KLAS-TV Channel 8 News Las VegasI-Team Exclusive: Dirty Poker
Click here to read Dirty Poker, Part 2
If you are one of the millions of people who've taken up online poker, there's a pretty good chance you are being cheated on a regular basis according to a man who may be the most successful gambling cheat ever. Richard Marcus knew every trick in the book when it came to fleecing the casinos. He retired without ever getting caught and is now warning poker players about what they are up against. Marcus spoke exclusively with George Knapp of the I-Team.
There's an old saying about poker. If you can't spot the sucker at the table, then the sucker is you. Considering how much money is involved in poker these days, Richard Marcus says it's entirely possible someone will shoot him for revealing that poker, despite its popularity, is crooked. It's rigged, both the online games and the live tournaments in Las Vegas casinos. He's written a new book called Dirty Poker in which he lays out the sordid details. Here are a few of them.
Richard Marcus said, "I am not an angel. I'm not a saint. I'm a thief. I'm a cheater." Richard Marcus is one of -- if not the most successful gambling cheats in history. For 25 years, he prowled casinos in Las Vegas and around the world looking for ways to separate the house from its money. Craps, roulette, blackjack, and baccarat were his best games. He raked in a bundle but is cagey about how much.
He left the racket a few years ago but stays in touch with his fellow cheaters from the old days, many of whom now have a new line of work -- poker players. Just a few years ago, casinos were taking out their poker rooms so they could install more slot machines, but suddenly, poker is hot. At any given time there's a tournament or two on television. Players have become celebrities. Celebrities have become players. Hottest of all is online poker, now a $12 billion industry, even though it isn't quite legal in the U.S. And with so many new players pulling up a chair, widespread cheating is inevitable, says Marcus.
"Online is just a river full of suckers. If you don't cheat, you're a sucker online," he said. How is it done, and how does he know? Because some of the same techniques that worked in the casinos works online too. One of them is an oldie but goodie, collusion, where players secretly work as a team. "They use multiple Internet providers, multiple IP's, different accounts with different addresses. You could be sitting in China and I could be sitting in Las Vegas and we're working together."
Marcus says some cheats set up a room with eight or more computers and pretend to be eight different people, but it's one person who sees the cards in all of the other hands, a huge advantage. The use of so-called bots, short for robots, poker playing computer software, is also more common than online companies want to admit. The Internet sites use their own bots to fill up tables at times. One company was shut down because its bots had the ability to see everyone else's cards. The Internet poker industry assures players that bots simply aren't sophisticated enough to beat humans. Marcus scoffs.
"The online sites say they can monitor everyone's play and know if someone is using a bot. That's a bunch of bullcrap," he said. But the biggest threat to the integrity of online poker comes from hackers. Marcus says he knows computer whiz's that managed to penetrate the security software of online sites, which allows the hackers to see their opponents' hole cards. Not many people can pull this off, but he says he's seen it done and that hackers will always find a way to defeat defense mechanisms. Marcus thinks the writing is on the wall for online poker.
Richard Marcus said, "I'll tell you right now that in ten years there won't be any more online poker because of the cheating with robots and hackers. The honest players will see they can't win anymore. Before it ends, it will be computers against computers. You're gonna have a whole online table and there's not going to be one human playing. I'm not kidding."
Marcus advises that anyone who plays online poker should stick to the small stakes games because the cheaters are less likely to go after small pots.
Tuesday at 5 p.m., Marcus really unloads with some nasty secrets about Las Vegas poker rooms and some of the biggest names in gambling. His new book Dirty Poker, won't be released until March 15th.
Email investigaitve reporter George Knapp at gknapp@klastv.com
