New Member question about RFID cards in live dealer casinos

[rtesone1]

Hello! New to the forum but have been gambling for over 15 years and a couple of years online. Watched a tv segment showcasing gambling cheats, and one of the presenters described an RFID technology that marks the cards on the sides and lets a video camera know the order of all the cards in the shoe. Can live dealer casinos such as Pragmatic Play and Evolution cheat with this in combination with computer bots? Thanks.

 

[jasonuk]

Sounds like you are confusing two different technologies here.

The RFID chips inside the cards are unlikely to be accurate enough to do what you suggest - both in terms of distance precision, and in terms of read success. Even if you can read within 1 centimetre and 99% of the cards accurately, that's still a lot of ambiguity and errors.

Regarding the shuffler itself, this has been the source of more interest in recent months after the Hustler Casino poker scandal around 15 months ago. Their report - wrongly - suggested that the shuffler was "secure and cannot be compromised", which is basically a red rag to a bull for the security community and they predictably ripped it apart. The talk at the Black Hat security conference demonstrated a working prototype (for a later edition of the one used as Hustler) that could a) use the camera to extract the sort order of the deck, and b) modify the algorithm used to sort the deck.

Anyone with partial or total knowledge of the deck will be at an advantage over the opponent - whether that be house versus player, or player versus player.

In the case of Pragmatic, they've got bigger problems anyway. I really should have filmed it because seeing a blackjack dealer deal from both shoes in the same hand would have been a great YouTube short -something that the dealer, pit boss and software all missed.

 

[rtesone1]

Sounds like you are confusing two different technologies here.

The RFID chips inside the cards are unlikely to be accurate enough to do what you suggest - both in terms of distance precision, and in terms of read success. Even if you can read within 1 centimetre and 99% of the cards accurately, that's still a lot of ambiguity and errors.

Regarding the shuffler itself, this has been the source of more interest in recent months after the Hustler Casino poker scandal around 15 months ago. Their report - wrongly - suggested that the shuffler was "secure and cannot be compromised", which is basically a red rag to a bull for the security community and they predictably ripped it apart. The talk at the Black Hat security conference demonstrated a working prototype (for a later edition of the one used as Hustler) that could a) use the camera to extract the sort order of the deck, and b) modify the algorithm used to sort the deck.

Anyone with partial or total knowledge of the deck will be at an advantage over the opponent - whether that be house versus player, or player versus player.

In the case of Pragmatic, they've got bigger problems anyway. I really should have filmed it because seeing a blackjack dealer deal from both shoes in the same hand would have been a great YouTube short -something that the dealer, pit boss and software all missed.

I was surprised with the information about the RFID cards (HBO Max show 'Hustlers Gamblers Crooks', S1 Ep5). But if true, it would explain what I've experienced multiple times when a player hits extra cards compared to basic strategy or even a 19 vs. a dealer 6, and the dealer gets a 21, beating my double. Or a player suddenly enters the table and takes what would have been my BJ. I've previously reasoned it is a mis-click and random players.

 

[jasonuk]

It's the kind of thing that might happen in an unregulated jurisdiction - because nobody is going to be able to verify. For someone like Evolution the risk would be too high - it's not worth jeopardising their entire business over a $100 hand of blackjack.

People are very good at misremembering good versus bad - why they're quick to berate the last seat misplay that busts the table, but not when their misplay saves the table. It all averages out over time.

 

[rtesone1]

You could be right. But apparently the technology exists and would not be difficult to implement. I searched online and one example seems to be the manufacturer 'Carta Mundi.' And it is annoying that the dealer in live online games appears to be dealt more than the fair share of 10s and aces as the up card as a consequence of players jumping in and out of the hand. But it could all be random as well. Thanks for the replies.

 

[Webzcas]

Welcome to Casinomeister. I am afraid live games at an online casino are not my bag, but tagging in @neilw who has a very large bag when it comes to all things Live Casinos and their games.

 

[MahoneyKnows]

I was surprised with the information about the RFID cards (HBO Max show 'Hustlers Gamblers Crooks', S1 Ep5). But if true, it would explain what I've experienced multiple times when a player hits extra cards compared to basic strategy or even a 19 vs. a dealer 6, and the dealer gets a 21, beating my double. Or a player suddenly enters the table and takes what would have been my BJ. I've previously reasoned it is an mis-click and random players.

If it’s a live table and something smells fishy - I bite the bullet, lower my bet and do out of character hits in an attempt to “reshuffle” the shoe where the edge is removed… of course as you mentioned this could exactly be where a new player appears and the shoe gets reshuffled to the house’s favour. The amount of times my 20 has lost to a 5 card 21 is quite amazing when dealing with online BJ.

 

[jasonuk]

You could be right. But apparently the technology exists and would not be difficult to implement.

I don't have access to the episode in question, but looking around there's been a number of suggestions that the content of the show has been sensationalised - one part truth, one part editing. I suspect that may be what is happening here.

RFID cards have been in use for a number of years now - and there are two main scenarios to consider:

• the existence of a card
• the spatial location of a card

The first is the easy one, and the most common scenario - the table can pick up on the card (to within a few centimetres) and sends that information to the server. If the card fails, it can be entered manually by the pit boss.

There have already been poker scandals where RFID-led productions have been accused of feeding the information back to the table in real time - obviously if one player is aware of the other player's cards then it's not a battle but a bloodbath.

The second is a more interesting one, but requires so many things to go right that the error rate would be astronomical. All cards would need to have a functioning RFID chip and both chip and card positioned correctly to within fractions of a centimetre (e.g. in the sorted shoe you'd be limited to 13mm / 52 = 0.25mm, during the actual sort you'd have slightly more space to work with but it'll behave similarly to the camera scenario).

I'm not saying it isn't possible - but right now the technology is too error prone to order the deck in this way because you only need one failure (in 52, 104, 312, 416 cards) and the deck is no longer accurate. In five years, who knows...

Which brings us to camera and shuffler with firmware as the current generation of technology - obviously this isn't theoretical because that's what the hardware providers already offer, but similarly it's not anywhere near as secure as they claim given the demonstration by the Black Hat security conference a few months ago.