ASM, CSM and Indian casinos.

[fjrider]

Have read old ASM threads, one ended at exactly the point I was looking for. Norm ended it with this post:

"The odds of being cheated by a machine in a mainstream casino are extremely low. But, a discussion is worth having as there are players that play well off the beaten path, different jurisdictions have different laws, and some devices do have limited programming capability. The original MP21 tables had features that violated NV law. There are tables with audio pickups in the UK that would violate NV law. It would be insanely stupid for a large casino to cheat. But then, who said the guys that run these casinos are all sane?

In any case, this discussion seems to have run its course. "

Since Indian casinos outnumber well regulated ones in the US, this is the discussion I was looking for. Why?
Because I was trying to beat a CSM and I saw some things that made me suspect, even though I tried to tell myself it was just all normal variance.
Too high a house win percentage far too often. High house win percentages that went on far too long. The final straw was close to 20/80 win/loss that went on for the equivalent of about 4 boots. Possible? Sure, but highly unlikely, and coupled with seeing the high percentages come in so often, I just gave up on it.

But, since I spent 20 years in the electronics business, most as technician and engineer, I thought to myself, "Hard to believe it's rigged, but let me think seriously about how I would do it if I was going to".
And here's what I came up with.

First there couldn't be any dealer or pit input, it had to do all itself. And my premise was that it would feed the dealer good hands.
Which meant the first problem was that it had to know how many players immediately as the number changed. Well, that would be easy to do. I own a little electronic scale that measures to a 10th of a grain, or about 1/5000th of an ounce, cost me $15 on Ebay and is about the size of a deck of cards(for gold prospecting, not the other stuff). Electronic display.
Since every hand was fed back into the machine as it was played all you would have to do is weigh them as they came into the hopper, and you would know after each hand pretty accurately how many people were playing, 2 or 3 hands and it would be effectively perfect. Feed that info to a processor, which the machine already has, and if it's not up to all that's needed, replace it with a more powerful one.
Since the CSM uses a wheel with a lot of slots, add in an optical reader and some memory, some position sensing(again easy old tech.) and the machine now knows where every card is.
It knows how many players so it's just a matter of setting parameters for how to load the exit. Would not always be perfect as people are nuts, but gaining an advantage would certainly happen. Since it probably would be more difficult to make it pull a specific card, you could load slots for different scenarios and set up an algorithm for selecting which slot to exit.
Now, I have no idea how many cards are loaded into the exit at a time but making that variable based on number of players wouldn't be hard either.
A good processor, some readily available and fairly cheap hardware, and I could rig one of those machines to cheat.
And I have a good friend that works on designing and implementing custom, leading edge control systems for extremely precise movement. He could do it a lot faster than I could.

So the how of it really only took a few minutes to outline once I really started to think about it, but IF they would do it is another question.
Why can't the maker do it and sell it at a certain house advantage, like a slot machine? I can't see any reason an Indian casino would not do that. But I don't know law.

Anyways, my real interest is how casino's do cheat, and mostly in the context of Indian casinos that regulate themselves. They might not consider it cheating. Which is somewhat related to what is indeed actually possible with those machines as they are sold.
I really want a random deal from an ASM, since that is what I'll focus on next. Although I am looking forward to playing a CSM in Nevada to look for differences.
And one of the biggest things that made me suspect the CSM was that when it was first loaded, I could beat it for about an hour to an hour and a half, it looked like a shuffled deck, but after that, no one could beat it. Once it had the cards moving for a while, the big percentage house runs started.

[Floor]

Have read old ASM threads, one ended at exactly the point I was looking for. Norm ended it with this post:

"The odds of being cheated by a machine in a mainstream casino are extremely low. But, a discussion is worth having as there are players that play well off the beaten path, different jurisdictions have different laws, and some devices do have limited programming capability. The original MP21 tables had features that violated NV law. There are tables with audio pickups in the UK that would violate NV law. It would be insanely stupid for a large casino to cheat. But then, who said the guys that run these casinos are all sane?

In any case, this discussion seems to have run its course. "

Since Indian casinos outnumber well regulated ones in the US, this is the discussion I was looking for. Why?
Because I was trying to beat a CSM and I saw some things that made me suspect, even though I tried to tell myself it was just all normal variance.
Too high a house win percentage far too often. High house win percentages that went on far too long. The final straw was close to 20/80 win/loss that went on for the equivalent of about 4 boots. Possible? Sure, but highly unlikely, and coupled with seeing the high percentages come in so often, I just gave up on it.

But, since I spent 20 years in the electronics business, most as technician and engineer, I thought to myself, "Hard to believe it's rigged, but let me think seriously about how I would do it if I was going to".
And here's what I came up with.

First there couldn't be any dealer or pit input, it had to do all itself. And my premise was that it would feed the dealer good hands.
Which meant the first problem was that it had to know how many players immediately as the number changed. Well, that would be easy to do. I own a little electronic scale that measures to a 10th of a grain, or about 1/5000th of an ounce, cost me $15 on Ebay and is about the size of a deck of cards(for gold prospecting, not the other stuff). Electronic display.
Since every hand was fed back into the machine as it was played all you would have to do is weigh them as they came into the hopper, and you would know after each hand pretty accurately how many people were playing, 2 or 3 hands and it would be effectively perfect. Feed that info to a processor, which the machine already has, and if it's not up to all that's needed, replace it with a more powerful one.
Since the CSM uses a wheel with a lot of slots, add in an optical reader and some memory, some position sensing(again easy old tech.) and the machine now knows where every card is.
It knows how many players so it's just a matter of setting parameters for how to load the exit. Would not always be perfect as people are nuts, but gaining an advantage would certainly happen. Since it probably would be more difficult to make it pull a specific card, you could load slots for different scenarios and set up an algorithm for selecting which slot to exit.
Now, I have no idea how many cards are loaded into the exit at a time but making that variable based on number of players wouldn't be hard either.
A good processor, some readily available and fairly cheap hardware, and I could rig one of those machines to cheat.
And I have a good friend that works on designing and implementing custom, leading edge control systems for extremely precise movement. He could do it a lot faster than I could.

So the how of it really only took a few minutes to outline once I really started to think about it, but IF they would do it is another question.
Why can't the maker do it and sell it at a certain house advantage, like a slot machine? I can't see any reason an Indian casino would not do that. But I don't know law.

Anyways, my real interest is how casino's do cheat, and mostly in the context of Indian casinos that regulate themselves. They might not consider it cheating. Which is somewhat related to what is indeed actually possible with those machines as they are sold.
I really want a random deal from an ASM, since that is what I'll focus on next. Although I am looking forward to playing a CSM in Nevada to look for differences.
And one of the biggest things that made me suspect the CSM was that when it was first loaded, I could beat it for about an hour to an hour and a half, it looked like a shuffled deck, but after that, no one could beat it. Once it had the cards moving for a while, the big percentage house runs started.

Alright first of all, "4 boots" doesn't sound like a meaningful sample size at all. Second of all, your theory on how a CSM would be rigged is absolutely way too far fetched. A much easier and practical method would be for the machine to be programmed to simply prevent a number of aces and/or tens from ever coming in to play. So for example, let's assume you program the 6 deck CSM to prevent half the aces (12) and one quarter of the tens (24) from ever being dealt. Since most houses require the dealers to put the cards back in after each round, I doubt that most players would notice that the house edge just went from around a half a percent to close to 4%*. You could certainly test a casino's CSM to determine if this method was being utilized, but I'm fairly certain it would be a colossal waste of your time.

*This 4% house edge also assumes you use perfect strategy based on the adjusted composition of the shoe, which no one would know to do, so the house edge would actually be higher.

[fjrider]

Alright first of all, "4 boots" doesn't sound like a meaningful sample size at all. Second of all, your theory on how a CSM would be rigged is absolutely way too far fetched. A much easier and practical method would be for the machine to be programmed to simply prevent a number of aces and/or tens from ever coming in to play. So for example, let's assume you program the 6 deck CSM to prevent half the aces (12) and one quarter of the tens (24) from ever being dealt. Since most houses require the dealers to put the cards back in after each round, I doubt that most players would notice that the house edge just went from around a half a percent to close to 4%*. You could certainly test a casino's CSM to determine if this method was being utilized, but I'm fairly certain it would be a colossal waste of your time.

*This 4% house edge also assumes you use perfect strategy based on the adjusted composition of the shoe, which no one would know to do, so the house edge would actually be higher.

My solution is not "far fetched". I am sure I could do it without much trouble.
But what I am interested in is what is actually happening/actually possible. With Indian casinos self regulating, I would expect something.
I noticed that in previous threads a lot of responses were based on what NV could get away with/be willing to do. Not my focus.

[Dieter]

Since every hand was fed back into the machine as it was played all you would have to do is weigh them as they came into the hopper, and you would know after each hand pretty accurately how many people were playing, 2 or 3 hands and it would be effectively perfect.

Or, without adding visible hardware, time the dealing of the initial cards.

There should usually be a brief pause between the dealer's last card and the first player's option, and that will always occur after an even number of cards have come out (4,6,8,10,12,14, or 16).

Since most cards will already be enhanced with no-peek (or tech art) markings, the optical sensor can be extremely simple - you don't need OCR to pick off the aces and faces.

The most subtle move, in my opinion, is to try to deal the dealer's hand an ace up blackjack slightly less often than usual, and an ace down blackjack slightly more often than usual. This would not account for a 20/80 win/loss, and would be hard to recognize.

[Floor]

My solution is not "far fetched". I am sure I could do it without much trouble.
But what I am interested in is what is actually happening/actually possible. With Indian casinos self regulating, I would expect something.
I noticed that in previous threads a lot of responses were based on what NV could get away with/be willing to do. Not my focus.

Well your method is certainly unnecessarily complicated.

[Freightman]

Alright first of all, "4 boots" doesn't sound like a meaningful sample size at all. Second of all, your theory on how a CSM would be rigged is absolutely way too far fetched. A much easier and practical method would be for the machine to be programmed to simply prevent a number of aces and/or tens from ever coming in to play. So for example, let's assume you program the 6 deck CSM to prevent half the aces (12) and one quarter of the tens (24) from ever being dealt. Since most houses require the dealers to put the cards back in after each round, I doubt that most players would notice that the house edge just went from around a half a percent to close to 4%*. You could certainly test a casino's CSM to determine if this method was being utilized, but I'm fairly certain it would be a colossal waste of your time.

*This 4% house edge also assumes you use perfect strategy based on the adjusted composition of the shoe, which no one would know to do, so the house edge would actually be higher.

Is there anyway of getting a look at the code? Who, at the casino level, if anyone, has access?

[Norm]

Much easier to cheat without a machine.

[fjrider]

Or, without adding visible hardware, time the dealing of the initial cards.

There should usually be a brief pause between the dealer's last card and the first player's option, and that will always occur after an even number of cards have come out (4,6,8,10,12,14, or 16).

Since most cards will already be enhanced with no-peek (or tech art) markings, the optical sensor can be extremely simple - you don't need OCR to pick off the aces and faces.

The most subtle move, in my opinion, is to try to deal the dealer's hand an ace up blackjack slightly less often than usual, and an ace down blackjack slightly more often than usual. This would not account for a 20/80 win/loss, and would be hard to recognize.

I have not thought much about an ASM being rigged, but this did occur to me, just haven't visualized the mechanics. Some kind of counter on exit? The weight thing, keeping track of # in boot?

[Floor]

Is there anyway of getting a look at the code? Who, at the casino level, if anyone, has access?

Well we use the One2Six which is proprietary technology, so I doubt the code is open source. As far as I know, there is no menu option to "use modified shoe" or anything like that. You could probably send an email to gaming laboratories and inquire about that though.

[fjrider]

Much easier to cheat without a machine.

Should have added I'm looking at 6D, 8D boots. Any examples greatly appreciated though.

[fjrider]

Well your method is certainly unnecessarily complicated.

Functionally, doing what you suggested would be pretty much equal in complication. I didn't mention anything that wasn't old tech, easily done.

[Three]

My solution is not "far fetched". I am sure I could do it without much trouble.
But what I am interested in is what is actually happening/actually possible. With Indian casinos self regulating, I would expect something.
I noticed that in previous threads a lot of responses were based on what NV could get away with/be willing to do. Not my focus.

I wasn't going to pick apart your idea but since you think it is doable I will point out why it wouldn't work after you do it.
1) The number of spots being changed could change from round to round.
2) The number of cards per spot played in each round is a huge variable. What would knowing 17 cards were played last round. This round the dealer got BJ and 12 cards were used. The round before last everyone got lots of low cards and 30 cards were used. How is the weight of the cards going to say anything about how to give the dealer a good hand.

[Floor]

I have not thought much about an ASM being rigged, but this did occur to me, just haven't visualized the mechanics. Some kind of counter on exit? The weight thing, keeping track of # in boot?

I've often wondered if the ASM could be "rigged" by simply ensuring that there is always a relatively even distribution of high and low cards in all shuffles produced. At face value, that would seem to eliminate the possibility of card counting, but might open up new possibilities for tracking the finite number of possible "flat" shuffles, or making plays based on cards you will not likely get. The math involved in that is way beyond me though.