in
29:39
that order anywhere in time and space in the universe.
29:41
OK, the basic math is around 99.99, repeating 55 times,
29:47
percent unique. There's virtually no chance that
29:49
you've ever had a deck in that order ever again on Earth, RUG.
29:53
And roughly speaking, 7 riffle shuffles.
29:56
The sort of the shuffle where you spread the cards out.
29:58
Standard shuffle. Yeah, standard shuffles enough
30:00
to get you there. Now, I find that somewhat
30:02
fascinating that 7 gets you to a state where the odds are in your
30:05
favor that no one has ever seen it before.
30:07
That's pretty, pretty cool. Yeah.
30:08
You want true sort of randomness of the overage.
30:10
You probably do it 10,000 times. That's why you use the the
30:12
riffle shuffle. But there's also something that
30:13
I think is really fascinating about the decks and the the fact
30:16
that they're so unique. If you were to do a perfect
30:18
farro shuffle. So a farro shuffle is where the
30:19
deck is split exactly in half and perfectly interleaved.
30:22
So, you know, right. And then card from, you know, a
30:24
card from B card from A card from BA zipper, a perfect
30:27
zipper, perfect zipper. If you did that and if you
30:29
performed that perfect shuffle 8 times where the top card always
30:32
stayed on top, after 8 times, you would get a 52 card deck in
30:36
its original order back, which I find fascinating.
30:39
Oh, that's really cool. Isn't that cool?
30:40
Yeah. Like, so if you do it 8 times
30:42
perfectly, you end up exactly back where you started.
30:44
I also found that fascinating. But that is not the coolest
30:46
thing about these decks. What I find even more amazing,
30:49
and this was from a guy named Ben Joffe.
30:51
He explored this idea about 15 years ago.
30:53
He publishes results in on his blog in 2009.
30:56
He wondered if it was possible to stack a deck so that no
30:59
matter which way it was cut, the winning hand was always dealt to
31:02
the dealer. OK, Right.
31:03
This is in, in, in Texas Holdem. And it turns out the answer is
31:06
yes. Sure.
31:07
So he wrote some scripts to figure this out.
31:08
It was really fun. He found solutions all the way
31:11
up to seven players where you could have a that's cool.
31:13
A a deck, right? A deck that's in a certain order
31:16
where no matter where you cut it, the same player always wins.
31:19
Not just the dealer could be a player in any position.
31:21
Yeah, always wins. I find that fascinating.
31:24
But you have to set up that deck in that specific order.
31:26
Yes, the deck has. To be set up in that specific
31:28
order and typically and hold them really in any card game you
31:30
after you shuffle, you hand the deck to someone that's not the
31:33
dealer to make the cut. And the point is that you could
31:35
come up with cards in an order such that even with the cut,
31:38
yeah, the dealer could still guarantee who wins.
31:40
If only you had like a shuffling machine that could put the cards
31:43
yeah in the order that you wanted them to be.
31:45
If only if that were a thing. And if only that machine had a
31:48
USB port on it so that you could, oh, I don't know, tell it
31:51
what to. Do sure yeah, connect a
31:53
Raspberry Pi to it. Yes, that is the whole premise
31:56
of this show and I'm so glad that Jeff Jeff brought us there.
31:58
So enter the deck mate shuffling machine.
32:00
Yes, now the original deck mate, the deck mate wasn't called the
32:03
deck mate one, but we can call it the deck mate one.
32:05
It was designed in 2002 to buy shuffle entertainment.
32:09
Very cute. Their name was SHFL
32:11
Entertainment for casino poker rooms, right?
32:13
To assist dealers and shuffling. That was the whole point of this
32:16
thing. Sure.
32:16
It took about 45 seconds to shuffle deck of cards.
32:19
They had basically a monopoly over shuffling machines and they
32:21
generally rented them out. They didn't.
32:22
Even sell you everything. You and I can't buy one of
32:24
these. We can buy used ones.
32:25
You can. Find used ones now, I don't know
32:27
how they become, I don't know how they end up in the used
32:29
hands. I don't know how much that that
32:30
process has changed. But early on they were the only
32:32
ones that had, it was 500 bucks a month, you know, and it came
32:35
with service and all that fun stuff.
32:36
Yeah, In 2013, Shuffler Entertainment was acquired by
32:39
Bally's. Later Bally's agreed to be
32:41
acquired by Scientific Games. Scientific Games is now called
32:43
Light and Wonder. Light and Wonder released, or I
32:46
should say it was back when was still shuffled, but they
32:48
released the Deck Mate 2 in around 2012.
32:51
And a successor. Yes.
32:53
Yeah, the successor. So this is the one that you're
32:54
mostly going to see these days is the Deck Mate 2.
32:57
It's their most this. Is when you when you read about
32:59
the NBA cheating scandal, this is the shuffler they're using.
33:02
From Light and Wonder's website, they say the Deck Mate 2
33:05
features a number of enhancements, including a
33:07
shuffle time. Just 22 seconds sounds exciting.
33:10
Onboard card recognition, right? That's a little concerning.
33:12
Should be a built in timer so that they can call the clock,
33:15
which is which is a nice sort of ancillary thing and the ability
33:18
to sort cards back to a suited deck.
33:20
Sure. So the onboard card recognition
33:22
and the sort back to a suited deck concerns me, right?
33:25
Those aren't necessarily. Should be troubling for anyone
33:27
paying attention. Yeah, you would want that.
33:29
That sounds not great to me. These things were deployed
33:32
everywhere. I mean, I saw these deck mates.
33:34
Everywhere. It's the default shuffler of
33:35
gambling establishments all over the.
33:37
World early on, I would say within the first couple of
33:39
years, this thing being out there, you had plenty of of
33:41
nerds and privacy, privacy advocates, typical like folks
33:44
that look at electronics and don't trust them saying this is
33:47
risky. Now I, as a person who has spent
33:49
time around cards, I made a very broad assumption that there was
33:52
no camera in this thing. I didn't know you couldn't.
33:54
Find out maybe the optical recognition.
33:56
I didn't know that they did shuffling in order.
33:58
I didn't know that you could actually put back an order.
34:00
I know that it was doing card checks.
34:01
Yeah, that was a feature that I didn't know.
34:02
Once I found that out, I was like, oh, now you've got a real
34:05
problem. Now you can sort any way you
34:07
want, not just by suit. Let's.
34:08
Go back a couple years to September of 22.
34:11
This is when any any folks who follow poker probably saw this.
34:14
There was a live stream poker event here in LA at the Hustler
34:17
Live Casino and you basically had a a novice playing against a
34:20
veteran. The novice had a terrible hand,
34:22
had a a a Jack for and called the the bluff of a veteran
34:26
player. Sure.
34:27
And pretty much the entire poker community, including myself and
34:30
my friends, all agreed that there is no, no way this person
34:33
could have made this call unless they had information that the
34:36
rest of us didn't have at that time.
34:38
Basically, there was some cheating involved.
34:39
They had to know something because you just would not have
34:41
made this. Had to know the other player was
34:43
bluffing and did not. Happen.
34:45
And the guy that got called the table was just like, in
34:47
disbelief. This should have never happened.
34:49
Yeah. Now several months later,
34:50
Hustler Casino published a post mortem of the investigation,
34:54
right? And they found, quote, no
34:55
credible evidence of foul play. And they noted that if there was
34:58
cheating, it was most likely some sort of secret
35:00
communication between the player and a staff member in the
35:02
production booth. Somebody could see the players
35:04
in real hand. Because the cameras can see
35:06
they're like there's. No way this was anything to do
35:08
with our casino or our stuff. And they had said in in their
35:12
statement, they had said the deck mate shuffling machine is
35:14
secure and cannot be compromised.
35:16
They their position, this is Hustler's position.
35:18
They ruled out any possibility that the automated card shuffle
35:21
machine that was used at the table for this event sure could
35:23
have been hacked. They just said it was not
35:25
possible. To let me describe really
35:26
quickly what this thing looks like, the Placer has some idea
35:28
what we're talking about. It almost looks like an old
35:30
school PC case. Yeah, it's almost the size of
35:33
that. It's painted black.
35:34
They get scuffed up because they're typically mounted under
35:36
the table. So you're not seeing this giant
35:38
machinery on the table. And you put the card to deck
35:40
with cards in and they come back to you shuffled in like, you
35:42
know, 22 seconds really fast. You put them in, they disappear.
35:45
They they have a little elevator, they go down and then
35:47
some magic happens and they come back.
35:48
Out and the other thing that you need to know about this is that
35:51
on on the back of it is a USB port yes.
35:54
By the way, when it's installed in the table, the USB port faces
35:58
the the customers, it faces the the players.
36:00
But was there ever an explanation as to why this thing
36:03
had a USB? Mean, I think they leave it for
36:05
presumption of like updating firmware and things like that.
36:07
Yeah. Again, why you would make it an
36:08
exposed USB port, not something inside which would mitigate the
36:12
problem a little bit. It would keep it so that a
36:14
player just walking up couldn't. But you still have to worry
36:16
about cleaning staff and the technicians that are there.
36:19
The dealers like you still have all sorts of other chains of
36:21
custody issues, but let's talk about how how we sort of
36:24
discovered that these things were, you know, big surprise,
36:27
hackable. Programmable, let's say.
36:29
Programmable. That's the right word.
36:30
You're right, not even hackable programmable.
36:33
So there there was this kind of IO active that that when they
36:36
when they heard this statement from Hustler, they went, oh boy,
36:39
that sounds like a challenge to me, right?
36:41
Pretty much any right, any reasonable hagger If you tell
36:43
them something can't be done here we go.
36:45
First thing they do is set their beer down.
36:46
The second thing they do is figure it out.
36:48
And that's typically what happens.
36:49
Sure. So this was back in in 2023 and
36:52
IO Active found that with a Deck Mate 2 that has this internal
36:56
camera and you know this external USB port, they could
36:58
gain access to the camera to learn the entire order of the
37:01
deck in real. Time.
37:02
Well, of course. And they could.
37:03
Send the results from the deck right via Bluetooth to a nearby
37:07
phone. The equipment they needed to do
37:09
this, they never needed to open the device, they just had to
37:11
plug. In a fact it was a Raspberry Pi
37:13
0, so a very tiny itty bitty micro computer into the port.
37:18
Because the Raspberry Pi 0, at least the West, has a Bluetooth
37:20
stack. On so that was in 2023 and a
37:23
Wired got a hold of this the magazine Wired got a hold of
37:25
this found it fascinating did a whole article on it.
37:28
They actually set up a game, a fake game with real players, not
37:32
for real money, and they tried to cheat at this that the
37:36
reporter who was actually playing the cards is a terrible
37:39
poker player. Admitted and they had it.
37:41
Yeah, self admitted terrible poker player, but they had the
37:44
the one of the IO active employees communicating in real
37:48
time the information to them and and what he knew was because
37:51
they know the order of the cards that come out of the the
37:53
shuffler, they still get cut. It doesn't matter when they cut.
37:56
All you've done is change the index into where the first card
37:59
is right? So as soon as the cards are
38:00
dealt, as soon as you see your first card in your hole in
38:04
poker, or the first card you see on the flop, you now know the
38:07
order of all the. Cards entire deck.
38:09
You know what everyone has? Everything that got dealt and.
38:11
And you know who's going to win and who's going to lose?
38:13
Again, this is back in 2023. So this was public information
38:17
in at least as early as 2023, if not earlier.
38:21
And in my little bit of looking around, there are plenty of
38:24
people talking online about, you know, they say, I saw these
38:28
things happen with a Decmate 2 predating 2022, predating even
38:33
the Hustler event. So sure, you had a lot of
38:35
players saying, no, that's not possible.
38:37
You're, you know, just a, just an upset player, you're not very
38:40
good. And that's why you're right.
38:41
But there have been a lot of folks talking about in 2023.
38:43
We've proven now publicly that this is doable.
38:46
And then as you were alluding to earlier last month, in October
38:48
of 2025, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment
38:51
from earlier in the month that alleged 31 people, including
38:55
several organized families, along with two well known
38:58
figures in the NBA. So that was the Portland
38:59
Trailblazer, coach Chauncey Billups, I think you mentioned
39:01
earlier. Detroit Pistons player, a star
39:04
player, a fantastic player. How did he get caught up in
39:08
former? Player and assistant coach Damon
39:09
Jones for what prosecutors describe as their roles in a
39:12
vast rigging gambling conspiracy.
39:14
And as it turns out, one of they were doing many things, but one
39:17
of the things they were doing were using these hacked deck
39:20
mates. So they had people acting as
39:22
what they call them Jeff, I think like a like a quarterback
39:24
or something. They had like a, they tried to
39:26
throw them off the. Yes, somebody at the table who
39:28
looks at his cards and then folds, folds immediately, and
39:30
then they look at their lack like they're distracted or
39:32
they're texting their friends on their phone or whatever they get
39:35
from the computer attached to the shuffling device by a
39:37
Bluetooth or whatever. In the case of the NBA scandal,
39:40
they were actually getting it, sending it out by IP and sending
39:42
it back in. So it was actually leaving the
39:44
building. They looked down and they get
39:46
the entire order of the deck. You know the order of the deck,
39:48
you know your position in the deck, Now you communicate to
39:50
whomever you want, right? Who's gonna win?
39:52
Who's gonna lose? So now you know how to play like
39:54
all of the unknown of the game, you know, based on, oh, do I,
39:57
I've got 2 Queens. Is this gonna be the winning it
39:59
all that's gone. Yeah.
40:00
So anybody that has this information knows who is going
40:02
to win with certainty. Ultimately in the indictment,
40:05
they allege that something, the tune of like $7,000,000 was
40:08
fleeced from people they just wanted to play with NBA stars,
40:10
right? The allure to come to this game
40:11
was to come play with an NBA. Stars the celebrity thing.
40:14
Yeah, right. Like I want to be around so and
40:15
so. And then you would just get bled
40:17
for a bunch of money because they would, they would beat you.
40:19
Yeah. Wired, who's done the most sort
40:22
of research on this and I've read a couple of their articles.
40:24
They reached out to Light and Wonder the folks who make the
40:26
deck mate too, and their company spokesman responded by pointing
40:30
out to multiple ways the company has improved the shuffler's
40:32
security. So namely, they've done a
40:33
firmware update that is supposed to patch the security flaws,
40:36
like requiring it to do a cryptographic check on the
40:39
firmware so it can't be altered, yadda yadda.
40:41
And I look at all. They also had an update to
40:43
disable the USB port. Lovely.
40:45
But I look at all that. I'm like, you just fixed all of
40:46
it in software. Like that's all.
40:48
That's all still reversible. Sure, take the damn camera out,
40:51
put it in a clear box like, right?
40:52
Do some things to make this a little easier.
40:54
This is why we were saying the shuffling machine be in a clear
40:57
box on the table where everyone can see it, yeah.
40:59
Absolutely now and also I just want to I mentioned this, I just
41:01
want to be clear on this. The charges against these 31
41:05
folks in the indictment, it's not just about cheating with a
41:07
deck mate too. They were also using.
41:08
Marked cards. Basically marked cards and they
41:11
had like electronic poker chip trays and phones that could read
41:14
card markings and special glasses and contact lenses.
41:16
Like sure, these guys were it was like, you know, James Bond
41:19
double O 7 sort of cheatery. But the deck mate one was the
41:23
most interesting to me because again, people postulated this
41:25
for 10 years, but now it's out in the wild being used, not just
41:29
demonstrated by Wired in quote the lab, right?
41:31
But we've actually seen this out in the wild being used.
41:34
I don't know yet if the the folks in this indictment were
41:36
using it before the Wired article came out.
41:38
My hunch is certainly the Wired article could have been the the
41:42
impetus for like, oh, hey, we can hack these things, right?
41:45
Let's go find them, find a couple nerds that can help us
41:48
figure out firmware for this, and away we go.
41:49
Anytime you want to make a piece of machinery like this and you
41:51
want us to trust that it's not completely hackable, yeah, take
41:55
a few of them to DEFCON and let the teams at DEFCON just go to
41:58
work on these things. And if they can't break it,
42:00
you're probably. Fine, yeah.
42:01
Or they just haven't told. You.
42:02
Well, that could happen too. You could just set your watch by
42:04
how quick until these things are broken but.
42:06
Sure, this is the crew who will voluntarily.
42:08
Yeah, do your dirty work and figure out where your flaws are.
42:11
They'll. Probably pay you for the honor.
42:13
Yeah, do it and break it first. Yeah.
42:14
I mean, look, at the end of the day, my thing is, I think any
42:17
shuffle with a camera inside that idea is going to put you at
42:19
severe risk of cheating. That's just not a great idea.
42:22
And generally speaking, I would say when you're gamble, right,
42:27
when you're playing cards, you're already putting a lot of
42:29
trust in the house that they're gonna pay you, right?
42:31
You give them real money, sure. And they give you fake little
42:33
chips. You're putting trust that
42:35
they're going. To those.
42:35
Convert those chips back into money S you're already putting
42:38
some trust into them. I look at it and I just go,
42:40
well, what's your brand value, right?
42:42
I'm pretty confident that the sands isn't gonna RIP me off for
42:46
a couple 100 bucks or even, you know, 10s or hundreds of
42:49
thousands of dollars. Sure, because their license.
42:51
Is so valued. I was gonna say they're gaming
42:52
licenses. They just wouldn't.
42:54
Do it right. Like, like they have too much to
42:56
risk. If you're at some local dimly
42:58
lit house game, at some point they could just rug pull that
43:01
thing and be like, yeah, no, sorry, we're keeping the money.
43:03
Sure. So trust is a really important
43:05
part of this. And to me, it's not just
43:06
trusting that the house didn't cheat, it's trusting that the
43:09
house had sort of control over the device, right.
43:12
Chain of custody. Yeah.
43:13
Because you could have someone that's not the house but
43:15
associated getting that the folks that are cleaning the
43:17
tables, right? Or setting them up or bringing
43:18
the chairs, sure. Any of those people could have
43:21
could have cheated. And there have been some
43:22
documented cases of folks that seem to be not related to the
43:25
house performing these sort of firmware updates to get data out
43:29
of these machines. So I just think Truss is a
43:31
really important part. Now there is a a relatively easy
43:34
mitigation strategy for especially for these deck mate
43:36
twos, which is. If there's any reason to
43:38
question the deck. Mate, yeah, if you're, if you're
43:39
questioning the output of these deck mates, a deck mate twos or
43:42
any automatic shuffler, which you should, yeah, one of the
43:45
simplest things you can do to help mitigate that risk is have
43:49
the human dealer riffle them. Shuffle the cards.
43:52
Just two times is enough, preferably 3 or 4, but just two
43:55
times is enough so that now I don't know the order of every
43:58
single card in the deck, right? And and I look at this and I go,
44:00
man, I understand why you want to, you know, less repetitive
44:03
stress on the dealer. You want to turntables faster.
44:06
Players want to play faster, but I think we can all survive two
44:09
or three riffles which will take like 4 seconds.
44:12
Yeah, no, no time about. I mean, someone that's a
44:13
professional can do this very quickly and then you've got much
44:16
better odds of them not cheating, right?
44:18
I trust the dealer a lot more than I do the machine that
44:21
someone, some faceless person, could have manipulated.
44:23
Well, now everybody who listens, you all know how to cheat at
44:26
cards. I'm I'm glad to have corrupted
44:27
all of. You man, I am so glad that these
44:30
deck mates like if you want to buy one online the click of a
44:32
button you're gonna spend 15 ish grand.
44:35
I've seen them used for sort of the three to $4000.
44:37
Range I see 12/5 for a deck mate too I.
44:39
So badly want to get one because here's the thing, right?
44:42
What they've done so far is is told you the order, which is
44:45
really cool, right? They're communicating the order.
44:47
But remember, these things can put the decks back into order.
44:50
They can put it back into the order that you want.
44:51
So when you're done with the cards, you can count them and
44:54
make sure no notes cards escape you play.
44:55
There's not 2 ace of spades and no two of diamonds.
44:58
Yeah, and get rid of them. That means I can put them into
45:00
any order. And if you remember earlier, I
45:02
was telling you about Ben Joffe, who figured out that there are
45:05
certain orders where you can guarantee what person wins.
45:07
Sure. You want to do that?
45:08
Don't you now, I'm sure it's going to take more than 22
45:11
seconds of shuffle time, but man, I love the idea of being
45:14
able to say, hey, I want the person to seat forward to win.
45:17
And it being able to just hand it out like you just as a parlor
45:19
trick, not using to steal money from people.
45:21
Sure. I think this would be
45:22
fascinating. So I'm so glad these things are
45:24
just expensive enough to make me go, no, I don't want to go spend
45:27
50 hours of my life and five grand making this thing.
45:30
What might be cheaper is for one of our listeners to just send me
45:32
a deck mate to that they're sitting on, and I'll go ahead
45:35
and spring for the Raspberry Pi and we'll figure out how to make
45:37
this thing spit out Magic decks. I mean, could you imagine?
45:40
I just love the idea of being able to say I've made a deck for
45:44
this number of people that seats always going to win no matter
45:46
where the cut is. Sure, I think.
45:48
So many people would just not believe it.
45:49
They would just be like no, let me cut it.
45:51
I'm so glad that that is just out of of the reasonable reach
45:54
for me because it has now saved me 10s if not hundreds of hours
45:57
of my life. All right, Speaking of 10s of
45:59
thousands of hours of our lives, we have to get out of here, but
46:01
quickly before we do, have you seen or read anything good this
46:03
last week? Well, look, not this past week,
46:06
but given the theme of the show. Oh, you're taking the theme of
46:09
the show for your recommendation?
46:11
Wow. Yeah, it's taken me 160 episodes
46:14
to learn from you, but. Somebody showed up and did
46:17
homework. Well, no, I wouldn't say I did
46:18
homework. I had to reach into the cobwebs
46:21
of my brain and I was like, OK, what are my favorite gambling
46:24
movies? And I was like, well, casino or
46:26
round, those are both great examples, right?
46:28
Yeah. But then I was like, how about
46:30
2001's Ocean's 11? Because Ocean's 11A delightful
46:33
move is a fantastic film. So for those that don't
46:35
remember, Danny Ocean is the lead character in the film.
46:39
It's, of course, George Clooney. He's a man of action.
46:41
Less than 24 hours into his parole from a New Jersey
46:44
penitentiary, he is out rolling his next plan.
46:47
And he doesn't hurt anybody. He doesn't want to steal from
46:49
anyone who doesn't deserve it. Quote, UN quote, which I love.
46:51
And he, he's going to, you know, play the game like not to lose
46:55
and play for big stakes. Absolutely amazing.
46:56
Amazing. It's so much fun.
46:57
Rockstar cast. George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad
47:00
Pitt, Don Cheadle, Andy Garcia, Carl Reiner, who I had forgotten
47:03
about. And I was like, Oh yeah, Carl
47:04
Reiner's in that feels. So good in it he's.
47:06
So good in it and Julia Roberts. I mean everyone is amazing.
47:10
So my recommendation this week is Ocean's 11, available on VHS
47:13
and Laserdisc at a Blockbuster near you.
47:14
How? About you.
47:15
Listen, my recommendation is even older than that.
47:17
Oh boy. It is also a gambling movie.
47:19
OK, 1973 is The Sting the definitive con artist caper?
47:24
Yeah. 390 legends Paul Newman and Robert Redford Vern Oscar
47:26
winning masterpiece set in the dazzling Deceptor world of 1930s
47:30
Chicago. Redford plays Johnny Hooker, a
47:32
small time grifter seeking vengeance after his mentor is
47:34
killed by ruthless mob boss Doyle Lonegan, who's played by
47:38
Robert Schaub. Brilliantly, he teams up with
47:40
the legendary Henry Gondorf, played by Paul Newman, a master
47:43
of the Big Con, for spectacular high stakes revenge scheme
47:46
designed to separate Lonegan from a massive sum of cash.
47:49
Steeped in period detail jazzy rag time music, it's what
47:52
popularized Scott Joplin's The Entertainer and sharp Suits.
47:55
The Sting is a master club class in misdirection leading up to 1
47:58
of cinema's most famous and perfectly executed surprise
48:02
endings. The Sting Available for rent on
48:03
YouTube, movies and TV now. So once again, even though I
48:06
pull Ocean's 11 now, which is a great film, The Sting is better.
48:10
Yeah, the sting is better. You're neck and neck there.
48:12
I don't know. I do love Henry Gondorf though.
48:15
His dressing, the Gondorf's own dressing, is really.
48:17
Good. Isn't this episode long enough?
48:20
That is the episode. Thank you for joining us for all
48:22
this nonsense truly terrible podcast from our awful company
48:26
is on the web at nonsense dot productions.
48:27
I'm still. I'm Jeff Parker.
48:28
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Thursday mornings for more nonsense.
49:01
After our Thanksgiving break. Oh, I'll be fatter.
49:03
Join us then. When my child was younger, I
49:17
gambled a lot by getting up to go to the bathroom in the night
49:20
in the dark and and gambling whether or not there'd be Lego
49:23
on the floor in my pants. Oh yeah, it's a parent's
49:25
standard gamble. Yeah, if Dante were alive today,
49:28
the 9th inner ring of hell would just be covered in Legos.
49:31
That's what it would be. He'd be like, oh, yeah, it was
49:33
ice. But now if you go inside the
49:35
ice, it's just Legos. And you walk even worse.
49:37
It's even worse. Good luck.
49:38
Yeah. Everyone's like, no, no, just
49:39
leave me in the ice, Please. Just leave me in the ice.
49:41
I don't want to go to the Legos.