zengrifter
Banned
Beating The Casinos in Play and in Court
By Marcus K. Dalton
Tribune Media Group | July 19, 2005
Eliot Jacobson compares the average casino customer with the Hispaniola islanders who were not able to see Christopher Columbus' ships when they arrived at the New World in 1492.
"The point is the islanders were familiar only with small boats and canoes. They had never seen anything like those large ships," Jacobson explains. "It was the shaman who knew how to think differently and could look out to sea and point out the ships."
Jacobson, a University of California Santa Barbara math and computer professor, gaming management consultant and a skilled blackjack card counter as well, compares "advantage players" - casino customers who have a strong chance of winning - with the 15th century shaman medicine man who knew how to think outside the box.
Author of The Blackjack Zone and proprietor of an advantage gambler website www.CardCounter.com, Jacobson has highly specialized casino skills. He excels at one game. But, Jacobson explains, there are other advantage players who are much more open-minded when it comes to beating the house.
An advantage gambler is someone who increases his or her chances of winning by taking advantage of a dealer's or casino's mistakes or by means such as card counting. Advantage players look for opportunities in a casino," Jacobson says. "Every game has the potential for opportunity. It might be that a roulette wheel is defective. A good advantage player will exploit these opportunities."
Consider, for example, Stanford Wong, one of the best advantage players who ever sat down at a 21 table. Author of Professional Blackjack, considered the card-counting Bible, Wong recently released book about scientifically beating... craps? Wong also runs an advantage gambler website a www.BJ21.com.
"Its called Wong on Dice," said Wong, who holds a Ph.D. in finance from Stanford University, and who made a very good living playing 21 in Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s.
Wong says he's been experimenting with craps for more than a year, and he's determined it is possible to "grip the dice properly and throw them properly to cause less-than-random outcomes."
For Wong, beating craps is a challenge, which makes the game preferable to 21.
Casinos Strike Back
Today, the major resorts no longer have direct ties to organized crime, and many are holdings of publicly traded corporations. They no longer use mechanics to cheat advantage players. But floor supervisors at many resorts still are very serious about trying to stop legal "advantage play," which they believe can skim as much as 3 percent of a casino's winnings.
Several Las Vegas lawyers, however, say there is an emerging pattern of intimidation and excessive force, with casino security, state gaming officers and the Metropolitan Police Department often working in concert to trample constitutional rights, civil liberties and gaming regulations to deter advantage gamblers from playing at local properties.
Casinos increasingly are refusing to tolerate certain kinds of behavior that damage their winnings, even when the courts have ruled that behavior is legal, the attorneys say.
The problem has been emerging from the backrooms of casinos into wider public view through a bevy of legal cases in Las Vegas in which advantage gamblers have sued casino-hotels, Gaming Control Board agents and police officers after they have had their winnings confiscated, been detained, roughed up by security and police officers and even charged with unrelated minor offenses.
Many people are reluctant to file suit against the casinos or police agencies, even in cases where criminal charges have been filed against them. Even when advantage gamblers have filed suits in the past, judges often upheld convictions or dismissed the plaintiffs' claims in favor of the casino and police versions of what happened.
One who understands this is Las Vegas attorney Bob Nersesian, who represents several advantage players who charge that their civil rights have been violated in casinos in recent years.
In a November 2004 article entitled "Bringing Down The House, Las Vegas Mercury author Bob Shemeligian quotes Nersesian and reviews some of the attorney's cases against casino abuse -
- "The casino is at war with everybody - every single player," Nersesian says. "Every day, the casino wins the war against the average casino patron. They do this by winning from the patron. But when it comes to their war against advantage players, I would suggest the casino uses tactics not approved by the Geneva Convention."
- Among advantage players who are Nersesian's clients:
Steve Bernier, who in 1999 at the grand opening of the Resort at Summerlin noticed a bank of $1 slot machines mistakenly set for payouts for $100 machines. Bernier won $27,000 playing those machines, but left most of the money on his playing card. Two days later, when he returned to the casino, he was denied his winnings, taken to a back room, handcuffed and detained against his will. Bernier is suing the Nevada Gaming Control Board, since the owner of the hotel subsequently went bankrupt, and the property was sold. Bernier claims state agents interrogated him at the hotel, threatened to charge him with several felonies and partially strip-searched him.
James Grosjean, author of Beyond Counting, a manual describing legal ways to beat three-card poker, craps, baccarat and even the big six wheel, recently won a $400,000 verdict against the Imperial Palace in a wrongful imprisonment suit. Grosjean also successfully sued Caesars Palace, two Gaming Control Board agents and the Griffin Agency, which maintains a dossier on advantage players. In the actions, Grosjean contends he was detained at Caesars Palace in April 2000 and at the Imperial Palace nearly a year later. Grosjean contends he was collared at Caesars and then held in custody at the Clark County Detention Center after a session at the 21 tables in which Grosjean won because of a sloppy dealer who was exposing the hole card. At the Imperial Palace, Grosjean was spotted simply walking through the casino and subsequently detained by security guards who, Grosjean contends, interrogated him and threatened "to smack his head against the wall."
Ray Cagno, a personal fitness trainer who was convicted of disorderly conduct after he was led away in handcuffs from the El Cortez's gaming tables by security guards (as he yelled out to casino patrons to call police to help him). Cagno, who subsequently sued the casino and the casino and three Metro Police officers, appealing his conviction.
In the case of Ray Cagno, Judge Joseph Bonaventure tossed the case after finding Cagno's arrest was illegal and unauthorized under Nevada law.
Judge Bonaventure found the El Cortez, in essence, had cooked up charges against Cagno to justify its policy of treating advantage gamblers harshly, and that there had never been probable cause that any crime had been committed despite his arrest by Las Vegas police.
"The idea of someone in custody being arrested for complaining about the casino's improper actions is without merit and the judge's rule was proper," said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"It's good to see the courts recognize that even if people are advantage gamblers, they still have constitutional rights," he said.
The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled there is nothing illegal about advantage gambling, which can include such techniques as card counting, shuffle tracking and playing slot machines that are paying out more than their fair share. Nevada's highest court, as well as courts in other gambling states, have ruled advantage gambling is legal since players don't manipulate any cards or machines. Rather, they do nothing more than use normal intelligence much as a bridge player would use watching other players.
Las Vegas attorney Bob Nersesian has handled about 30 advantage gambling cases, said he and his client "feel vindicated, to a degree."
"I'm elated the judge saw the city's failure. I'm heartened and disheartened at the same time that you have to go through the judicial process to have your rights recognized under the law when they should be clear as day," he said.
Ultimately Cagno's lawsuit for unspecified damages against the El Cortez, was settled.
Bonaventure ruled that the civil liberties issues involved in the federal case were moot in District Court because of the dismissal of what he ruled was an illegal arrest, but Cagno refiled his case against the three arresting Metro officers in federal court.
Nersesian said Bonaventure's ruling that Cagno's arrest by Las Vegas police had been illegal cut the legs out of the defense offered by the police in the civil action.
District Court Judge Michael Cherry last December handed down a similar ruling that found the Flamingo Laughlin liable for false imprisonment in the arrest of Tony Vincent, another advantage gambler. A host of other cases are said to be pending, although they are impossible to trace because there is no record advantage gambling is the root cause of a case until the trials proceed.
Many Las Vegas lawyers say there is an emerging pattern of intimidation and excessive force being used by casino security, state gaming and Las Vegas police officers, who often work in concert to trample constitutional rights, civil liberties and gaming regulations to deter advantage gamblers from playing at local properties.
Cagno had been convicted of disorderly conduct because of an advantage gambling incident at the El Cortez and appealed that conviction.
Cagno's disorderly conduct arrest stemmed from his yelling out to casino patrons to call police to help him as he was being led away in handcuffs by hotel security guards.
Video footage Nersesian obtained from the El Cortez shows Cagno hole carding -- meaning he was able to see the blackjack dealer's hole card because of the dealer's mistakes -- in October 2002. He is approached by two security officers who ask him to stop playing. The tapes show Cagno getting up and walking toward an exit.
As he approaches the door, however, he is blocked by two more guards and is forced to the floor, handcuffed and taken to a security holding cell.
Once in the security office, the tapes show Cagno demanding that police be called.
When police officers did arrive at the casino, however, Cagno's bad luck seemingly turned even worse.
Instead of getting help from the police, the officers charged Cagno with disorderly conduct for "yelling, screaming and struggling with a security officer," based on a citizen's complaint, according to motions filed in the case.
However, the complaining witness testified in court that she was told to file the complaint, which actually was written by a police officer, and that she had not even read the complaining document.
"Here he's trying to file a report because of his battery and false imprisonment by El Cortez, and he ends up in jail with the police claiming he's the perpetrator," Nersesian said.
"There's a pattern and practice where the police, both gaming agents and Metro, ignore any kind of complaint a patron makes against a casino about wrongs they commit distinguished from disputes they jump on, but when it comes to personal liberty issues and imprisonments by casinos, it is fundamentally impossible to have public agencies prosecute casinos," Nersesian said.
What makes the Cagno case stand out, Nersesian said, is that he "went the extra mile to make sure his rights were protected and when he did that, they ground him out like a dirty little cigarette butt."
'Cheats' Who Are Not
Steve Bernier, unlike most of Nersesian's clients, is suing the Gaming Control Board directly since the original owners of the Resort at Summerlin, Swiss Casinos of America Inc., subsequently went bankrupt. The resort has been taken over by Hotspur Resorts, which operates the hotel as a JW Marriott, and leased the property's Rampart Casino to Las Vegas-based Millennium Management.
While held in custody, which civil liberties attorneys say was unconstitutional, Bernier was interrogated by security guards without being read his rights and with state Gaming Control Board officers watching from behind a one-way mirror.
Take the case of James Grosjean, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Chicago and author of "Beyond Counting," a "how-to" gambling manual on beating the odds.
Grosjean, who was winning a card game thanks to a "sloppy" dealer and his own "hole carding," where a player tries to win an advantage by catching glimpses of a dealer's unturned cards, was handcuffed and detained by security guards at Caesars Palace on Good Friday in 2000 for cheating.
A spokesman for Park Place Entertainment, which owns Caesars Palace, while declining further comment on the case, said casino records indicated he was suspected of marking cards, but police spokesman Jose Montoya said there is no record Grosjeans ever was arrested or charged with any crime.
The police spokesman said it is not unusual for a player to be detained while an investigation is in progress and then released when there appears to be no probable cause.
"In the old days, if a boss spotted (hole carding), they'd fix the dealer. Sometimes, they'd even have a sense of humor," Grosjeans said.
That day, however, Grosjean and his friend were detained at Caesars Palace for five hours and then taken to the Clark County Detention Center. Grosjean's friend was released the next day, but Grosjeans was held in custody for 4 1/2 days.
The gambler admits he was never physically abused by law enforcement officers but calls the incident "very intimidating. (Jail) is a very stressful place. My greatest fear was from the other prisoners."
Still, Grosjean said, "We didn't do anything illegal, so (we thought) if we talked with them, we'd be out in time for dinner. That's where we underestimated the malice."
What Grosjean calls malice became apparent weeks later when he visited the Imperial Palace.
"I wasn't even playing. I noticed a guard watching me, so I left, but he followed and he did get physical. He put his hands on my chest and he blocked me from leaving," said Grosjean who is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 124 pounds. The guard was about 6 feet 2 inches tall, he said.
Nersesian said a Gaming Control Board supervisor had contacted the Imperial Palace after the Caesars Palace incident, saying if Grosjean was seen, he was to be called.
Instead, two Gaming Control agents told Imperial Palace security not to let Grosjean leave the property.
Grosjean was handcuffed again and led to a security cell by six guards who emptied his pockets, interrogated him and threatened "to smack his head against the wall."
"That's the attitude. They like hurting people," Grosjean said.
In the meantime, the agents reached the Gaming Control Board supervisor who was "incredulous he was being held," Nersesian said.
"Here is a guy who is absolutely innocent of anything, yet he was held and incarcerated and, even once they figure out they're wrong, they continue to hold him," Nersesian said.
The Imperial Palace incident "is absolute proof that (security officers) who affirmatively acknowledge they have no reason to detain someone, still feel at liberty to detain an individual, and the system and judges back each other up," Nersesian said.
Grosjean said what "shocks me is there are people in authority who are complicit. I admit I am a problem for casinos. If I were them, I wouldn't want me playing either. But I'd kick them out."
Civil liberties attorneys, like many of the victims, are particularly critical of the role of the Police Department and the Gaming Control Board in these incidents.
"Too often, the police seem to act as if they are an adjunct of the casinos' private security forces rather than public servants whose job it is to protect everyone and treat everyone equally. We've had the opportunity to experience this firsthand far too many times," the ACLU's Peck said.
While Nersesian believes Nevada's casinos are slowly beginning to recognize the civil rights of advantage players--following court-ordered judgments against them or settlements paid to those illegally detained--it is still much more dangerous for an advantage player to count cards in Nevada than in other states, such as New Jersey, where the rights of players are recognized by the courts.
"Last December, in 30 minutes, I was thrown out of four places," said Professor Jacobsen.
"Being a card counter is akin to a cheat, but this is not cheating. There's no sign on the wall that says 'thou shalt not use thy brain.' It's not illegal to make a bet at blackjack, but when I make a bet, I get tossed. When others bet, they get comps," Jacobsen said.
As long as no devices are involved, card counting is not illegal. In fact, the notion that blackjack can be beaten by players who pay attention to the cards is the exact reason the game is so popular. Booklets that teach counting techniques are sold in every casino in the state. More advanced books, sold at places like the Gamblers Book Shop, have created a community of a few thousand advanced players who say the casino paranoia is getting ridiculous.
"They're tougher than ever before. If the casinos continue at this antagonistic level, they'll kill the game of blackjack, and people will be standing around the tables," said Howard Schwartz of Gamblers Book Shop.
In general, players say, casinos will either tell the counter to stop playing or will 86 them off the property. More recently, though, players say the ante has been upped. Players find themselves handcuffed, hauled into backrooms where they can be detained for hours, questioned, photographed, threatened and sometimes roughed up.
Growing ranks of players contend this isn't just an issue for card counters, but rather for anyone who loves blackjack. The casinos have gone to such lengths to defend against counters that the game itself has changed radically and may no longer be beatable. They compare it to a rigged slot machine.
No wonder many skilled 21 players have turned in their counting charts and decided to turn their attention to other lucrative casino action--such as the sports book.
Sports Books on the Defensive
The sports books are constantly on guard against advantage players. They don't allow the use of cell phones or pagers anywhere near the books, and they often scrutinize large bets, especially those that follow movements in the line. In other words, if a bettor puts a lot of money on a team that's drawing a lot of interest and wagers from the betting public, he obviously knows something--perhaps that the line is inaccurate and the team he's betting is a real bargain. This type of action worries sports book supervisors.
"If we noticed there's a pattern developing, we don't necessarily back them off. We might ask them to limit their action to one visit per day, and generally they're cool. They understand," says an executive of Station Casinos.
One of 'them,' a former professional Jai Lai player turned poker room manager known as 'Hounds' in advantage gambling circles, turned his talent toward beating the books at dog racing.
"I became very accomplished at analyzing and handicapping dog races to the point that I had a significant advantage over the casinos," Hounds reminisces. "That's when things began to get nasty." He remembers being yelled at and verbally abused, by the sports book managers of the Palms and the Mirage, simply for winning too often. He was ultimately denied the opportunity to bet on dog races at most of the books in town and was often wrongly slandered as belonging to "the syndicate" and other nonsense, he chuckles.
"Some places take all the action, and some book the faces. It's a term that's been around. In other words, it depends who's making the bet," says Harrah's race and sports book director Howard Greenbaum.
Greenbaum laughs when asked whether he can recognize an advantage player. "You mean the ones we call wise guys," he replies.
Some sports bettors question why a sports book manager should ever be concerned with a particular wager, since every game draws action from both sides, and the outcome should not concern the sports book. But Greenbaum said that's not the way it works.
"When a customer wins, he's winning from the casino," Greenbaum explains. "When a bet is made in the race and sports book, the person is betting against the house. It's much different in racing, which is parimutuel wagering, meaning the casino simply takes a certain amount off the top."
Griffin the Dinosaur
Grojean's suit against Caesars showed how exaggerated and sometimes outright false much of the Griffin Agency's information is. Griffin was once the primary source of intelligence on advantage gamblers for the casinos, but the detective agency's influence is waning.
After being influenced by the Griffin Book, Caesars wound up with an adverse jury verdict of $50,000, and then settled for an undisclosed amount before the jury could assess additional punitive damages. Legal defense for Caesars probably cost an additional $250,000 or more. Though Russo and Grosjean were not looking for a payday, future plaintiffs will obviously see that the casinos have deep pockets and that any lawsuits should be filed against the casinos involved, not just against Griffin.
Mathematically and legally its becomming clear that the odds are not always stacked in favor of the house.
By Marcus K. Dalton
Tribune Media Group | July 19, 2005
Eliot Jacobson compares the average casino customer with the Hispaniola islanders who were not able to see Christopher Columbus' ships when they arrived at the New World in 1492.
"The point is the islanders were familiar only with small boats and canoes. They had never seen anything like those large ships," Jacobson explains. "It was the shaman who knew how to think differently and could look out to sea and point out the ships."
Jacobson, a University of California Santa Barbara math and computer professor, gaming management consultant and a skilled blackjack card counter as well, compares "advantage players" - casino customers who have a strong chance of winning - with the 15th century shaman medicine man who knew how to think outside the box.
Author of The Blackjack Zone and proprietor of an advantage gambler website www.CardCounter.com, Jacobson has highly specialized casino skills. He excels at one game. But, Jacobson explains, there are other advantage players who are much more open-minded when it comes to beating the house.
An advantage gambler is someone who increases his or her chances of winning by taking advantage of a dealer's or casino's mistakes or by means such as card counting. Advantage players look for opportunities in a casino," Jacobson says. "Every game has the potential for opportunity. It might be that a roulette wheel is defective. A good advantage player will exploit these opportunities."
Consider, for example, Stanford Wong, one of the best advantage players who ever sat down at a 21 table. Author of Professional Blackjack, considered the card-counting Bible, Wong recently released book about scientifically beating... craps? Wong also runs an advantage gambler website a www.BJ21.com.
"Its called Wong on Dice," said Wong, who holds a Ph.D. in finance from Stanford University, and who made a very good living playing 21 in Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s.
Wong says he's been experimenting with craps for more than a year, and he's determined it is possible to "grip the dice properly and throw them properly to cause less-than-random outcomes."
For Wong, beating craps is a challenge, which makes the game preferable to 21.
Casinos Strike Back
Today, the major resorts no longer have direct ties to organized crime, and many are holdings of publicly traded corporations. They no longer use mechanics to cheat advantage players. But floor supervisors at many resorts still are very serious about trying to stop legal "advantage play," which they believe can skim as much as 3 percent of a casino's winnings.
Several Las Vegas lawyers, however, say there is an emerging pattern of intimidation and excessive force, with casino security, state gaming officers and the Metropolitan Police Department often working in concert to trample constitutional rights, civil liberties and gaming regulations to deter advantage gamblers from playing at local properties.
Casinos increasingly are refusing to tolerate certain kinds of behavior that damage their winnings, even when the courts have ruled that behavior is legal, the attorneys say.
The problem has been emerging from the backrooms of casinos into wider public view through a bevy of legal cases in Las Vegas in which advantage gamblers have sued casino-hotels, Gaming Control Board agents and police officers after they have had their winnings confiscated, been detained, roughed up by security and police officers and even charged with unrelated minor offenses.
Many people are reluctant to file suit against the casinos or police agencies, even in cases where criminal charges have been filed against them. Even when advantage gamblers have filed suits in the past, judges often upheld convictions or dismissed the plaintiffs' claims in favor of the casino and police versions of what happened.
One who understands this is Las Vegas attorney Bob Nersesian, who represents several advantage players who charge that their civil rights have been violated in casinos in recent years.
In a November 2004 article entitled "Bringing Down The House, Las Vegas Mercury author Bob Shemeligian quotes Nersesian and reviews some of the attorney's cases against casino abuse -
- "The casino is at war with everybody - every single player," Nersesian says. "Every day, the casino wins the war against the average casino patron. They do this by winning from the patron. But when it comes to their war against advantage players, I would suggest the casino uses tactics not approved by the Geneva Convention."
- Among advantage players who are Nersesian's clients:
Steve Bernier, who in 1999 at the grand opening of the Resort at Summerlin noticed a bank of $1 slot machines mistakenly set for payouts for $100 machines. Bernier won $27,000 playing those machines, but left most of the money on his playing card. Two days later, when he returned to the casino, he was denied his winnings, taken to a back room, handcuffed and detained against his will. Bernier is suing the Nevada Gaming Control Board, since the owner of the hotel subsequently went bankrupt, and the property was sold. Bernier claims state agents interrogated him at the hotel, threatened to charge him with several felonies and partially strip-searched him.
James Grosjean, author of Beyond Counting, a manual describing legal ways to beat three-card poker, craps, baccarat and even the big six wheel, recently won a $400,000 verdict against the Imperial Palace in a wrongful imprisonment suit. Grosjean also successfully sued Caesars Palace, two Gaming Control Board agents and the Griffin Agency, which maintains a dossier on advantage players. In the actions, Grosjean contends he was detained at Caesars Palace in April 2000 and at the Imperial Palace nearly a year later. Grosjean contends he was collared at Caesars and then held in custody at the Clark County Detention Center after a session at the 21 tables in which Grosjean won because of a sloppy dealer who was exposing the hole card. At the Imperial Palace, Grosjean was spotted simply walking through the casino and subsequently detained by security guards who, Grosjean contends, interrogated him and threatened "to smack his head against the wall."
Ray Cagno, a personal fitness trainer who was convicted of disorderly conduct after he was led away in handcuffs from the El Cortez's gaming tables by security guards (as he yelled out to casino patrons to call police to help him). Cagno, who subsequently sued the casino and the casino and three Metro Police officers, appealing his conviction.
In the case of Ray Cagno, Judge Joseph Bonaventure tossed the case after finding Cagno's arrest was illegal and unauthorized under Nevada law.
Judge Bonaventure found the El Cortez, in essence, had cooked up charges against Cagno to justify its policy of treating advantage gamblers harshly, and that there had never been probable cause that any crime had been committed despite his arrest by Las Vegas police.
"The idea of someone in custody being arrested for complaining about the casino's improper actions is without merit and the judge's rule was proper," said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"It's good to see the courts recognize that even if people are advantage gamblers, they still have constitutional rights," he said.
The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled there is nothing illegal about advantage gambling, which can include such techniques as card counting, shuffle tracking and playing slot machines that are paying out more than their fair share. Nevada's highest court, as well as courts in other gambling states, have ruled advantage gambling is legal since players don't manipulate any cards or machines. Rather, they do nothing more than use normal intelligence much as a bridge player would use watching other players.
Las Vegas attorney Bob Nersesian has handled about 30 advantage gambling cases, said he and his client "feel vindicated, to a degree."
"I'm elated the judge saw the city's failure. I'm heartened and disheartened at the same time that you have to go through the judicial process to have your rights recognized under the law when they should be clear as day," he said.
Ultimately Cagno's lawsuit for unspecified damages against the El Cortez, was settled.
Bonaventure ruled that the civil liberties issues involved in the federal case were moot in District Court because of the dismissal of what he ruled was an illegal arrest, but Cagno refiled his case against the three arresting Metro officers in federal court.
Nersesian said Bonaventure's ruling that Cagno's arrest by Las Vegas police had been illegal cut the legs out of the defense offered by the police in the civil action.
District Court Judge Michael Cherry last December handed down a similar ruling that found the Flamingo Laughlin liable for false imprisonment in the arrest of Tony Vincent, another advantage gambler. A host of other cases are said to be pending, although they are impossible to trace because there is no record advantage gambling is the root cause of a case until the trials proceed.
Many Las Vegas lawyers say there is an emerging pattern of intimidation and excessive force being used by casino security, state gaming and Las Vegas police officers, who often work in concert to trample constitutional rights, civil liberties and gaming regulations to deter advantage gamblers from playing at local properties.
Cagno had been convicted of disorderly conduct because of an advantage gambling incident at the El Cortez and appealed that conviction.
Cagno's disorderly conduct arrest stemmed from his yelling out to casino patrons to call police to help him as he was being led away in handcuffs by hotel security guards.
Video footage Nersesian obtained from the El Cortez shows Cagno hole carding -- meaning he was able to see the blackjack dealer's hole card because of the dealer's mistakes -- in October 2002. He is approached by two security officers who ask him to stop playing. The tapes show Cagno getting up and walking toward an exit.
As he approaches the door, however, he is blocked by two more guards and is forced to the floor, handcuffed and taken to a security holding cell.
Once in the security office, the tapes show Cagno demanding that police be called.
When police officers did arrive at the casino, however, Cagno's bad luck seemingly turned even worse.
Instead of getting help from the police, the officers charged Cagno with disorderly conduct for "yelling, screaming and struggling with a security officer," based on a citizen's complaint, according to motions filed in the case.
However, the complaining witness testified in court that she was told to file the complaint, which actually was written by a police officer, and that she had not even read the complaining document.
"Here he's trying to file a report because of his battery and false imprisonment by El Cortez, and he ends up in jail with the police claiming he's the perpetrator," Nersesian said.
"There's a pattern and practice where the police, both gaming agents and Metro, ignore any kind of complaint a patron makes against a casino about wrongs they commit distinguished from disputes they jump on, but when it comes to personal liberty issues and imprisonments by casinos, it is fundamentally impossible to have public agencies prosecute casinos," Nersesian said.
What makes the Cagno case stand out, Nersesian said, is that he "went the extra mile to make sure his rights were protected and when he did that, they ground him out like a dirty little cigarette butt."
'Cheats' Who Are Not
Steve Bernier, unlike most of Nersesian's clients, is suing the Gaming Control Board directly since the original owners of the Resort at Summerlin, Swiss Casinos of America Inc., subsequently went bankrupt. The resort has been taken over by Hotspur Resorts, which operates the hotel as a JW Marriott, and leased the property's Rampart Casino to Las Vegas-based Millennium Management.
While held in custody, which civil liberties attorneys say was unconstitutional, Bernier was interrogated by security guards without being read his rights and with state Gaming Control Board officers watching from behind a one-way mirror.
Take the case of James Grosjean, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Chicago and author of "Beyond Counting," a "how-to" gambling manual on beating the odds.
Grosjean, who was winning a card game thanks to a "sloppy" dealer and his own "hole carding," where a player tries to win an advantage by catching glimpses of a dealer's unturned cards, was handcuffed and detained by security guards at Caesars Palace on Good Friday in 2000 for cheating.
A spokesman for Park Place Entertainment, which owns Caesars Palace, while declining further comment on the case, said casino records indicated he was suspected of marking cards, but police spokesman Jose Montoya said there is no record Grosjeans ever was arrested or charged with any crime.
The police spokesman said it is not unusual for a player to be detained while an investigation is in progress and then released when there appears to be no probable cause.
"In the old days, if a boss spotted (hole carding), they'd fix the dealer. Sometimes, they'd even have a sense of humor," Grosjeans said.
That day, however, Grosjean and his friend were detained at Caesars Palace for five hours and then taken to the Clark County Detention Center. Grosjean's friend was released the next day, but Grosjeans was held in custody for 4 1/2 days.
The gambler admits he was never physically abused by law enforcement officers but calls the incident "very intimidating. (Jail) is a very stressful place. My greatest fear was from the other prisoners."
Still, Grosjean said, "We didn't do anything illegal, so (we thought) if we talked with them, we'd be out in time for dinner. That's where we underestimated the malice."
What Grosjean calls malice became apparent weeks later when he visited the Imperial Palace.
"I wasn't even playing. I noticed a guard watching me, so I left, but he followed and he did get physical. He put his hands on my chest and he blocked me from leaving," said Grosjean who is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 124 pounds. The guard was about 6 feet 2 inches tall, he said.
Nersesian said a Gaming Control Board supervisor had contacted the Imperial Palace after the Caesars Palace incident, saying if Grosjean was seen, he was to be called.
Instead, two Gaming Control agents told Imperial Palace security not to let Grosjean leave the property.
Grosjean was handcuffed again and led to a security cell by six guards who emptied his pockets, interrogated him and threatened "to smack his head against the wall."
"That's the attitude. They like hurting people," Grosjean said.
In the meantime, the agents reached the Gaming Control Board supervisor who was "incredulous he was being held," Nersesian said.
"Here is a guy who is absolutely innocent of anything, yet he was held and incarcerated and, even once they figure out they're wrong, they continue to hold him," Nersesian said.
The Imperial Palace incident "is absolute proof that (security officers) who affirmatively acknowledge they have no reason to detain someone, still feel at liberty to detain an individual, and the system and judges back each other up," Nersesian said.
Grosjean said what "shocks me is there are people in authority who are complicit. I admit I am a problem for casinos. If I were them, I wouldn't want me playing either. But I'd kick them out."
Civil liberties attorneys, like many of the victims, are particularly critical of the role of the Police Department and the Gaming Control Board in these incidents.
"Too often, the police seem to act as if they are an adjunct of the casinos' private security forces rather than public servants whose job it is to protect everyone and treat everyone equally. We've had the opportunity to experience this firsthand far too many times," the ACLU's Peck said.
While Nersesian believes Nevada's casinos are slowly beginning to recognize the civil rights of advantage players--following court-ordered judgments against them or settlements paid to those illegally detained--it is still much more dangerous for an advantage player to count cards in Nevada than in other states, such as New Jersey, where the rights of players are recognized by the courts.
"Last December, in 30 minutes, I was thrown out of four places," said Professor Jacobsen.
"Being a card counter is akin to a cheat, but this is not cheating. There's no sign on the wall that says 'thou shalt not use thy brain.' It's not illegal to make a bet at blackjack, but when I make a bet, I get tossed. When others bet, they get comps," Jacobsen said.
As long as no devices are involved, card counting is not illegal. In fact, the notion that blackjack can be beaten by players who pay attention to the cards is the exact reason the game is so popular. Booklets that teach counting techniques are sold in every casino in the state. More advanced books, sold at places like the Gamblers Book Shop, have created a community of a few thousand advanced players who say the casino paranoia is getting ridiculous.
"They're tougher than ever before. If the casinos continue at this antagonistic level, they'll kill the game of blackjack, and people will be standing around the tables," said Howard Schwartz of Gamblers Book Shop.
In general, players say, casinos will either tell the counter to stop playing or will 86 them off the property. More recently, though, players say the ante has been upped. Players find themselves handcuffed, hauled into backrooms where they can be detained for hours, questioned, photographed, threatened and sometimes roughed up.
Growing ranks of players contend this isn't just an issue for card counters, but rather for anyone who loves blackjack. The casinos have gone to such lengths to defend against counters that the game itself has changed radically and may no longer be beatable. They compare it to a rigged slot machine.
No wonder many skilled 21 players have turned in their counting charts and decided to turn their attention to other lucrative casino action--such as the sports book.
Sports Books on the Defensive
The sports books are constantly on guard against advantage players. They don't allow the use of cell phones or pagers anywhere near the books, and they often scrutinize large bets, especially those that follow movements in the line. In other words, if a bettor puts a lot of money on a team that's drawing a lot of interest and wagers from the betting public, he obviously knows something--perhaps that the line is inaccurate and the team he's betting is a real bargain. This type of action worries sports book supervisors.
"If we noticed there's a pattern developing, we don't necessarily back them off. We might ask them to limit their action to one visit per day, and generally they're cool. They understand," says an executive of Station Casinos.
One of 'them,' a former professional Jai Lai player turned poker room manager known as 'Hounds' in advantage gambling circles, turned his talent toward beating the books at dog racing.
"I became very accomplished at analyzing and handicapping dog races to the point that I had a significant advantage over the casinos," Hounds reminisces. "That's when things began to get nasty." He remembers being yelled at and verbally abused, by the sports book managers of the Palms and the Mirage, simply for winning too often. He was ultimately denied the opportunity to bet on dog races at most of the books in town and was often wrongly slandered as belonging to "the syndicate" and other nonsense, he chuckles.
"Some places take all the action, and some book the faces. It's a term that's been around. In other words, it depends who's making the bet," says Harrah's race and sports book director Howard Greenbaum.
Greenbaum laughs when asked whether he can recognize an advantage player. "You mean the ones we call wise guys," he replies.
Some sports bettors question why a sports book manager should ever be concerned with a particular wager, since every game draws action from both sides, and the outcome should not concern the sports book. But Greenbaum said that's not the way it works.
"When a customer wins, he's winning from the casino," Greenbaum explains. "When a bet is made in the race and sports book, the person is betting against the house. It's much different in racing, which is parimutuel wagering, meaning the casino simply takes a certain amount off the top."
Griffin the Dinosaur
Grojean's suit against Caesars showed how exaggerated and sometimes outright false much of the Griffin Agency's information is. Griffin was once the primary source of intelligence on advantage gamblers for the casinos, but the detective agency's influence is waning.
After being influenced by the Griffin Book, Caesars wound up with an adverse jury verdict of $50,000, and then settled for an undisclosed amount before the jury could assess additional punitive damages. Legal defense for Caesars probably cost an additional $250,000 or more. Though Russo and Grosjean were not looking for a payday, future plaintiffs will obviously see that the casinos have deep pockets and that any lawsuits should be filed against the casinos involved, not just against Griffin.
Mathematically and legally its becomming clear that the odds are not always stacked in favor of the house.