Question of the Day - 09 April 2022

[Editor's Note: This answer is written by our Stiffs & Georges writer, David McKee.]

Well, even if it were publicly traded, which is isn't, you might no want to invest in Gemaco.

The Kansas City-based Japanese-owed card maker never seems to get in the news in a good way. In 2012, it sold a shipment of playing cards to Tilman Fertitta’s Golden Nugget Atlantic City on the promise that the decks were pre-shuffled. Rather than check for themselves, Golden Nugget pit bosses loaded the cards as they were — and disaster followed. Mini-baccarat players were dealt a $1.5 million winning streak from the unshuffled cards. Fertitta howled that the ineptitude was really “a sophisticated swindling and cheating scheme.” 

The same mistake was made by Trump Taj Mahal, which paid out $91,000 in fines, sacked nine employees, and invested in a new $2.2 million surveillance setup. 

For his part, Fertitta didn't place the blame in-house. Instead, he sued Gemaco and fought the winning players in court after they refused a unilateral settlement offer. (His security force was also accused of illegal detention and racial discrimination; all the players were Asians, who noticed the cards hadn't been shuffled before the pit did -- and raised their bets from $10 to $5,000 per hand. The Nugget was ultimately cleared of liability for the disputed payouts.

Borgata got cleaned out to the tune of $10 million in another Gemaco-related scandal. This came when poker pro Phil Ivey clocked the house out at baccarat. According to a lawsuit filed by Borgata, Ivey and a co-conspirator discovered a flaw in the cut of the cards and exploited through an old cheating technique known as edge sorting. Quirks the printing on the back of the cards made some of them identifiable. 

Borgata did not help its cause by allowing Ivey’s Mandarin-speaking sidekick “special instructions” to the dealer on how to lay out the cards, in deference to alleged superstition. (Gemaco and an anonymous Borgata employee were also sued.) Borgata subsequently destroyed the evidence, i.e., the decks in question.

Another Japanese firm, Angel Group, has a foothold in Las Vegas at the Plaza Hotel, which uses Club Angel cards in its casino. (We’re indebted to Scott Roeben of casino.org for that tip.)

One company that buys Belgian is Boyd Gaming. Spokesman David Strow is “pretty sure” the casino chain uses U.S. Playing Card Co., “which is the largest card manufacturer in the country. This is the company that makes the Bicycle and Bee decks that you see in retail stores, but they make cards for us under our own brands.” Ah, so the answer was right under our noses all this time. (It also makes poker chips and has been in business since 1867.) 

Despite the flag-waving name, U.S. Playing Card is a subsidiary of Belgium’s Cartamundi, which dominates the Vegas market.”

Incidentally, unlike the makers of slot machines, card manufacturers do not have to be licensed in Nevada and are not regulated. Kind of a double standard, no?