Every few months, some rookie posts online about a surprising backoff incident, and then speculates, “I probably got nabbed by FRS (Facial Recognition Software).” I think I’ve got a soapbox sitting around here somewhere.
No, dear rookie, you didn’t get nabbed by FRS. And I am here to assure you that while the NSA probably can listen in on your phone calls, they do not have satellite surveillance of your bet spread on that juicy 80% DD S17 LS game. (In fact, can we ban the use of the word “juicy” in describing BJ count games?) On top of that, the head of surveillance is not an ex-CIA operative, nor are you an internationally notorious assassin code-named “The Jackal.”
Let’s understand FRS and its purpose. FRS is a search algorithm. It is useful when attempting to do an image search on a large database. Imagine that TSA has apprehended a suspected terrorist, a man who had a 5-oz tube of toothpaste in his carry-on. The man may be using fake documents, and may have changed his outward appearance since his previous arrests. The worldwide database of all criminals and terrorist suspects comprises millions of people. How can you look this guy up in the database? Since you have him in custody, you can take a perfect dead-on face shot, and compare that to the millions of dead-on mugshots in the database. The computer can search and find matches based on the unalterable geometry of a person’s face, among other factors.
None of that has anything to do with the world of professional gamblers! First of all, FRS methodology is most effective when both the current photo and the previous photo are dead-on frontal shots. If you’re not in handcuffs in the back room, and if you avoid unnecessary exposure at the cage, then they don’t have a dead-on frontal photo of you now, and they didn’t have one previously. So FRS would not be a useful tool here. If you go the FRS demo at the annual industry convention, you’ll see that it’s a joke. They put an ID photo of Tommy Hyland into the database, and then show how a current ID photo of Tommy is “found” by the cunning FRS system. Oh please. The thing has a silly number of false positives, even with the artificially simple setup.
Don’t believe the hype. Have you ever corrected a break-in dealer and then heard her say, “Surveillance would have caught that; they see everything.” That statement is as laughably naive as the rookie counter who whispers, “That casino uses FRS.” Even if you thought that the casino used FRS, who cares? Even if FRS were an appropriate, effective technology in this context (and I contend that it is not), it is no better than the simple, low-tech alternative of flipping through the binder.
As part of our lawsuit against the Griffin Detective Agency years ago, we had temporary access to the Griffin Gold database. We checked to see how many hole-card players were in the database. 120. Total. Including dead people. If a surveillance guy sees you and wants to check whether you’re in the database, he can browse 15 thumbnails per page, and page-down through the eight pages in a few minutes. It’s a tiny database. You don’t need FRS algorithms to search it. Besides, how long does it take the surveillance guy to search the database when there’s a flyer of you sitting on his desk with the word “BOLO” on the top, or a photo of you taped to the wall of the break room? How long does it take them to search the database when the shift boss knows who you are on sight?
How long does it take FRS to search the database, when you hand in a player’s card with the name “Tommy Hyland.” Get it? When you’re identified quickly, it’s because: (1) Someone recognized you, (2) There is a recent flyer being distributed with your photo on it, (3) You just used a poison name, or (4) You did something really stupid.
And that’s why the mention of FRS hits a nerve with me. You never see high-level players complaining about FRS, or even speculating that FRS was the cause of their demise. It’s only the rookies who complain about the dreaded FRS. And why is that? Because they are making excuses for their own ineptitude. In most cases, these quick backoffs are the result of obvious, amateurish play, and poor game management. The players were foolish, and probably didn’t notice the various heat warnings that occurred (the pit boss making a phone call five minutes before the backoff, the weird question the boss asked when he looked up your player’s account, the dealer’s sudden half-shoeing of you, etc.), or they ignored or poorly responded to those heat warnings.
Rather than admit their own poor decisions that led to a backoff, the rookies would rather create a fantasy: there was nothing I could do—the casino uses FRS. Ahhh, so the backoff was due to the casino’s use of this devastatingly wicked technology, the unbreakable foe that is FRS. The backoff was so fast that it had to be FRS. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you won $4k the weekend before and increased your spread after they half-shoed you. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you slouched like Jabba the Hut while going for the hole card. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you chatted with another player who was previously backed off. Yeah, Occam’s Razor be damned—had to be FRS!
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I have some classic examples from my TV-docu producer days. Like film crew noticing stabbed body lying bleeding on nightclub dancefloor before surveillance did — it was just after surveillance-“room service” delivery and all eyes were on the burgers and fries… Or finding that we had filmed a notorious card counter and master of disguise (no, not the bad Asian transvestite, the OTHER dude 🙂 playing blackjack and had walked right by with head of security, HOURS before the boys upstairs noticed and 86’d him. And this even after they’d used this exact same AP the previous day as the demo example for how powerful their facial recognition software was. Um, yeah… It only works if you look at it.
Tommy Hyland being the “other dude.” Tis true.
The only time I was ever backed off was a case of mistaken identity. I was playing $10 6D at a “locals” casino, with my wife, both of us using our player cards with our real names on them. At the time I had played red chip BJ at this casino more or less every day for a year.
So they are opening this table, and another couple sits down and buys in large. The first several hands out of the deck were winners and we were both pressing; then two successful doubles in a row. I am not counting. I get the tap.
(to me only) “Sam, would you please step away from the table…. I am the shift manager at this casino and you can’t play blackjack here anymore. We know your name is Sam Smith and you were just backed off at the Aliante Casino on Wednesday.”
“Sam Smith isn’t my name. My name is Sam Spade (I give him my driver’s license). I’ve never been to the Aliante and I’ve never been backed off anywhere. Sorry you feel that way. I’m not that good.”
“Well, no matter what your name is you can’t play blackjack here anymore.”
I go back to the table and announce to my wife, “Honey, we’re going to color out now.” She gets what is happening and heads for the exit. As I cash out, the idiot casino executive apologizes to me and tells me I look j ust like this other guy. I am again welcome to play blackjack. He promises me a steakhouse comp and later reneges.
So how come this casino, where I was literally playing every day with my player card swiped into their system, decided I was this other dude? Had to be FRS.
Why do you conclude it had to be FRS? I conclude the opposite–that the mistaken identity shows it was NOT FRS. You got nabbed because surveillance saw a flyer where you vaguely looked like the guy or had similar clothing (things that would not fool a real FRS system) and they panicked and backed you off. I’ve had my own teammates tell me that a photo of me was sitting on the podium in the pit, and I had to personally look at the flyer to verify that the photo was not of me. I’ve seen multiple photos of the same player in the database, and had a hard time linking them together. Mistaken identity is easy, and happens without FRS all the time.
James, this article is about 2 years old and do you still feel the same way about FRS? not just in casinos but in general? i’m guessing you don’t use facebook much to upload photos of your day to day life (you probably have much better things to do), but mine has an impressive facial recognition software where it can suggest that a person walking in the background is a friend of mine (with probably 75% ish accuracy). and these aren’t all the same angle of the person’s face either. granted, fbook has a much smaller group of people to pull from (my limited number of friends) and has lots of photos to reference. i’ve also started using google photos to store my photos from my phone and they automatically identify the same person in each photo so i can sort ALL my photos for “photos of me and jack” and it’ll pull up all my photos from the last 5 years of us.. the google photos recognition is impressive because it even identified the differences between two of my dogs (who are similar in size and color).
i’m not saying FRS is widely used in casinos (or has any real affect on APs), but it could be possible in the next few years. i wouldn’t put it past google or facebook or some other large database to sell the info they have on people.
My opinion is that James is right. Even years later after this original blog has been written. FrS is garbage and James is the John Dillinger of advantage play, I could only imagine a proud (chest stuck out like a peacock) Shift boss telling James “ Sorry Mr. Grosjean our Facial Recognition Software nailed you” They would be so proud the thing finally caught something besides a virus.