Okay, I see lots of speculation, but not much for facts. And that's been one of the problems with this story all along, and I'd be happy to report on this if facts actually came out. For the record, I worked at Prime Social for three weeks in March helping blog their spring series. I saw none of this cheating. I did see Martin Zamani bust out of one event while appearing to be high as fuck, but that's not part of this story.
Moving on. About a week ago I texted Landon Tice, because he knew I'd been there. He told me he believed the cheating was taking place in a smaller room that functions as a high-limit cash-game room. For those of you who don't know, Prime is in a converted Brazilian steak house, and it had a large main dining area and a smaller, semi-private room that was a natural fit to become the high-limit room, though in practice a lot of the big games just ran on the main floor as well.
Very little of the recent tourney action in the spring series was in the high-roller room; it was used as an overflow area when needed when there was a large event or several events running. All the seating and such was done through a central computer, linked to a server in the back room. Multiple computers could be attached it to it, and we had one for the bloggers area as well. (It runs the new Poker Atlas software and at the moment, that kicks Bravo's ass.)
Now, a lot of people may not realize that all the tourney staff for major series was in essence part time. Justin Hammer brought in a team of very highly regarded TDs. They had participation inside the cage during the series, too. However, Justin's team had nothing to do with the cash-game side of the operation that ran simultaneously during the series. There were always multiple people who had access to the computer and could access the seating, certainly including the owner who's been chatted about as likely having been part of this. Everyone just took turns at the computer; I was even on it a handful of times, especially early in the series when I needed pointers on how the software worked.
What's been bothersome is to see the aspersions being cast Hammer's way, here and there, as in some chat comments on streams like "Hammer's not there any more," insinuating that he must have been part of it. No way; this alleged cheating was being done parallel to Hammer's tourney work, and I'd bet my eye teeth he was utterly and completely uninvolved. He's been very open in discussing this and I know he chatted with Matt Berkey a couple of days back. I'm not sure if that's been published or is even planned to be; I'm at the series and have been way too busy to look.
Moving on to the shuffler. A lot of people don't really understand how an automated shuffler could be used to aid cheating in a game. The Prime Social cheating is alleged to have been done with the use of a DeckMate 2 shuffler, which has the ability to sort cards into various preset patterns. It's useful for re-making decks, which previously all had to be done by hand. I do not know the exact technical specs inside the machine, but it identifies each card through the use of a camera or sensor that compares multiple cards and allows them to be switched around through multiple sortings. But it's that camera or sensor that can be used illicitly as well, since it can record a stream of the cards in the order as they're presented to the dealer. That stream, according to the accounts that I've heard, can then be transmitted to a cheater, most likely an accomplice who is somewhere nearby the game.
So, say a dealer gets a deck freshly shuffled from the machine. It doesn't matter if he cuts the deck or not. Once the first up card appears -- usually the window card on the board -- then the order of the entire deck is known. That stream of cards can be calculated backwards and forwards; the cheater(s) will know their opponents' hole cards as well as know what cards are coming off the deck. The cheater can then know if what he holds will win the hand outright when the full board is out, or if not, which player or players he might have to bet out of the hand or bluff or whatever.
People might wonder if this sort of system could have been what was used in the alleged Postle cheating, too. To be honest, I don't see why not, but that's just conjecture. It circumvents the idea that Postle somehow had access to whatever the table sensors were picking up, which was likely a separate arrangement mocked up for the live streams, However, that Postle's alleged cheating occurred only in the live streamed games is another factor to be considered.
And there's another factor to be considered regarding the Prime Social situation as well. Prime also live streams games, multiple times a week when I was there, and they did a few of the spring series' final tables as well. But the stage for that was on one end of the main room, or the old main dining hall, as it was. That table is separate from the private room where the alleged cheating occurred.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
As usual, PFA (or PFA extended) is ahead of the curve.
On my Vegascasinotalk site, we discussed these shufflers about 2 years ago. The conclusion? It seemed quite possible these could be (and have been) hacked by bad actors within the casino industry, and sold to or modified for shady casinos/cardrooms trying to cheat.
This is NOT a concern for large, established casinos, as they would have too much to lose by trying to engage in such a scheme. Large casinos also likely have a strict protocol for obtaining and maintaining these machines.
But side of the road Indian casinos, or small-medium sized cardrooms? 100% they could do shit like this.
Why might a Texas cardroom like Prime Social do it? They could rig middle or high stakes games for their friends, and then split the profits later.
To be clear, the shuffling machines do NOT come with the ability to be programmable to arrange the deck at the casino owner's choosing, but certain models to have the capability to arrange the deck in various pre-programmed fashion (such as low-to-high), and this could be modified by a bad actor to arrange the deck whichever way they want. This could NOT be hacked by an outsider. It would require physical access to the components of the machine.
