The first line in the article about the referenced scandal says, "Five of seven people charged in an alleged conspiracy to steal from Detroit’s MotorCity Casino have pleaded guilty …" And later it says, "Authorities say he [the dealer] conspired with six players to make payouts or not collect on lost bets on Texas hold ’em." (Here's a link to the complete article.)
As is sometimes the case when reporters write about gambling, they don’t know enough about the subject to properly convey the facts, or in this case, even include the information necessary for full understanding. What’s not made clear anywhere in the article is that the cheating almost certainly didn’t take place at a poker game, but rather on a table game in the pit.
Had it been a standard Texas hold ’em poker game, the dealer could have been cheating the house by stealing from the rake. Or he could have been cheating players in a number of ways while playing with an agent on the table. But in the second quote, the phrase "making payouts or not collecting on lost bets" isn’t consistent with a poker game. It does, however, make sense for a casino-banked game. Given the specifics in the article, the obvious choice is Ultimate Texas Hold ’Em (UTH). We haven't seen another account of this story, so we have no verification, but our best guess is that the Detroit cheating scheme took place on a UTH table.
Ultimate Texas Hold ’Em is what’s known as a "carnival game," a la Let It Ride or Three Card Poker. Not a lot has been written about UTH, but it’s one of the games included in James Grosjean’s set of table-game strategy cards. Anthony Curtis wrote about it in the Las Vegas Advisor, explaining that Grosjean’s motivation in creating the cards was to lower the edge the average player faces when playing:
Grosjean says that the most difficult of these games is Ultimate Texas Hold ’em and that many are playing at disadvantages in excess of 20%. Meanwhile the casino edge against the correct basic strategy is just -2.29% on the Ante bet and -3.5% on Trips. Assuming you make two $10 bets -- one on the Ante and one on Trips -- you’ll save the cost of the UTH card in two hands and pay for the entire set of eight cards in six!
That's a pretty vivid example of how playing properly can save money. Check out the Grosjean cards here.
