Question of the Day - 03 January 2025

I think the reply to this question misses a key element to the question.  If the eye-in-the-sky guys noticed that a dealer had accidentally shorted a player, would they call down and correct it?  Do they ever?

Yes, they do.  I've seen it happen.  In my career with casinos, I had access to the SV room, and have seen them call down to the floorperson and correct mistakes on both sides of the table.

The problem is manpower...although there are cameras on each table, there's usually only a few people in Surveillance here in the US (some states require a minimum of three at all times, others like NV have no such restrictions).  In a casino group in Macau that I worked for, there may be 50 SV people watching a few tables each at their individual stations, but the stakes are a lot higher there.

Several years ago at a strip casino, I was talking to a casino host about the interest of the players in the area with the scantily clothed female dealers - fun pits, pleasure pits, etc.  The casino host winked at me and said this was a good place to play.  The dealer's ability to pay correctly seemed to be about as scanty as what they were wearing, and the casino just accepted that a few extra chips would be payed to the player.  The stakes were low enough that it did not matter that much.  The host told me that the serious high limit players wanted the most professional dealers possible, and that they avoided these pits!

at Mgm last year was playing Let it Ride, couple of golfers were drunk and didn't like the dealer, or losing.  Once I started winning they didn't like me either, and it got uglier once I hit a fullhouse for several hundred dollars.  Pit boss and security removed them and I cashed out, but walking away from the cage a security guard came and took me back to the table, the Eye had spotted a $200 error in the payout.  They spread the cards back on the table, pointed out each of the payouts, then gave me a couple of black chips and we all nodded and smiled.  (off topic, but if the casinos think LIR doesn't make enough money to keep around the profit margins on the other games must be unbelievable.)

It happened to meat the Green VAlley Ranch, dealer mispaid me for $125.  10 minutes later pit boss, came over and told me to pay it back or I was banned from Casino. Accused me of being in cahoots with the dealer.  Which I was not.  He did not even say a word todealerwhi kepyt dealing! He then, Ruined my status with Stations.  Only good thing was I won over a $1000 before I left, and told new pit boss to tell his boss that was KARMA!
Now rarely go there while in Vegas.  Still pissed to this day about it.

I work in Surveillance and I have caught a pretty fair amount of catches. Generally, the Casino Shift Managers are more than happy to go down to the Pit and give out some money if Surveillance catches a mistake that went against the player. The CSMs see it as a great way to ensure a positive guest experience. Also, about 75% of the time, the player will take the money given and toke it back to the dealer that technically screwed them over. Everybody wins.

I love the Las Vegas Advisor question of the day. I’ve been following Vegas for decades and still learn something new all the time. Keep up the great work.

I've found that mistakes on payoffs are infrequent.  If I catch one when the mistake is against me, most places don't argue about it.  Sometimes they take a few minutes to review the video, but by and large if you call them on it, a resolution comes quickly enough.  If I'm overpaid and they ask for it back, no problem, here it is, and if they don't ask, I don't offer.

I was in Las Vegas for a week over Christmas, and only once all week was there anything amounting to a real dispute.  Everything else was resolved quickly and calmly.  The one dispute (at NYNY, during my best roll of the trip) got fixed by the pit boss after a lengthy review of the video "upstairs".  It was an honest mistake--wrong payout on odds--but the dealer got pissy about it.

Of course, it helps that I know the payouts at the craps table, where I usually play.  I am amazed at how people can throw so much money out and not know either how to play, how the payoffs work, or both.

Yes, surveillance can call in dealer errors. But in my experience, it is very very very rare. 99.99% of the time they will not.
So far as the fun pit and what I call “ titty girls”, I used to target them thinking that they were most likely to make exploitable errors. I’ve had surprisingly very little success with that. My theory is that they get extra training precisely because they’re perceived to be vulnerable. But my experience is that they have above average skills.
I’ve been told by a couple of surveillance people that their #1 job is to be on the lookout for things that the casino can be sued for, like slip and falls. Foiling AP’s ranks pretty low on the surveillance totem pole.

I worked as a casino security officer for 6 years. My personal input is that surveillance can't be everywhere, looking at everything, all the time; obviously, that's not humanly possible. Yet, nearly every significant area of a casino (with few obvious exceptions, like restrooms) are being taped and can be reviewed as necessary. Surveillance is typically excellent in reviewing tapes and uncovering the truth whenever there is a complaint, discrepancy, or suspicion.
My response here reflects a first-hand and somewhat similar experience. I was on the job less than 2 weeks when dispatched to the pit to assist in the removal of a Pit Boss who was slipping chips into his suit jacket pocket.