Question of the Day - 10 December 2020

Yesterday, we tackled facial recognition in general. Today, we're looking at a specific situation. And frankly, we'd like to know the answer to this question as well. 

But as hard as we tried, posing it to numerous casinos and advantage players, we came up pretty short. 

We did receive two replies. 

A reliable industry source responded, “Our security team reports no noticeable uptick on our end. Of note, we do ask all customers to briefly pull down their mask when they enter our properties, so surveillance does get a look at everyone’s face when they enter. So we would be able to easily identify a known cheater (or anyone else) if they attempted to enter our property, even with masks.”

On the other hand, a floor supervisor of our acquaintance told us, "I'd say it's toss-up. Is it harder to identify the face? Yes. But the play is still the play. I never look at faces when I analyze play."

We have to assume that the casinos, though they'd like everyone to believe they're all-powerful and all-knowing, especially when it comes to game protection, are vulnerable to barred players thanks to the mask mandate.

Heck, in our book The 21st Century Card Counter, a number of advantage players insist that after being backed off and/or barred, they return to the same casino on a different shift a few days later, or even the same day, and are rarely if ever picked off. And that's without a mask.