Who are the people that managed to trick the gambling system and how did they do it?

There are some people who brag about the fact that they managed to fool and beat the system. Even though casinos are very well protected and have all types of detecting machines, there are a few persons that can say that they managed to break the system and win with style. In this article, I will present some of them, who are considered to be the best at fooling the system.

Errol McNeal had 1 million to 1 odds at slots and received a monster jackpot of $100.000 in a casino from Atlantic City. What was strange about this is that McNeal was very calm about this and didn’t have an ID with him. The rules are that if the winning is bigger than $35.000, a special team of officials must check the winning. When the team from the Gaming Control Board arrived, McNeal was in his room with Ron Harris, who proved to be a slot machine tester who was responsible for testing the machines in Nevada. At the beginning, nothing was suspicious, but when they went back for Ron, he was missing and the room was filled with computer equipment notes, studies which demonstrated how Errol was able to beat the slot machine. Both of them were arrested later on.

Gonzalo GarciasPelayo won $1.5 million by being smart and playing the wait game. We heard the idea that not all roulette wheels are random, so there must be a mechanism behind them. What he started to do was to study this wheel bias for a long period. He had many versions of wheels and used to spin them for thousands of times while recording and analyzing them. After knowing what to do, he went on playing. After winning a lot in Spain, he became very famous and went to America where he started doing the same thing.

LoRiggio or “The man with the golden arm’ how other people know him. LoRiggio is a player that knew how to control the shootings , this means that after days of practice and after spinning quite many dices, he finally managed to control the dices while playing craps in such a way that he could always win. This way of controlling the dices is done by knowing specifically how to put the dices in your hand, and how to throw them in a way that they would land exactly how you want them to. He met with a friend of him and then they went together to win thousands of dollars at craps. If you go by the book, you will see that what he was doing is not illegal but some casinos will spot this type of players and make them roll the dices in another way. After making money, he opened some classes in which he taught other people how to throw dices.

Not only men are good at fooling casinos and the living example is the story of Ida Summer, who managed to earn back in the 60s thousands of dollars with her tricks. Her special tricks included hiding card which was already on the table and using it when the moment came and she needed it. After winning some serious money by pulling this scam, she decided to take it a little bit far and things become more serious. Her new scam was to insert a deck into the game. Basically what she was doing was to insert a new standard pack of cards in the game when she needed a card. It is a very dangerous way of cheating because the dealer may spot the scam in a very easy way. With her skills and charm, she managed to win some serious money until the gaming officials together with the FBI caught her and endsed her scam life.

The interesting stories about how smart people defeated the casinos stories are quite many. One of them is the story of Keith Taft. Taft was not the usual scam artist who knew how to roll the dices or how to put other cards in his hands, as all his scams where based on technology. He was a genius when it comes to electronic games, and together with his son, they made devices that could beat the casino’s systems. In 1969 he came to be interested in blackjack and decided to make an instrument that could help him count the cards. After working on it for a long period, he created an instrument called George. He was wearing this instrument under his clothes and controlled it with his toes. It was a winning instrument and then he made the second model, which was a little bit lighter. Another invention of him was Thor, a computer that can help one find out the position of a card in a deck. Taft made thousands of dollars at the time, so for this effort he entered the Blackjack Hall of Fame.

MIT Blackjack Team is considered the most famous team. It all started as club meeting of the MIT in the 90s, when a group of students decided to use the statistics system learned at school in order the win when playing blackjack. This group became serious when they started to recruit new students and give them a test to see if they were up to the challenge. What they did was to take card counting to the next level. After having everything ready, they went to text it in the underground word of poker and earn serious money before going in the real casinos. They managed to earn more than $5 million in a short period and became a well know group which inspired other people; also, a movies was made, based on their experience.