How Does Cheating Benefit Dealers?

In a recent QOD, you talked about dealer cheating. How does that benefit them? I and most of the people that I've observed are a lot more
generous with tips when we're winning. Wouldn't the dealers make more money when they get more tips?

Right you are. Dealers make much more money when players win, almost exclusively due to the tip factor. Any dealer who cheats the players, as many people suspect when they go on long losing streaks, is deliberately taking money out of his or her own pocket.

In days of yore, casinos hired card mechanics to cheat players, so the house was assured a win. When a high roller of the time sat down and started firing up big bucks, a cheating dealer was often inserted to take him off. He benefited by being in cahoots with the casino, which either cut him into some of the player's losses or paid him a handsome flat fee, or let him work off whatever he owed the casino for various reasons. Regulatory oversight was lax to say the least, crooks were running many of the joints, and cheating at gambling was commonplace. It might still happen here and there in smaller casinos and cardrooms, but the risks of getting caught are generally too great for most legitimate places to engage in it.

Nowadays, the only ways cheating benefits a dealer is if he or she has an accomplice, or two or three, on the other side of the green felt. Almost all contemporary cheating moves at tables games involve players to whom a dealer can funnel ill-gotten gains. In a QoD just last week, we told the story of a cheating crap dealer at Bellagio who, with three co-conspirators making phony hop bets, stole a reported $1.2 million right out of the pit over a two-year period.

And if you want to learn the whole story of dealer-agent swindles at blackjack, you can read our enlightening book Cheating at Blackjack by Dustin Marks, a dealer who scammed Las Vegas casinos over a fairly long career and never got caught.

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Thomas Dikens Oct-29-2021

Cheating

I have seen the dealer cheat many times.  But, always for me.  I am a heavy tipper.  My own personal saying is "Anyone who thinks the dealer does not cheat, does not tip." In addition, sometimes the dealer simply likes a player. Conversely, I have seen "jerk" players cheated - it may be as simple as, in PAI GOW,  not calling the pit boss over when the jerk player has set his hand wrong and they may give him a "one time break". Two thoughts, generally it pays to be nice to the dealer, in all aspects.  Secondly, if you don't like the dealer or they don't seem to like you, don't play with them.

Kevin Lewis Oct-29-2021

One exception

If a dealer is handing off money to a confederate (via any of a number of ways, such as tipping off his hole card), then he may feel compelled to "even up" the table take by cheating everyone else. I have intimate knowledge of this exact thing happening back in my dealer days (some time ago, to be sure).

They always kept track of whether "we" had won or lost money on a shift (obviously, it was the casino, not us, that won or lost). One "bad" shift was OK, but two in a row would get you the fish-eye. Three in a row and you might actually get written up. Any more, and you might get summarily fired.

For the above reason, we always dreaded it when some high-roller came up to our table; he might take ten grand off the game, which would pretty much guarantee a "losing" shift. And tokes? We split our tokes, so even a $100 gratuity would be maybe $3 or $4 for each of us--and the big players rarely toked at all, let alone in those amounts. So, large risk for little reward.

Question of the Day - 29 October 2021

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