First-time casino visitors

Who are they? First-time casino visitors. This is the question every duty manager has to ask themselves when a big player (players) appears on their gaming floor.

They may have arrived in a junket group from some unknown gaming jurisdiction or they may have just arrived on business to your city.

If they are an individual or a small group of players and they sit down on your gaming table and buy-in with a large amount, what do you do, what do you ask yourself? Cheats often buy-in for large amounts because they want to cheat big for big money, not for peanuts.

Are they legit or are they what I call strange bedfellows? Is there an age difference among them, do they belong to different racial minorities who don’t usually mix together, is there a young beautiful girl among them who should have little knowledge or playing experience. (Camouflage) Is there a young good looking guy who should normally be in the night club chasing girls?

Or are we just persuaded by a large amount of money that is laid down on the table? Do we automatically start to treat them as VIPs?

I always remember a good friend of mine who was kicking himself, for inviting and hosting the Ritz Club scammers for dinner, afterwards they took the casino for 1.3 million pounds.

So how do we get to know who is this stranger or strangers, well we can ask around, we can ask the local casinos if we have a friend there or we can go online and search a name in Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media platforms. If that turns up zero we are still in the dark and the game is in progress and what’s worse is they are winning, because the losers don’t raise any red flags but if they are winning and winning big then we need to know.

So what do we do now because they have our money, do we speed the game up with the chance they will lose it all back or because they are cheating do we pay them more. Are the cards marked, is the roulette wheel fixed, is there staff collusion have the slot machines been hacked.

Let’s go to a casino security group and ask if these subjects of interest are known but the answer usually comes back after the fact when the money has gone out the door.

The answer as always is, be prepared, KYC, know your customers, subscribe to an online database, there are a few which I am not going to mention here however in the past they have helped me to know certain cheats who have sat on my gaming tables and yes they have been winning because we don’t care about the losers, except to give the losers the treatment and invite them back, sometimes all expenses paid or dinner or complimentary tickets to a show, flights, hotel stays etc, but do that with a cheat then it grates on our mind for years to come.

What if the Crockfords and the Borgata had known already that Phil Ivey’s friend Ms Sun (The Queen of Sorts) had already tried to scam Foxwoods

How did casino hosts feel after giving the treatment to the well documented MIT blackjack card counters, eventually they turned to security groups for their answers after the money had gone in some cases.

C.S. & S.S. is one such security group but there are others.

http://groups.google.com/group/casino-security

https://groups.google.com/group/casino-security

Because you can bring a horse to water but you can’t always make it drink, don’t be that horse, smell the coffee and taste it.