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Old 05-31-2007, 03:46 PM
Blair Rodman Blair Rodman is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 141
Default What is Harrah\'s Thinking?

I think it’s safe to say that the poker boom of the past few years took everyone by surprise. What’s even more surprising to me is that there hasn’t been a 60 Minutes-type piece on the dark side of poker, or an industry-shaking cheating scandal. In my opinion, poker rooms leave themselves exposed to this by not taking extensive precautions to protect the industry. I think much more could be done on the part of management to preserve the integrity of their games. Instead we seem to going in the other direction.

At the Caesars circuit event a dealer made us aware that during the WSOP dealers will be instructed to not do a mini-scramble after every hand. A player will be allowed to ask for a scramble only once with each dealer. This alters a basic dealing procedure that has been in use for many years. These procedures were instituted to standardize dealing rituals and to reduce as much as possible the possibilities of cheating by dealers. Most card rooms instruct dealers to do a mini-scramble after each hand. It can be done in less than 3 seconds. It’s fairly simple for a cheating dealer who can keep a slug of cards that are known to him intact to run up a hand for a compatriot. A proper mini-scramble reduces the possibility of keeping a slug of cards intact for all but the best dealer/mechanics. Harrahs’ procedure just about guarantees that slugs and hands from the previous hand will be intact as the dealers squares the deck for the shuffle. A few false shuffles and a false cut and the con is on, not to mention the advantage for shuffle trackers. If anyone thinks that among the hundreds of dealers at the WSOP there aren’t more than a few capable of making these moves they are very naïve.

What is going on here? Is Harrah’s so short-sighted that they think the few seconds saved by prohibiting the mini-scramble is worth whatever profits that policy might eke out that they’re willing to expose players to even more risks of being cheated than they already are? Do they simply not care? It’s virtually impossible for floor management to police cheating during the zoo that the WSOP has become. The only hope players have is that adherence to long-established dealing procedures will provide some modicum of protection. For Harrah’s to bypass these procedures in the name of profit is typical of their attitude of profit above all else.

BTW, an email expressing this concern was sent to the appropriate person at Harrah’s last week but remains unanswered.
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