Casino Procedures - Fill, Count and Drop Box Q's

[John Wesley Powell]

Questions...

1) Several factors are or can be used to determine if a fill is needed. Are they short Black, Green, Red? Are the expecting a High roller? Etc...
2) A floor person can do it. It may depend on the house procedures, or how big is the joint your playing in. Some places require that a shift boss or assistant approve all fills or credits.
3) Usually three times a day. Shift boss or assisstant along with a rep from the shift who is releiving them. It is called the count and happens right before (30 minutes) shift change. In addition most modern houses have systems installed at the table to track who has been playing, what their buy-ins or color ups have been, this allows them to track how much has been dropped and whether the table is winning or losing for the day.
4) Most places have gone to a 24 hour drop. Meaning boxes are pulled once a day, usually between 2am & 3am. The exception to this is the poker room where a drop is performed three times a day, 10am - 6pm - 2am.
5) The next morning by soft count.
6) Soft Count personnel enter this count information in to the computer. It generates a flash report or quicktime report that is immediately sent to executive management, usually by 10am or 11am that morning. A more detailed table by table and department by department analsysis (sic) is preformed by accounting and sent out that afternoon or the next day. This flash or quicktime report includes table games, poker, keno, Race & Sports, Slots, and food outlets also.
7) First of all table counts themselves DO NOT raise a flag. Individual players do. Most shift bosses know what tables are losing - they don't usually concern themselves with winning tables unless it has had a big win.

Now Toddler you knew DV, you probably knew the answers to these questions already. Why are you really asking them. Please tell me I'm dying to know.
JWP

 

[toddler]

Subterfuge and Obfuscation Puzzle

JWP/OPC,

Thanks very much to both of your responses. If we can keep this going a bit further, I would appreciate it.

JWP, your insight is correct when mentioning DV. Offline, DV provided some very interesting information, borderline esoteric, beyond counting. The questions posed are part of a larger discussion, a discussion which, unfortunately, did not get finalized. The bottomline here is obfuscation, looking for pit/surveillance blind or down time. This all relates to "looking inside the casino".

I've seen unnecessary fills performed where there were plenty of all denoms. They absolutely filled the float. I've witnessed small fills where I thought, "What a waste of time." I have even asked the dealer, "You need a fill?" She would shake her head in minor disgust. I attempt to play at tables which are not in need of an immediate fill. This is why I ask about the determining metrics. Something to keep in the back of your mind... pits, traditionally, are not allowed to perform cross-fills, taking chips from one table to another. But the players can.

Let me pose these questions (and please chime in OPC!)... How does a casino know if a table is losing? When do they know? How often are dealers and floor personnel "pushed out"? Do they coincide with one another? As DV would say, "Where there is chaos, there is advantage."

Here's a hypothetical scenario. A casino has two tables, Table 1 and Table 2, each with $10K in the float. I buy in for $5K at table 1 and then a count is done immediately after I buy in. From the casino viewpoint, what assumptions could be made at this point in time? A step further, while they are performing the count, I take all my chips to table 2 and proceed to lose them all. From a cursory glance, which table "looks" better? Has any table lost money? Has the casino lost or made money? How and when would they know? Let's say I appear at table 2 with only $1K in chips and loose them all, $4K stuffed in my pockets. Now what can be determined?

And here's a great question, what could you accomplish by making the oncoming shift think that a certain table is holding well (full of chips) and that any chip purchases are setting out in front of the players or that all the players only have chump change in front of them?

I know you're dying to know why I ask these questions. On some level, so am I. I'm attempting to piece together a larger puzzle DV had left me.

toddler

 

[LV Bear]

Money laundering?

Not always for AP/CC tracking, perhaps for money laundering as one example.


Why would a casino get involved in worrying about money laundering?

 

[gorilla player]

I think..)...

That if they get caught taking large sums of cash, particularly cash where the serial numbers have been logged by the feds, the casino can take a world of heat for doing so... We have a local bank (very large bank spread all over SE) that got caught up in a laundering scheme. Turns out that they _should_ have realized what was going on, but they supposedly didn't. The fine was huge (many millions

Casinos are a prime way to do this...

 

[zengrifter]

Also, because most if not ALL...

...casinos are thmselves laundering money*. So it takes the heat off a bit. zg
*'The Money And The Power' - Denton and Harris