Two Years In Prison For Using Infrared Contact Lenses To Cheat At Poker 320
dmfinn writes "It was back in 2011 when Stefano Ampollini and two accomplices cheated a French casino out of over €90,000 thanks to the help of Chinese-made infrared contact lenses. According to French authorities, Ampollini and two casino workers marked cards using an invisible liquid that would be picked up by the infrared lenses, which Ampollini then used to read his competitors' cards. Though the contacts themselves cost over €2,000, the crew managed to take €71,000 in their first night. However, the trio was finally caught when a lawyer working for the casino became suspicious after Ampollini folded with an unbelievably good hand, which suggested he knew the croupier's cards. This week, a French court sentenced Ampollini to two years in prison and a €100,000 fine. His main accomplice was handed an even harsher sentence; he was forced to pay the same fine and given a 36-month sentence. It appears, despite their best efforts and advanced tactics, that the men were still unable to beat the house without raising significant alarms. So, at least for now, it seems modern technology still can't simulate good old 'luck.'"
Re:Outliers and out and out liars... (Score:4, Informative)
Poker is a bit more than 'a game of chance'. There's a chance element, of course, but skill is a major factor. The most important aspect is you're not playing against the house. There's no such thing as 'winning the day at a casino' in poker. 'It's all one big session.'
It's not a typical casino game like roulette or craps where you're playing against the house and the payouts are structured such that every bet has negative expectation. If you consistently play against people who make worse betting decisions than you, you will be a consistent winner in the long term.
So your assertion that winning over a long period in poker is cheating is false (although, it is true that most players are long-term losing players).
The reason the casino went after them is that it's in the casinos interest to run a fair game. The casino takes a cut of each pot over a certain amount, and some also collect an hourly vig from sitting at the table. Players won't play in an unfair game though, so the casino has to protect this model or lose its players. It was the threat of an indirect loss of money that necessitated action, not that the players were taking directly from the casino.
And the reality is - these guys got caught because they were greedy. There have been several highly publicised (within the poker community anyway) cases of cheating, and its always the same. The cheater makes some ridiculous reads, bets / bluffs consistently at the right time with very marginal holdings, or folds big hands in big pots when they are beat. Once that suspicion is triggered, anyone who understands the game will spot it easily.
If they were smart, they would be much more subtle about it, losing their fair share but making sure they get the big pots. Once the cash starts rolling in though, I guess it's very hard to resist pushing it just a little too hard.
Casinos take this shit very seriously. From a purely academic point of view the IR contact lenses are an interesting concept, but you have to be pretty damn stupid to try it so brazenly.
Re: Just avoid being stupid (Score:4, Informative)
My other question is how did they figure out he was using special contacts? I feel like he could have easily bluffed his way out of this.
(According to the article) once the casino got suspicious, they called the betting police (whatever those are), who used telephone surveillance to figure out how they had cheated.
So once you raise suspicions, you need to avoid surveillance.
Information missing from summary and articles (Score:5, Informative)
Most people associate "poker" with games where the players compete against each other, rather than the house. Texas Holdem and Draw poker are two well known variants. Many casinos have poker tables now - they provide a dealer, and make their money by taking a small percentage of each pot.
The article talks about Stefano Ampollini knowing which cards the croupier had. The croupier would not have any cards in a normal game of poker.
Looking at their website, it appears that the Les Princes Casino in Cannes does not have any normal poker tables. Instead, they run a casino game called "Casino Stud" or "Caribbean Stud Poker". It is a normal casino game that gives the house a 5% edge if the player uses the best possible strategy.
The players must ante before each game. After they have seen their cards, if they want to continue they must place a "raise" - a bet which is double the ante.
When the cheat decided whether or not to raise, he looked at the dealer's face down hand. He knew if the dealer would win or lose before he made his "raise" bet.
It's likely that the casino knew the cheat's cards from the video surveillance footage.
Re:Outliers and out and out liars... (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting - but they weren't playing poker against other players ...
IR contact lenses can be bought here (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.gambleromania.com/5-sets-ir-contact-lenses
Re:Infared Contact Lenses? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Infrared-Goggles!-For-Under-$10/
I think this is how they did it. This isn't true IR, but near-IR. The ink would need to be near IR but I think you could find something that would work and it would be all but invisible under brought lights at a casino.
For those to lazy to follow the link. Someone makes near-IR goggles using welding glasses and two theatrical movie light gel sheets. Am guessing someone in china would be willing to make this into contact lenses. With the right equipment you could make them your self.
Re:Outliers and out and out liars... (Score:5, Informative)
Where does the article say that? It mentions "the cheater knew the croupier's cards" - are you suggesting that the croupier participates in the action in a standard poker game like Texas Holdem?
It seems that they were playing Caribbean Stud Poker, which is a game where the players compete against the house, and where the croupier does indeed have a hand representing the house.
Re:Infared Contact Lenses? (Score:5, Informative)
For the naked eye, the ink would appear as a very pale cyan color. With a proper filter, everything would look very dark due to the filter removing 99% of the visible light, but the ink would show up with much more contrast. Effective long-pass filters do exist, e.g. Schott RG695 or RG715 for a 695 or 715 nm cut-off [schott.com], respectively. There are plenty of suitable dyes [sigmaaldrich.com]. Probably you would want to have this filter only on one eye, otherwise the world around you might appear very dark.
The other theories that have been posted here make no sense.
Frequency-doubling needs extremely high intensities (like a high-power or focused low-power laser beam), which would render you blind. Moreeover, frequency-doubling requires proper phase matching, which boils down to the requirement of an exact combination of angle and wavelength.
Polarizers: it is not possible to turn unpolarized light into polarized light without throwing away half of the light. Once the light is polarized, the polarization direction can be manipulated with optically active materials, though.
A high-refractive index coating would not only change at the Brewster angle, it would make the cards much more glossy as seen from any angle. It is not possible to make the refractive index change dramatically within a short wavelength range without changing the absorption as well, so the glossiness would appear in visible light as well.
A phosphor coating would not work for several reasons: phosphors do not emit the phosphorence in the same direction as the absorbed radiation; they always convert from short wavelengths to long wavelengths, and the phosphorence light would be completely out of focus.
Glass tables (Score:2, Informative)
Large televised poker games use a glass table [youtube.com] so that viewers and commentators can see the players' cards. This may even be true of all large games regardless of whether they're televised to try and catch unusual betting behaviour (as was the case here).
Re:They were greedy (Score:4, Informative)
Re:get real (Score:3, Informative)
That's an interesting theory, but the casino in question doesn't have any "player vs player" poker tables. [lucienbarriere.com]
Instead they play a house game where each individual bets against the casino, as per the link above. The croupier's actions (on behalf of the casino) are predetermined by the game's rules, so it doesn't matter if the casino can see the player's cards or not.
The most common variant of this game is called Caribbean Stud poker. [wikipedia.org]