Casino Security

Casino security refers to the measures that are taken at casinos to protect the establishment's money and property and the patrons. The security protects the casino and its customers from violent crime, theft, and other inappropriate behavior.

Given the relatively large amounts of currency that are handled within a casino, the temptation exists for both patrons and staff to commit crimes. Many casinos take security measures to prevent theft and other crime. The most basic level of security today consists of cameras located throughout the property operated by highly trained individuals who attempt to locate cheating and stealing by both players and employees.

While casino security of the past was nothing more than a muscle man, today's security is a multi-million dollar investment that is as complex as a police department. Modern casino security is usually divided between a physical security force and a specialized surveillance department that operates the casino's closed circuit television system known in the industry as the eye in the sky in an effort to detect any misconduct by both guests and employees alike. Both of these specialized casino departments work very closely with each other to ensure the safety of both guests as well as the casino's assets, and have been quite successful in preventing crime. Some casinos also have catwalks in the ceiling above the casino floor. These catwalks allow surveillance personnel to look directly down, through one-way glass, on the activities at the tables and/or slot machines.

In addition to cameras and other technological measures, casinos also enforce security through rules of conduct and behavior; for example, players at card games are usually required to keep their hands visible at all times.

The amount of security that is used at a casino is determined based on local laws and ordinances and what the prosecutors in the region are willing to act upon.

Poker Paigow

Paigow

Pai-gow poker is a banking poker game played in some of the California card clubs and casinos. The object of pai-gow poker is to make two poker hands that beat the banker's hands. The player is dealt 7 cards that he makes into a five card hand (high hand) and a two card hand (low hand). The hands are played and ranked as traditional poker hands (with one exception: A2345 is the second highest straight), and the 5 card hand must be higher than the 2 card hand. If both hands are better than the banker's hand, you win, if both lose, you lose, otherwise it's a push. The banker wins absolute ties (i.e. K Q vs K Q). The game is played with a 52 cards plus one joker. The joker can be used as an Ace or to complete a flush or straight.

Each player spot has spaces for a bet, low hand, high hand and sometimes the house commission. The dealer deals 7 7-card hands in front of the chip tray. The banker can be a player, but is usually the house. The banker designates which hands go to which player by shaking a dice cup with three dice; the banker's position is either 1, 8 or 15 and the hands are passed out counterclockwise. So, if the dealer is the bank and the dice total to 6, player 5 gets the first hand, player 6 gets the second, the dealer gets the third and so on. The dice mumbo-jumbo appears to be ritual stuff --- you don't need to worry about anything until you get your hand.

In pai-gow poker, the only strategic decisions are how much to bet and how to set your hand. The simple basic strategy for setting your hand is to make the highest 2-card hand that is less than your five card hand. If you can't figure out what to do, you can show your hand to the dealer and they will tell you how the house would set it.

In the California card clubs, all wagering is between players, so the option to be the bank rotates among the active players. The rule differences from the IP rules are that the Joker is wild, and the house commission is a flat $1 per hand ($10 minimum bet).

Pai-gow poker is an easy game to play, and since each hand takes a while to play (dealer has to shuffle for each game) and most hands push, you can play on $20 at a $5 table for quite a while.

Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide.

Traditional or brick and mortar, live venues for playing poker, such as casinos and poker rooms, may be intimidating for novice players and are often located in geographically disparate locations. In addition, brick and mortar casinos are reluctant to promote poker because it is difficult for them to profit from it. Though the rake, or time charge, of traditional casinos is often high, the opportunity costs of running a poker room are even higher. Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines.

Online venues, by contrast, are dramatically cheaper because they have much smaller overhead costs. For example, adding another table does not take up valuable space like it would for a brick and mortar casino. Online poker rooms also allow the players to play for low stakes as low as 1¢/2¢ and often offer poker free roll tournaments where there is no entry fee, attracting beginners and/or less wealthy clientele.

Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud, especially collusion between players. However, they have collusion detection abilities that do not exist in brick and mortar casinos. For example, online poker room security employees can look at the hand history of the cards previously played by any player on the site, making patterns of behavior easier to detect than in a casino where colluding players can simply fold their hands without anyone ever knowing the strength of their holding. Online poker rooms also check players' IP addresses in order to prevent players at the same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables

Typically, online poker rooms generate the bulk of their revenue via four methods. First, there is the rake. Rake is collected from most real money ring game pots. The rake is normally calculated as a percentage of the pot based on a sliding scale and capped at some maximum fee. Each online poker room determines its own rake structure. Since the expenses for running an online poker table are smaller than those for running a live poker table, rake in most online poker rooms is much smaller than its brick and mortar counterpart.

Second, hands played in pre-scheduled multi-table and impromptu sit-and-go tournaments are not raked, but rather an entry fee around five to ten percent of the tournament buy-in is added to the entry cost of the tournament. These two are usually specified in the tournament details as, e.g., $20+$2 $20 represents the buy-in that goes into the prize pool and $2 represents the entry fee, de facto rake. Unlike real casino tournaments, online tournaments do not deduct dealer tips and other expenses from the prize pool.

Third, some online poker sites also offer games like blackjack or side bets on poker hands where the player plays against the house for real money. The odds are in the house's favor in these games, thus producing a profit for the house. Some sites go as far as getting affiliated with online casinos, or even integrating them into the poker room software.

Fourth, like almost all institutions that hold money, online poker sites invest the money that players deposit. Regulations in most jurisdictions exist in an effort to limit the sort of risks sites can take with their clients' money. However, since the sites do not have to pay interest on players' bankrolls even low-risk investments can be a significant source of revenue.

Differences compared with conventional poker

There are substantial differences between online poker gaming and conventional, in-person gaming.

One obvious difference is that players do not sit right across from each other, removing any ability to observe others' reactions and body language. Instead, online poker players learn to focus more keenly on betting patterns, reaction time, speed of play, use of check boxes/auto plays, opponents' fold/flop percentages, chat box, waiting for the big blind, beginners' tells, and other behavior tells that are not physical in nature. Since poker is a game that requires adaptability, successful online players learn to master the new frontiers of their surroundings.

Another less obvious difference is the rate of play. In brick and mortar casinos, the dealer has to collect the cards, shuffle, and deal them after every hand. Due to this and other delays common in offline casinos, the average rate of play is around thirty hands per hour. However, online casinos do not have these delays. The dealing and shuffling are instantaneous, there are no delays relating to counting chips for a split pot, and on average, the play is faster due to auto-action buttons where the player selects his action before his turn. It is not uncommon for an online poker table to average ninety to one hundred hands per hour.

Online poker is considerably cheaper to play than conventional poker in many ways. While the rake structures of online poker sites might not differ fundamentally from those in brick and mortar operations, most of the other incidental expenses that are entailed by playing poker in a live room do not exist in online poker. An online poker player can play at home and thus incur no transportation costs to get to and from the poker room. Provided the player already has a somewhat modern computer and an Internet connection, there are no further up-front equipment costs to get started. There are also considerable incidental expenses once on a live poker table. In addition to the rake, tipping the dealers, chip runners, servers and other casino employees is almost universally expected, putting a further drain on a player's profits. Also, whereas an online player can enter and leave tables almost as he pleases, once seated at a live table a player must remain there until he wishes to stop playing, or else go back to the bottom of the waiting list. Food and beverages at casinos are generally expensive even compared to other hospitality establishments in the same city let alone compared to at home and casino managers feel little incentive to comp poker players.