I was asked to answer a Question of the Day sent to The Las Vegas Advisor. My answer was “too long” for a QOD, but appropriate for one of my blogs. Since LVA hosts my blog and they have plenty of QOD questions “in the hopper,” I was allowed to answer this question here.
Is card-pulling at video poker still an effective way of minimizing wins?
Card pulling was never an effective way of minimizing wins. It was done to disguise wins. That is, to make a casino (and possibly the IRS), believe you have won less than you really have.
In the good old days, the player tracking systems tracked your wins and losses when the card was inserted and didn’t do so when it was not. If you were playing dollar Deuces Wild and were dealt four deuces, for example, if you pulled out the card after the deal but before the draw, the $1,000 would not register on your card, but it would still register on the video poker machine itself. At the end of the year, a player who had won $20,000 on the year could easily make it look like he had lost $50,000 or more by strategic card pulling.
For the most part, this doesn’t work anymore. With today’s player tracking systems, if you pull your card mid-play (such as after being dealt a four of a kind but before you play it off), the tracking system will still know that the $1,000 jackpot belonged to you. There will often be a message such as Carded session still in progress. On such a machine, card pulling won’t help you.
On games such as the original Ultimate X, you can effectively card pull — although it’s a little different and there is a cost associated with it. Let’s say you’re playing quarter Ten Play Double Double Bonus Ultimate X and are dealt a full house. You keep your card in while you draw. But after the hand, when you have 12x multipliers on all ten hands, you can pull your card BEFORE you play that one hand. You won’t get credit for the $25 coin-in on that hand (because your card wasn’t in), but if you get any kind of a good hand, multiplied by 12 on all 10 lines, you won’t have that “charged” against you either.
Dealt straights and flushes (8x and 10x on each line, respectively) have a similar effect, although slightly smaller.
Keep in mind it is really obvious when you pull out a card. It is easily seen by others watching — including by the eye in the sky. Some casinos have a policy of removing players who are trying to defraud them. A point can be made that disguising wins and losses (which are data points casinos use to reward players) is a form of fraud. Whether you think it is fraud is largely irrelevant. In most jurisdictions, it’s the casino’s privilege to remove you for almost any reason.
There are also loss rebate programs. Some players use Ultimate X games to rack up massive imaginary losses. They then have collected on these rebates. Others have been kicked out of casinos for doing exactly this. If a casino wanted to document your actions before they decided to not give you the rebate and withdraw your welcome from the casino, it’s relatively easy to use the eye in the sky digital tapes to create a record of on exactly what you were doing. Seeing such evidence, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to convince a jury that you were cheating.
Reporting doctored data to the IRS is definitely fraud. Using Win Loss statements that you have doctored by card pulling is a felony if caught. You probably won’t be caught, but who knows?
Many IRS auditors don’t accept casino-generated Win Loss statements because they are easy to manipulate. (Even if you don’t pull your card, if you play at five casinos and only turn in Win Loss statements from three of them, it is simple to present misleading information.) IRS regulations all require players to keep their own records.
Even when the casino is not actively looking for you pulling your card, sometimes you will get W-2Gs when your card is out. A casino manager could well ask how you can be racking up casino points when your card isn’t in the machine? If they didn’t know you were trying to defraud the casino before, they do now.
Bottom line, the move is well known by most casino managers. It is easy to detect when you’re doing it. It works only on a few machines. The penalties for getting caught at it can be severe. Are you sure this is what you wish to be doing?
May.only work on a few VP machines, but works very well on many accumulator slots.
I don’t disagree with the major point being made by the article, but I just feel it’s relevant to mention that casino surveillance camera footage often is not very clear. You know those documentary TV shows that include footage, recorded by such cameras on the outside of a bank or shopping center, of a parking lot that shows someone or some vehicle on the far side of the lot? The narrator is saying that you can clearly see the person, or his vehicle’s license plate number, but in fact, you can’t make out the person or the license plate because the footage has such poor resolution and is grainy, fuzzy or smudgy. Well, that’s what a lot of casino surveillance is like. I once left money on a video poker machine at the Fremont when I ended my playing session, remembered this just 1 minute later, went back to the machine, and someone had already cashed out my money. I went to Security, and they let me watch while they pulled up the surveillance footage to view. The footage was worthless. The camera was positioned to cover 3 rows, and not only was my machine in the farthest row, mostly obscured by the middle row, but there was a floor-to-ceiling structural post that itself obscured most of my machine. But even if those 2 obstacles didn’t exist, the view was very indistinct, of very poor quality, and it would’ve been extremely difficult to discern a person’s face or a “fine” movement such as removing a card from a machine. The guards (and I) were unable to see who took my money, so of course I didn’t recover it. I have never seen surveillance footage shown on TV that was any good. So, who knows whether any “crisp-footage” video surveillance systems even exist?
With Amazon paying zero tax, it’s disgusting that the IRS hassles and taxes us players playing our own after tax money, this is a societal evil…
Harrahs in AC actually tried to prosecute someone for pulling their card about 7 or 8 years ago. I remember the judge asking the prosecutor if they were serious. I read about it in the newspaper, but I don’t know what eventually happened.
I use to pull the card all the time, but that was well over 15 years ago. You could never do it at the Borgata, but you could do it at Caesars and Harrahs.
> Bottom line, the move is well known by most casino managers.
I was at Cosmopolitan many years ago, maybe a decade ago, I think at the time they had some sort of small loss rebate promotion. I remember seeing one of the casino managers demonstrating to other staff members how Ultimate-X works and how you could to make it look like you lost by removing the card.
I’m not sure what, if anything, they were doing about it; but they were most certainly aware.
I will never figure out why the threshold has not yet ben risen to at least 4’999.00 or higher because since this hole tax thing started the US Dollar has be devaluated to a high degree and what some 30 or 40 years back was 1199 Dollars today looks to me like around 5’000. The Tax cut for small time gamblers is just too high to make it worthwhile playing for higher denonimations. Unless you hit the once-in-a-moonlight megabucks it’s just ridiculous to play and get taxed 30 per cent if you finally win something. From that point of view it makes sense that some smart players try to fly under the radar.
From Switzerland
Boris
Bob, thank you for this write up. I was actually planning on submitting a question to you about this very subject and now you’ve answered it. I was playing in the Cosmo high limit room Jacks or Better multiple line ($.50 with 70 lines) and hit four 3’s on the main line. I held the four 3’s and waited about 10 minutes (before hitting the deal button) for my friend to get back so he could see. Nonetheless, later I was kicking myself because I thought I should’ve pulled my card out in those 10 minutes to NOT register the $4,375.00 win. With your explanation that it wouldn’t have mattered either way, I can now sleep better at night 🙂
The IRS doesn’t “hassle and tax” you. That’s Congress. IRS just enforces the laws that are written by your elected legislators.
Semantics and world views do not issue 1099’s to players, the IRS does… When “Congress” or “politicians” address this, you can have your good guys vs bad guys discourse, nobody is standing up for us that I can see…
Michael, the IRS does not issue 1099s, except for any interest they may pay on a refund. The casino issues the W-2(G)s to gamblers. The casino then reports the same numbers to the IRS.