Originally Posted by
bigplayer
Pitch games, definitely, 99.9% of the time it's done by rogue employees. I'd suspect that you have a less than 2% chance of being cheated at a pitch game though in a U.S. non-tribal casino. In tribal casinos or international casinos all bets are off and your chances of being cheated (or having your money outright stolen by casino management) goes way way up. There are several stories now about casinos in London just claiming card counting is cheating and waiting for players to either win big or buy-in big while losing and then make a comeback to get back to even or slightly ahead and then just have security eject them and keep their money.
Problem is, unless you're a card mechanic or magician yourself you will never really know for sure if you are being cheated. There are things to watch for mentioned in several books and those warning signs have not really changed over the last 50 years. (dealer turning wrist, keeping hands low, fiddling with chips in the middle of hand, etc). Best way when playing a pitch game is to just refuse to lose more than a certain amount to any single dealer, particularly if these warning signs are visible, and particularly in casinos with poor surveillance/poor management.
That said, you should not be overly paranoid about it either.
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