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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
silexia wrote 14 hours 54 min ago:
Yet another reason to not watch pro sports. Entitled and overpaid
athlete criminals.
exabrial wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
Where they actual X-Rays? Exposing people to ionizing radiation? Or was
is this used in a figurative sense
I_dream_of_Geni wrote 17 hours 9 min ago:
X-Ray tables?? Seriously? Why are the feds looking at the gambling, and
NOT the uncontrolled beaming of raw x-rays into a room full of people.
There's GOT to be a law covering that...
anxman wrote 18 hours 31 min ago:
[1] This appears to be the / a source for the devices in question.
It's worth reading over the technical details of how it all works.
It's both terrifying and impressive. Cards can be identified using a
barcode encoded on their thin edge from meters away.
HTML [1]: https://www.markedcardsshop.com
smallstepforman wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
This can be done with no tech at legit casinos. Just have a group of
people with a predetermined âtellâ system so that only the best
hand in the group competes against the fish. In a 4 player game, with 3
teamplayers and 1 fish, thats 75% of games youâll win. With zero
tech.
breakpointalpha wrote 18 hours 33 min ago:
Collusion in live casinos is a real thing for sure, but it's not
exactly easy to pull off.
1) Most card rooms these days are 8 or 9 players, so your team would
need to be at least 3, maybe 4 to really swing the odds in your
favor.
2) You need a subtle but effective way to signal to your team the
relative strength of your hand. Think baseball signals, but way more
low key. "If I touch my watch, I have an Ace" etc. You'll probably
want to mix these up across the hours or days of play.
3) Seats typically do open one at a time, and you want to trickle in
your team to avoid suspicion. Higher stakes games, like $5-10, where
there are thousands of dollars in front of most players are your
goal, and good news is that these are typically more rare so there
may be only one table running. Your teammates will have to wait it
out, but once at the table, they can stay for hours.
4) You'll never know exactly what your targets are holding, but
knowing that your teammates folded a flush draw for example can help
you narrow your opponents cards to a smaller range of possibilities.
You'll want to position your teammates around the table to create
"squeeze" situations where two of the team can trap a target in
between.
It takes some creative subtlety, but it can be very hard to
impossible to detect collusion in live games.
awb wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
A few issues:
* The casino takes a rake, so you lose money every hand, but you only
win when the fish bets and loses. Youâre also expected to tip the
dealer
* Everything is on camera and dealers remember players, so there will
be a lot of witnesses and evidence
* Seats often open one at a time, so youâd potentially lose money
at other tables waiting to play together. Or, you all show up at once
and ask to start a new table together, which would get suspicious.
* If you donât know the fishâs cards, thereâs still a chance
you lose and lose big
metabagel wrote 20 hours 51 min ago:
Wouldn't this be discovered and get you banned by the casino?
VWWHFSfQ wrote 19 hours 56 min ago:
And get your hand smashed by a hammer in the back room
rufus_foreman wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
Which hand?
bobafett-9902 wrote 21 hours 21 min ago:
All this potential jail time and reputation lost for $7 mil stolen over
multiple years total??? And how many criminals split those winnings??
So the take home pay for an NBA HOF was like under $1 mil? Billups just
signed an extension as an NBA head coach making well over that amount
EVERY YEAR. Just sad imo
SoftTalker wrote 18 hours 36 min ago:
These guys are competitors. They crave it. Gambling is a way they
scratch that itch.
Nifty3929 wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
I think what happens is that many of these professional athletes grow
up in communities and circumstances where it's just normal and
expected to be "hustling," getting away with things, and avoiding the
law. Wrong, but maybe understandable under those circumstances
(poverty primarily).
But then you take that person out of the "hood," and give him a
$1M/yr sports contract, and the mentality doesn't necessarily go
away. It's still about the hustle. They might not stop to consider
that they don't NEED to hustle anymore. And they're probably also
surrounded now by grifters/"friends"/family who do still need/want to
hustle, and essentially using these guys.
It is sad.
dopamean wrote 18 hours 56 min ago:
I can tell you right now that the kinds of dudes who play high
level college ball and then go on to play professional ball were
not hustling as kids. Many did grow up in unfortunate circumstances
(this is less true as the years go on) however their talents
generally were identified early and the track they were on was
pretty clear.
I think the simpler answer is that some people are especially poor
at risk vs reward analysis. Others enjoy the thrill of getting away
with something. It's been 30+ years since Chauncey Billups has had
to worry about money. I think your point about friends around them
is very fair though. Lots of these guys have hangers on with their
hands out and despite making lots of money in their careers they
cant just give cash to everyone. So I can imagine them thinking
"hey place a bet on my under for the next game because I'm going to
go out early" seems like a low risk, not so evil way to put a few
dollars in a friend's pocket.
ChrisArchitect wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
Earlier:
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684548
whycome wrote 18 hours 20 min ago:
Yessss. "Earlier" or "Other Discussions" are good ways of framing it.
'Dupe' isn't apt. Thank you.
zwog wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
Semi related: A couple of years ago a waste facility in Berlin measured
increased levels of radio activity and traced it back to a restaurant
where 13 cards laced with radioactive Iodine-125 were found: [1] I
couldn't find anything about how the cheat actually worked, though.
In Mongolia they found radioactive dice at an airport:
HTML [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42157129
HTML [2]: https://conferences.iaea.org/event/16/contributions/7187/attac...
debo_ wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
This is like starting a YC company with fewer steps.
iandanforth wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
Isn't legal gambling default profitable? The house is allowed to remove
players who are good at games that involve skill and set the win ratio
on games that don't (as specified in regulations).
Is this a case of bureaucracy forcing people into illegality?
mastazi wrote 21 hours 52 min ago:
> including members of La Cosa Nostra crime families,
I'm not sure if this reflects common usage in English but in Italian,
Cosa Nostra is just a synonym for Mafia, not the name of a specific
family. Also, in Italian it's never preceded by the article "La".
prodigycorp wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
La Cosa Nostra is the umbrella term for the American Mafia, as
opposed to the Sicilian Mafia (Costa Nostra)
The term was coined by the FBI specifically to make that geographic
distinction.
croes wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
Mafia nowadays is used as a synonym for organized crime so Cosa
Nostra makes it clear it means the original Mafia.
Lucasoato wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
Cosa Nostra is a well defined organization operating in Sicily, that
term isnât used for other Mafias around Italy or other Sicilian
criminal organizations. Among its past leaders you can find Bernardo
Provenzano and Matteo Messina Denaro.
logtrees wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
This one would be an amazing film exploring both the intersection of
tech and the NBA and the families involved too. It would be a stunning
production if done with high quality in mind.
everdrive wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
This is probably a very HN comment, but I cannot imagine why people
actually like gambling and poker:
- high likelihood you lose money
- the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers
- you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours
- the only victory condition is that you take money from other people
allthetime wrote 17 hours 11 min ago:
Everyone at the table agrees to those conditions.
Arrath wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
It entirely depends on the vibes, the company, and the game, in my
opinion.
At one job, we used it as a social time, 6 to 15 people from work
(had to run two tables for those big nights) got together Saturday
night, bbq'd some food, maybe watched a game on tv if there was a
good one, and played a friendly game. Had a few drinks and enjoyed
the company, while cards were played in the background.
Mildly competitive, but it was a flat $40 buy in with no more money
allowed so the stakes were never incredibly high.
At another company, one guy in particular was the driver to get games
going and he always wanted the stakes too high (for my taste) with
lots of money moving around. I only went to two of those, wasn't my
style.
zone411 wrote 18 hours 27 min ago:
You got many answers already, but a couple more points:
Poker doesn't require lying or table talk. Bluffing is rule-legal
strategic deception expressed through betting. More like a feint in
sports than cheating.
If "sitting at a table following rules" is the issue, that's true of
most games. And formats vary: many are short and cash games are
leave-anytime.
breakpointalpha wrote 18 hours 56 min ago:
You don't have to lie to win at poker, you just have to bluff
sometimes.
The game is similar to chess when played at a moderate to high level.
adolph wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
> - high likelihood you lose money
Loss aversion is a cognitive bias that has to be worked on like any
other. Poker might be a good method to address it.
matwood wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
I don't consider poker gambling (that would be something like craps
which I also find fun). It is a skill you can build and not
necessarily lose money. I also don't consider it lying when everyone
at the table agrees to how the game is played. Playing 'good' poker
requires folding a lot and it can get boring sitting at a table.
Poker is a lot like business distilled down. The player is managing
resources and deciding where to use them while dealing with
incomplete information.
floam wrote 19 hours 56 min ago:
You donât just get to beat and be handed currency from people; you
get to keep their money (now it is your money!)
rideontime wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
"the only victory condition is that you take money from other people"
is also why I cannot be interested in day trading or cryptocurrency
speculation, and will likely die penniless.
metabagel wrote 20 hours 44 min ago:
Playing poker on a more than casual basis seems like work. But, then
again so does something like Farmville. Gotta keep grinding.
mgfist wrote 20 hours 47 min ago:
Poker is so much fun with friends. It's not about winning, it's about
hanging out and being a little competitive. It's a great way to hang
out in real life for a few hours in today's online world.
alexey-salmin wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
Right so what are the downsides?
jm4 wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
Poker is a great game. There are so many aspects to it where you can
go down a rabbit hole of strategy to improve your game - there's
math, making decisions with incomplete information, deduction,
reading people, all kinds of non-verbal communication, etc. Although
there's chance involved, it is undoubtedly a skill game. The gambling
is one of the unfortunate aspects, but it just doesn't play the same
without some money involved. You can get around that a little bit
with house games where everyone throws in $20 or small buy-in sit and
go games at a casino.
Another game that's worth checking out if some of this sounds
interesting but you really don't like gambling is "Blood on the
Clocktower". It's a social logic and deduction party game. There's
chance, bluffing, incomplete information, trying to figure out what
other players have, etc. It's completely different, but it can
scratch some of the same itches and it's a blast to play. My friends
and I play it with our kids.
captn3m0 wrote 19 hours 6 min ago:
There's also Match Poker, which makes a Team Sport out of Poker and
removes all the gambling and chance -
HTML [1]: https://matchpokerfed.org/match-poker/
capncleaver wrote 21 hours 2 min ago:
Yes. See 'Thinking in Bets' by Annie Duke for a good summary of why
Poker is interesting / useful. World is Casino!
Blood on the Clocktower is great! My 15yo son is always trying to
get a group of 8+ together for a game.
Came here to recommend Skull, a quick and easy to learn bluffing
game, of which the designer said he was aiming for 'the feelings of
poker without the money or luck' and I would say succeeded.
dimal wrote 21 hours 15 min ago:
I dislike all gambling except poker. Anything that is purely chance
and not within my control at all (roulette, sports betting) is dull
and stressful. The odds are always against you. Poker has a big
element of chance of course, but itâs really a game of skill. It
hits a sweet spot of mathematics and social engineering that lights
up a lot of neurons in a very engaging way.
When it comes to lying, in the real world I tend to be hypermoral and
honest to a fault. Itâs fun to have a game structure where
dishonesty and aggression are acceptable.
xandrius wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
With that mindset literally anything is unfun. Do you enjoy anything
in particular that does not produce value? If so, you're also very
likely losing something, stuck somewhere, etc.
kenjackson wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
This is honestly an odd take. For most people the money is in
exchange for having fun (there are pros and likely addicts though for
which the money is the goal). I play in fantasy sports leagues and I
pay into them. I donât even care about winning the pot - I enjoy
the game. The victory condition is having fun. Winning money is a
bonus.
The point of the game isnât to lie to friends. Is this how you see
the point of chess or sports in general? Or any game where revealing
your strategy would diminish your chances of winning?
I donât think your comment is very HN typical, but it does indicate
some other qualities you may have - not bad or good, but not typical.
croes wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
Why do people smoke?
Reason is rarely our motive.
dragonwriter wrote 18 hours 20 min ago:
Reason cannot be a motive.
(Reason can be how you get from a motive to a chosen action to
fulfill that motive, though.)
simonsarris wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
I mean, one could write something like "I cannot imagine why people
actually like ski resorts"
- 100% likelihood you lose money
- the point of the game is fly down a mountain and not hit any trees
(about 45 more deaths per year than poker in the US)
- you're stuck sitting in a lift or a line and following rules for
hours
- there are no victory conditions
metabagel wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
> 100% likelihood you lose money
Paying money for a service and losing money gambling are two
different things.
> the point of the game is fly down a mountain and not hit any
trees (about 45 more deaths per year than poker in the US)
It's not a game. It's an activity.
> you're stuck sitting in a lift or a line and following rules for
hours
Not the whole time.
> there are no victory conditions
Right, because it's not a game.
Nicook wrote 20 hours 26 min ago:
paying money for a service and gambling are not totally
different, especially if you more or less know your odds before
entering. ./when I play blackjack (rarely) I understand I am
more or less paying to play a game for enjoyment.
comrade1234 wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
Skiing is downright sisyphean. I'm only sort of joking - I live in
Switzerland and since I started ski-touring, where you climb up the
mountain and then ski down it, this feeling is even stronger.
But I think Sisyphus must have gotten at least some satisfaction
for almost reaching the top.
DavidWoof wrote 18 hours 45 min ago:
I have Sisyphus as my wallpaper. When people ask about it I say
he's the patron saint of software development.
banannaise wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
Camus strikes again.
vel0city wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
I'll share my experience. Playing a small pot poker game every now
and then can be fun between friends. I've had a few groups of guys
I'd go play poker with from time to time throughout the years.
The buy in would be something kind of low for everyone playing, like
$20. No repeat buy-ins. So the loss if you didn't win wasn't much,
and the payout wasn't exactly life changing but like take your spouse
out to a nice date night with the winnings kind of thing. I'd often
spend $20 or so doing some other kind of event with friends from time
to time anyways, so its not like its some large amount being spent on
entertainment. Paying for a batting cage for the evening or go-karts
or renting a karaoke booth is also a 100% chance of losing money,
should we also never do these things?
There's lots of deception to be played in tons of card games and
board games, I don't know why poker would be held as something odd.
Any game where you're holding a secret hand pretty much involves some
amount of hidden motivations. One might also bluff in Catan or
deceive their opponents in their strategy, should we also avoid
playing that game? I'll try and hide my routes from everyone else
when I'm playing ticket to ride, is that bad?
I'm stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours. Like any
other board or card game. People are stuck sitting at a table and
following rules for hours playing tabletop role-playing games as
well. To me, it was a chance to catch up with these friends, which at
that point in time in our lives catching up at the poker game was
kind of the big quarterly check-in with each other. I loved spending
the time with these friends, sitting around the table and sharing
life with each other, often also partaking in meals and drinks.
The victory condition is winning the pot, yes. Which, as mentioned,
for at least in my games wasn't exactly some life changing amount of
money one was taking from friends. We all went in knowing we'd
probably be out the $20 in the end, and in the end the winner would
have a small amount of money as a little bonus. And as mentioned,
most of us would use it to take our significant others out on a date
the next night.
I honestly don't see it as any different from spending a night
playing any other board game or roleplaying game with friends, other
than with a small bit of money involved as well. Obviously, other
people go way harder with this gambling, which quickly just becomes
an addition to the high of winning.
mattmaroon wrote 21 hours 51 min ago:
As a former poker pro: I hated gambling, I just was willing to do it
when I had an edge and at poker I had an edge. I almost never gambled
at anything else unless I was getting an edge from promotions. Still
donât.
Thereâs a approximately a 45% chance of losing money on any given
day, even for the best players, but it decreases over a big sample.
Itâs definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Thatâs true of most
things worth doing though.
Itâs not lying when itâs part of the game, and kinda silly to
view it that way. Is it lying by omission to not tell your chess
opponent your strategy?
You are stuck sitting at a table, thatâs true. But you choose when
youâre there and the only rules really are basic civility so I
never found that part difficult.
Money is the scoreboard. Everyone who sits down knows that. Iâd
argue itâs a lot less bad than how most tech companies make money
these days. Iâm not selling anyoneâs data without them knowing
about or understanding it. Iâm just taking money from a guy who is
trying to take my money. We both voluntarily put the money up to be
taken and can stop doing so at any point.
CGMthrowaway wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
This tracks. Not a pro here, but if you have a 5% edge at a $20
8-seat home game your EV is BEST CASE maybe $20/hour. Which is good
for entertainment but not much else
mattmaroon wrote 19 hours 43 min ago:
Well, if youâre paying NL against people who donât know what
theyâre doing, your win rate should be much higher. But yeah
you can only take however much money is on the table so nobody
makes a living playing the really low stakes.
Back in my day most cash games were limit holdâem (itâs been
awhile) and you could pretty easily get to making $50 an hour
beating up an amateurs. That was equivalent to about $90/hr today
which is pretty great if youâre a young kid playing a game you
enjoy.
WXLCKNO wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
I hate casino games but I enjoy poker. I don't play often anymore but
I used to play online a lot, multi tabling.
There's something very satisfying about making thousands of decisions
that have a positive expected value and seeing the math win
throughout the variance, resulting in a proven edge.
Like anything in life, it's fun to get good at something and at some
point it's beyond the math and theory, it feels like the cards become
transparent at times, you just have a gut feeling that this hand,
this person is trying to bluff. It can be based on what you know
about them or just how fast they clicked or their bet size, but this
guy wants you to fold so you'll call with almost nothing and still
win.
But overall as a profession fuck poker, you don't contribute anything
to the world.
pests wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
Itâs fun?
Would you pay for an experience somewhere and then call it a loss
because your bank balance is now lower?
Itâs not lying, itâs a game and everyone knows the rules.
Cant the victory condition be⦠having fun? Why so transactional
everdrive wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
>Itâs not lying, itâs a game and everyone knows the rules.
It's deception at a minimum. Lying could have a stricter definition
depending on who you're talking about.
pavel_lishin wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
Right. But everyone knows you're all attempting to deceive each
other; it's part of the game. It's consensual.
RankingMember wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
Different strokes. (It doesn't appeal to me at all either fwiw, but
I'm sure what I do for fun doesn't appeal to plenty of people)
empath75 wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
Texas hold 'em is quite fun for casuals under these conditions:
The amount of money involved is small compared to the incomes of
those playing, where most players have the expectation that they
won't get money back and that is fine for the enjoyment they get out
of the game, and the pot isn't big enough to be worth cheating about.
Everyone puts in the same amount of money.
You play texas hold 'em no limit with escalating blinds starting with
a pretty big stack of chips, just like a real tournament.
When people are out, they can't buy back in.
You play until everyone is out, and the Top N players get some money
back.
Lots of fun games involve lying, but you can play all night long and
never tell a single lie and still win. Your only necessary verbs in
a game of poker are "Call, raise, fold". Everything else is
optional. If you bet big on a hand, you aren't saying anything about
what is in your hand, lie or not. All the interpretation of what
that means is in your opponents head. Lots of very good poker
players don't talk about the hands at all.
My family quite commonly plays Texas Hold 'em for _no money at all_,
everyone just gets a stack of chips.
Arrath wrote 17 hours 51 min ago:
Yeah this is really the best way to do it, I've even played
friendly family games with candy or baked goods as the chips. Great
fun! Problematic when you're munching on your bank though.
q3k wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
because it's very fun
pavel_lishin wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
> - high likelihood you lose money
When I play games like this, I don't bet more than I can afford to
lose - and paying $20 to sit at a table with friends playing poker is
actually cheaper than going out to a bar with them.
> - the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers
Are there any games with hidden information that you find
interesting? Or any competitive games at all? Things like Werewolf,
or Go Fish, or Settlers of Catan? For that matter, even in a game
without hidden information, like chess, you're still trying to outwit
your opponents.
> - you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours
I mean, you can leave if you're not having fun.
> - the only victory condition is that you take money from other
people
But you also spend time with friends.
cyrialize wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
The story behind how Chauncey got his coaching job is kind of sketchy
as well!
The blazers didn't really listen to Dame at all, and the GM has known
Chauncey for more than 30 years.
At the time of Chauncey being hired, his only coaching experience was
~1 year of being an assistant coach.
beoberha wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
Former players being hired as head coaches without much other
coaching experience is fairly common in the NBA.
cyrialize wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
Yes, but in this case the blazers head office said they were going
to search for a coach, and they also took input from Dame on what
coaches he thought would be good for the team.
They didn't do any search at all, and just went straight to hiring
Chauncey.
This partially contributed to Dame leaving - it also didn't help
that Chauncey and Dame didn't quite get along (and also deciding to
bench him in the last 10 games of the season to tank).
I'm honestly fine with players being hired as head coaches. Before
looking into it I thought it was totally fine with Chauncey,
especially given his track record as a leader on the Pistons and
being a phenomenal classic point guard.
The main issue for me is just telling people you're going to do a
search... and then not doing it.
iambateman wrote 22 hours 8 min ago:
If these folks had used this level of creativity and determination to
make something usefulâ¦I bet their results wouldâve been fantastic.
ranadomo wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
This is a common fallacy. Criminals often turn to crime because
they're not very good at honest endeavors. Having failed to succeed
on a fair playing field (hard), they victimize the weak and take
advantage of others' naivety and trust (easy).
Almost nothing about crime is indicative of an intelligent mind that
could be put to good use. It's a lot of lowlife midwits who are
bitter they have no chance to compete or associate with real players.
breakpointalpha wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
Or they were raised with terrible and predatory culture. Screwing
other people to get ahead is something that is frequently taught in
childhood by parents and older role models that were also taught
that mentality. We've all seen the Mafia movies and shows, these
are family organizations where everyone's Aunts, Cousins, etc. is
somehow "connected". There's a big uphill battle for a kid to come
up in that environment and turn out like a model citizen. No
excuses...
dboreham wrote 21 hours 18 min ago:
And then they run for office..
jfengel wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
That seems like a lot of work. TFA said that they arrested 30 people,
and got $7 million out of it. The fancy tech involved must have taken a
good chunk of that.
It sounds like each of them could get at most a six-figure payday out
of this. Which is no chump change, to be sure, but it sounds like many
of them could have made as much money without the risk of going to jail
just by getting a desk job.
Plus, there's no way a conspiracy that big is going to remain secret
for long.
Maybe the expected to get away with it for longer and get a bigger
payoff. But wow, it seems like a ton of effort.
codyb wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
All these comments assume that 30 million is _all_ the mob has made
with these machines, and that the tech must be very expensive.
Usually when they pull out the big piles of drugs for the TVs, I
assume that's the tip of the iceberg. So why is it that here, with
four families involved, we think the only money they've made is
what's been shown to us?
Also, x-ray tables, rigged card shufflers, and funny glasses don't
necessarily sound like they're the most expensive things in the
world.
So my guess is...
Combined with these fellas other hustles this was probably a nice
chunk of change to bring in for a relatively low amount of work post
initial set up. I mean, you're sitting around playing rigged poker
with a bunch of millionaires and basketball players or whatever.
Probably having some drinks, I'd imagine there's pretty ladies
around, cigars, cocaine. Whatever.
Sounds more relaxing than extorting deli owners block by block like
all those movies about the 70s show.
And the best part? The people you're robbing are probably much less
likely to resort to violence as recourse.
empath75 wrote 22 hours 5 min ago:
The card shufflers and the phone app that reads marked cards would
probably put them back a few thousand at the most.
chidog99 wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
Chauncey Billups was mentioned by name 2 years ago for running scam
high stakes poker games [26:41]
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/live/G-TKR5ca5jI?si=TBsKcTi2ZG1-h1G0&t...
Noaidi wrote 22 hours 21 min ago:
Seems like Trump is going after his old enemies in New York.
Also, they spelled "Bonnano" wrong in that article. It is Bonanno. [1]
Bon Anno = Good Year
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonanno_crime_family
Noaidi wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
No idea why people are disagreeing with this, you are not from NY and
you do not know the history here. You do not do big business in NY
with out the mob. [1] [2] And... [3] "One of the key figures involved
in these deals has been the Russian-born, mob-linked businessman
Felix Sater, who plead guilty to racketeering for his role in a $40
million stock fraud scheme involving the Genovese and Bonanno crime
families49 and was convicted of stabbing a man in the face with a
broken margarita glass in New York."
"Despite their long association, Trump has repeatedly denied knowing
about Saterâs criminal past, notwithstanding the fact that Sater
widely represented himself as a Trump associate in business deals."
HTML [1]: https://www.gao.gov/products/t-osi-88-7
HTML [2]: https://www.amny.com/news/the-mob-is-making-a-comeback-in-co...
HTML [3]: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/donald-trump-crimin...
dudeinjapan wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Bon Nano = Good Text Editor
cattown wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
Doesnât sound that profitable to me. $7m is a lot of money. But not
that much after building all of that custom tech, setting up a
dedicated space, training and paying a whole bunch of people to run
these games. Then whateverâs left over gets split between multiple
crime families? Seems like a lot of work.
Aurornis wrote 19 hours 37 min ago:
This is likely one part of a larger operation including blackmail
opportunities, as others have mentioned.
However, don't overlook the value of $7 million in cash and
cryptocurrency. For an organized crime operation that's a lot more
valuable than $7 million in revenue from an actual business subject
to taxes, business records, and bank tracking. This was an easy way
to get millions of hard to trace dollars into accounts they could
use.
cellis wrote 10 hours 56 min ago:
Whenever some
group is said to have made/fined 1M out of their likely billions
in revenue, someone will chime and say âthatâs nothingâ. But
From a âdepartment P&L perspectiveâ yes, it is a lot of money!
Think about the crime families as making e.g. 50% money from
construction corruption, 40% from drug sales, 5% from extortionâ¦
someone has to run the other smaller departments and that is a lot
of money for that âDept Headâ. Also from the FBIs perspective
they want to unravel conspiracies, often by yanking on one piece of
yarn like this one.
dec0dedab0de wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
That was my first thought, especially because they could get similar
results with a marked deck. To me, this leads more credibility to it
being part of a bigger operation.
ranadomo wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
as others have speculated, the real money was probably in blackmail
and rigged sports betting.
mattmaroon wrote 21 hours 57 min ago:
Well itâs kind of an annuity. A million a year ainât nothing for
a small operation.
But yeah they surely make much more selling fentanyl.
MetaMalone wrote 22 hours 23 min ago:
âAn X-ray poker machine was employed to read facedown cards and a
rigged card-shuffling machine was also used in the plot, prosecutors
say.â
Would love to know more about such a machine, if anyone has any
insight. Are these developed underground? How expensive could they be?
If it can efficiently take in a deck of cards and deterministically
return a rigged deck in a reasonable amount of time, I would be
fascinated at how they solved that problem.
CamperBob2 wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
The card-shuffling machine is an obvious vulnerability.
But I'm provisionally calling BS on the "X-ray table." Based on
(admittedly limited) experience with X-ray imaging, I don't believe
that X-rays can read ink on playing cards. It would have to be a
backscatter machine, which is even less discriminatory than a
transmissive machine. Would need to see some evidence that this is
possible.
If nothing else, the sheer size and bulk of such a machine renders
the concept incredible. If I could build something like that, I
wouldn't use it to cheat at cards, I'd sell it to the TSA!
sigmar wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
Couldn't the cards have x-ray opaque ink (like with bismuth
trioxide)?
CamperBob2 wrote 6 hours 18 min ago:
That could be a good point, I suppose. Iron-based ink could have
a similar effect. I'll have to see if there's a deck of cards
around here to X-ray.
empath75 wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
There's a device that can scan the _sides_ of specially marked cards
and tell you the complete deck order.
For the shuffling machine there is this: [1] There are _so many_ ways
to cheat at poker that you should basically never play a private game
outside of close friends.
If you wanted to spend a year or so practicing, you can learn how to
do false shuffles and cuts, bottom deals, cold stack a deck etc...
[2] This guy was a professional card cheat for decades before going
honest.
As someone who knows a bunch of card tricks myself, I have learned to
resist the temptation to do an impromptu 'ambitious card' routine
just because a deck of cards and an audience is in front of me before
a poker game.
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA
HTML [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Mu7jocdew
koolba wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
> There are _so many_ ways to cheat at poker that you should
basically never play a private game outside of close friends.
Playing in an actual regulated casino or poker hall eliminates most
of the technical risk of a fraudulent shuffle. The risk to the
enterprise of losing their gaming license keeps things honest.
Imagine the net effect of Bellagioâs shuffling machines or
dealers being rigged.
But nothing can eliminate collusion of players. Youâre best bet
for that is your own self awareness. If your spidey sense is
tripping, listen to it.
jjmarr wrote 20 hours 57 min ago:
Regulated casinos take a certain % of every pot and players don't
want to give up $5 or $10 a pot to pay for
regulations/oversight/etc.
jjmarr wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
Many shuffle machines read all the cards, do the shuffle in software,
then sort the cards accordingly. Here's a guy on Wired showing how to
rig a poker game:
HTML [1]: https://youtu.be/JQ20ilE5DtA
ogig wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
The rigged card-shuffling machine method is documented in this recent
video:
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA
MetaMalone wrote 21 hours 40 min ago:
Thanks for the link. So basically, you are at a private game and if
everyone has their phones out (and you are also an unsuspecting
idiot), you are screwed.
Crazy that there is a USB port exposed outside the machine.
nikcub wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
> you are at a private game and if everyone has their phones out
I play private games. At any reasonable stakes electronics have
been banned from the room for years now.
8organicbits wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
Slight of hand? You put the deck to be sorted at the "in" side, the
machine shuffles it, then it ejects a different rigged deck.
mikkupikku wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
Maybe it doesn't return rigged orders, but records the order of the
output deck with high speed cameras.
JumpinJack_Cash wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
[flagged]
QuadmasterXLII wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
This scheme doesnât really make sense. Once youâve convinced a
wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, youâve
already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish
donât have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to
extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the
golden goose and doesnât even necessarily increase total winnings,
since it makes you win faster but doesnât increase the amount the
fish are willing to lose to have a good time.
gamblor956 wrote 14 hours 4 min ago:
Sometimes the wealthy person is the shark, and you're the fish...
In Molly's Game, Tobey Maguire was the celebrity shark. (In the movie
he was played by Michael Cera). He could easily have been a
professional poker player, but he makes way more from acting and he
prefers the easy play in private games.
nikcub wrote 15 hours 4 min ago:
Wealthy people aren't dumb - they don't join games where the odds are
tilted against them. In these high-stake private games they can
usually demand and set the rules like shallow stacks (100BB),
enforced straddles, raising stakes after a loss, button games etc.
that remove the GTO / poker element and make the game more gambly.
Boring pros who play these games straight up and don't "give action"
don't get invited back.
This is how you can have some of the best poker players like Tom Dwan
get absolutely wiped out while playing against whales in Macau
If you want to see a more recent example of this - the amateur whale
Monarch recently took on one of the best cash game heads up players
Bjorn Lee. I won't spoil the result because it's highly entertaining
and demonstrates how the game works at these stakes:
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCd7giB9s5U
alexpotato wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
> Once youâve convinced a wealthy person to play at your
underground poker table, youâve already won - just play better
poker than them,
This is why in the book Molly's Game [0], the author mentions
explicitly that she didn't want professionals in her game.
This b/c her game was seen as a game between "regular/amateur"
players who just happened to be famous and/or have a lot of money.
This was also DESPITE poker professionals both asking her to play AND
offering to give her a stake of their winnings.
Granted, certain players (e.g. Tobey Maguire) were MUCH better than
the other players but it seems that didn't matter as long as poker
wasn't their primary source of income.
0 -
HTML [1]: https://amzn.to/4o05BFi
Aurornis wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
> just play better poker than them
That's a big "just".
They were using sports celebrities as the draw to the table, not
expert poker players.
Cheating at poker also looks less threatening than playing against an
expert, counterintuitively. Someone who cheats can pull out some big
wins on some bets that look statistically bad. The target can see
this and think the other party is playing poorly (betting on
non-obvious hands) but simply getting lucky.
Contrast this with a shrewd expert poker player who will be easier to
spot.
They want the target to think the celebrity sports figure is just
getting lucky on bad bets, not that they're an expert poker shark
who's going to take all of their money.
EDIT: Here's a 2 year old YouTube video from before all of this
confirming this [1] (Skip to 29:50)
Having the cheating poker players look bad is a key part of the scam.
It tricks the other players into coming back and betting big.
HTML [1]: https://youtu.be/G-TKR5ca5jI?t=1790
terminalshort wrote 20 hours 20 min ago:
But you are already breaking the law running an underground poker
game.
CaptainOfCoit wrote 20 hours 41 min ago:
> just play better poker than them
You really don't understand the mind of fraudsters and criminals. The
reason they do what they do is because they don't want to "just be
better at X than Y" and spend the effort for that, they want to take
the shortcut and they think they've found the best shortcut
considering their situation.
Once you start to look at what people are doing with that
perspective, things will start to make more sense.
tqi wrote 20 hours 42 min ago:
They were also targeting pros, not merely wealthy players:
HTML [1]: https://x.com/OnlyFriends_Pod/status/1981379130190156129?s=4...
PaulHoule wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
My understanding is that collusion is rampant in poker.
If you get introduced to a 'friendly' game of 5 players there's a
good chance that these guys are signalling to each other and
basically folding to whoever's got the best hand. You can't win
against that. Even if you have 2 new players showing up at a table
existing players could worry about collusion.
If you don't have the fancy trappings those guys did it is almost
impossible to catch people colluding in poker.
BurningFrog wrote 20 hours 57 min ago:
The self made ultra rich are quite smart on average.
I doubt the same is true of these Cosa Nostra and NBA guys.
sandworm101 wrote 21 hours 33 min ago:
Organized crime groups are rarely interested in "the long game".
They work on the assumption that the party will end sooner than
anticipated. Each game must be total victory.
ZiiS wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
No need to learn; just hire players who are better than the fish and
split the profits???
Once it is your shuffler, I could cobble together a Raspberry Pi to
light a slightly different wavelength LED when it dealt them two
pictures and would need to concentrate to lose enough to get all
their money.
btilly wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
The trick isn't winning when the celebrity is at the table, it is in
getting the celebrity to the table, then keepong the victim there.
It's not about winning mote on each hand. It's about keeping the
target happy as money drains away. And that was their aim.
By controlling the whole game, they were able to psychologically
manipulate the situation. The target was at tbe table with someone
they respected. Saw others win and lose large amounts of money.
Sometimes won themselves.
morkalork wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
Exactly, to a pro poker player a celebrity or athlete looks like an
easy target. Someone with a lot of money, likes to play for fun,
and doesn't have the same skills as a pro. They are at the table to
bait the pros. But now the problem is you need those same players
to win in order to extract any money from the game, hence the
high-tech cheating.
Sammi wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
Ooooh you use all these tools in order to _control_ the game, so
that is is as fun as possible. So the victim still loses, as they
would without the tools, but now they're happy as it happens.
wildzzz wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
Poker requires skill but there's still a major amount of chance
involved. Removing the chance and conspiring against a single
player turns the game into a show. You can set up cheap wins and
expensive losses. It doesn't really matter how well the other
players win or lose because they are all on the same team, you're
the only one actually losing any money.
I remember as a kid, I'd play battleship with my siblings. I was
really good at it, they were not. They hated when it was obvious
that I let them win but also hated when I beat them badly so I
found a way to make the game go longer. Often we'd play on a
glass table and I'd "drop" a piece so I could peek under the
table and see where their pieces were. I could get a hit and then
miss many follow up shots to slowly destroy their ship and give
them more time to find and destroy mine. They'd gloat over their
hard-fought win but I'd just smile and beat them for real next
round. I could have done this without peeking but I wanted to
make sure I didn't accidentally play too well.
empath75 wrote 22 hours 3 min ago:
> Once youâve convinced a wealthy person to play at your
underground poker table, youâve already won - just play better
poker than them, ultra wealthy fish donât have time to learn to
play perfect poker and you do.
You would be surprised at how good some very wealthy people are at
poker. There is a lot of variance in the game and they don't want
that. In fact what they want is _exactly_ wealthy people who are
quite good at poker because they make big bets and you can reliably
bust them out on _one hand_ if you set it up properly after playing a
fair game all night. And the great thing about that is that they
feel like the night overall was fair and fun, because it was. You
just cheat them on one or two hands at the most.
People who are bad at poker can also be quite difficult to reliably
take money from fairly because they play randomly and sometimes win
huge pots out of complete luck. For one thing, they are near
impossible to bluff out of hands, so you end up having to fold a lot
more than normal because you can only play with strong hands against
them. If you are interested in making a lot of money, you certainly
want those strong hands more often than normal.
Blackthorn wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
You don't need to play better poker. You can just have multiple
people on the same team at the same table and communicating, vastly
increasing your odds of your team having the best hand.
IT4MD wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
Most criminals have a specific type of cleverness, but not
intelligence.
If they were smart people, they wouldn't do the crimes in the first
place.
I dealt with a low-tech breach at one of the hospitals I worked for.
The criminal worked in HIM, and used paper and pencil to note
specific info about specific types of patients. Since they worked in
HIM, it was expected for them to view many medical records in a day
and no app detects paper/pencil, so quite clever so far.
Ultimately, they used this info to file false tax returns to steal
the refunds.
The problem? They filed 881 false tax returns annnnnnd used the same
address for all of them. DOH.
They were busted/arrested and off to jail they went.
Clever, right until the end, then abysmally stupid.
wildzzz wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
The intelligent ones don't get caught, or at least find the right
loopholes to make their obvious crime technically legal.
dec0dedab0de wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
HIM = Health Information Management for anyone else wondering.
If they were smart people, they wouldn't do the crimes in the first
place.
There are tons of smart people committing crimes. The levels of
Intelligence, success, luck, greed, and morals can co-exist in
every possible combination within one human.
CGMthrowaway wrote 22 hours 6 min ago:
I read a theory that the poker winnings were not the scam.
The scam was that the criminal element would HELP the NBA players
cheat at poker, and then blackmail them with that info to change the
outcomes of NBA games, which they were betting on, from which they
could derive greater scale of winnings.
SoftTalker wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
Or the players were already jammed up in gambling losses and were
then offered to play in these games to forgive the losses.
im3w1l wrote 21 hours 52 min ago:
5d-poker.
prodigycorp wrote 21 hours 53 min ago:
imo that doesn't make sense. All the online betting platforms will
cut off the sharps. If you are net profitable and you make too much
money from them, you will get banned.
breakpointalpha wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
First, people who are banned from online bookies use "horses" or
other not-banned players to place bets for them.
Second, the FBI is targeting real world Mafia members, who will
typically be the bookies taking action from others. If they know
in advance, through blackmail or collusion that an NBA player or
coach will throw a game, they can exploit this versus their
entire betting pool for massive wins against the suckers placing
bets with them.
Aurornis wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
Organized crime operations have no problem getting a lot of
people involved in their schemes. They wouldn't use one account.
They'd spread the bets over a large number of people and accounts
and also possibly sell the information.
skeeter2020 wrote 19 hours 56 min ago:
You're focusing on a game with player vs. house odds, like a
casino. Online betting platforms do offer some of these games but
they are clearing markets for gambling; they manipualte the odds
to arbitrage wagering and take a cut regardless of the outcome.
It's all about volume. If you make a huge wager on a long-odds
parlay, they no longer look the same for the next (or other side)
of that specific (or components of the) wager.
evan_ wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
with that level of sophistication Iâm sure theyâre not using
the inside info to place bets on retail platforms.
skeeter2020 wrote 19 hours 55 min ago:
The do use retail platforms, just like the same orgs send out
armies with cloned cards to use retail banking infra.
dec0dedab0de wrote 21 hours 22 min ago:
Well first of all, organized crime does not need an online
platform to profit off of fixing professional sports games. There
are still plenty of bookies running around offering better odds
than draftkings. Though, if they really wanted to, they could
make smaller bets under hundreds of accounts.
There is also the very strong possibility that they are colluding
with the online betting platforms in some way. Coupled with the
fact that any difference-maker athlete is getting a huge salary,
and blackmail/extortion becomes your best option to getting one
on your side.
im3w1l wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
An organization could place the bets through different people
each time.
ClarityJones wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
Yeah, that would limit the scale if they were betting against the
platforms.
However, if you assume they were feeding the information to the
platforms...
SoftTalker wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
... or if you assume that they control the platforms...
raincole wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
> don't have time to learn to play perfect poker
Probably don't have time to play so many hands with you that the
better player is statistically guaranteed to win, either.
dfxm12 wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
You don't want to extract more money per hand, you want to build up
the fish (check the text message screenshots in the article) and then
strike at the right point. The x rays remove the luck from those big
hands.
SaltyBackendGuy wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
Exactly. You want zero risk asymmetric payouts.
JohnMakin wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
âjust play better pokerâ like thatâs an easy thing to do in a
game of chance and incomplete information, with variance having years
or decades long tails. not to mention itâs an unsolved game, so
âbetterâ poker doesnât even really have a set definition and
depends on tons of variables. and they literally knew what hole cards
were coming - thatâs vastly more of an edge than playing âbetter
pokerâ than someone.
Besides the fact they were often targeting pros - this was reported
on and known by LA area pros for at least two years now. why the FBI
decided to act now is weird to me. I canât stress enough that in
the pro scene this was common knowledge. years old podcast clips are
coming up talking about it.
source:
HTML [1]: https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/breaking-news/article/professio...
serf wrote 20 hours 59 min ago:
>âjust play better pokerâ like thatâs an easy thing to do in
a game of chance and incomplete information
you just need to beat the table, you don't need to become an
over-average pro.
that decades long tail you mentioned is for pros chasing
profitability in tournaments -- it's a much shorter tail when
you're playing fish in setups.
being better at poker than the guy at the table who is good at
making money isn't a big leap, it's what sharks and hustlers have
been aiming at for hundreds of years.
JohnMakin wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
You're illustrating why the phrase I am nitpicking is silly, and
why poker is somehow still profitable even after the boom of 20+
years ago. What is the definition of "beating the table?" Is it
winning? Because I promise you, that's a poor definition. You can
be playing perfectly great poker and get slaughtered, you can
play terrible poker and win. Look at the career of Phil Helmuth,
for instance (joke, I'm joking). Playing live poker, you're very
unlikely to get a large enough sample size to have a close to
100% confidence you're actually beating the game. You're even
less likely to get a large enough sample from a single
table/group of players to know either. And like I said up thread
- what is "good" or "optimal" or the highest expected value play
can change drastically depending on information. Poker is a game
of incomplete information, and you can conjure tons of scenarios
where folding something like a pair of Aces is correct before the
flop, even though many people who have a shallow understanding of
the game or haven't studied it deeply would say you should never
do that (for instance, in a double or nothing tournament, where
half the table cashes and half doesn't, folding AA with a large
chip lead to an all in from a certain stack size is the correct
play and happens surprisingly often).
Or like, say you're against a "fish" that goes all in preflop
with exactly J7 offsuit and nothing else, no matter how big his
stack is, because that's their lucky hand or something. You're
not playing as profitably as possible if you lack that knowledge,
and if you somehow have that knowledge, there are tons of hands
you play there that you normally never would and would appear to
others without that information as playing "bad."
It's a deeply complex game people try to trivialize. I've been
studying for about 20 years and every year that goes by I think I
know less than I did the year before. And I'm just talking no
limit hold'em right now - there are tons of variants that all
have their own areas of study, and that's not even to get into
weird live game areas of theory like tells and stuff (which is
not as important as people tend to think).
HelloMcFly wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
> it's a much shorter tail when you're playing fish in setups
A lot of rich people know more about poker than middle-income
scrubs. You don't want to find out the fish you're chasing was a
shark all along. The point here is to turn a game a chance into a
profit center, suggesting they just do it legitimately missed the
point and assumes the scammers themselves have the time or talent
to become good enough to reliably fleece people legitimately. It
also means you have to vet the people you invite, rather than
confidently turning out the pockets of scrubs and capable players
alike.
dboreham wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
> why the FBI decided to act now is weird to me
Someone didn't pay a bribe on time?
bobafett-9902 wrote 21 hours 25 min ago:
think of the spotlight the NBA had because of opening night!
Someone in the FBI/admin wanted this news to drop right when the
NBA was trying to make a splash and tarnish their new season
Scoundreller wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
Or the wrong person lost
dktp wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
People making most money _playing_ poker are really really good
players that get invited to games with the wealthy people. This
takes both poker skills, social skills (being entertaining) and
potentially doing some occasional "fun" (incorrect) plays.
They are not the best poker players in the world. Best poker
players have the misfortune of not being invited to "fun"
millionaire games
If you have enough of an edge, the variance is really not that big.
The only reason to have high-tech cheating when you already have a
table full of fish - is if the people running the scheme are not
very good at poker
darepublic wrote 21 hours 51 min ago:
I understand the "need" for cheating but it does seem like overkill
the way they cheated, at least as described. They've already got
colluders, and then the auto shuffler reads the cards, and then
they've ALSO got the contact lenses? Just some marked cards would
have been sufficient. And then the rare time the fish catches up
after being behind is your "let them win a hand and get traction".
It just seems like they really went too far to control every part
of the hand
yuliyp wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
Perhaps those were different iterations of the technique over
time. Start with marking cards to identify face cards, then move
on to x-ray table.
jimbokun wrote 21 hours 16 min ago:
What's the increased risk of cheating more?
Once you're cheating and colluding you are in danger of going to
jail, and it's not clear that more cheating makes it more likely
to be caught.
asdfasvea wrote 20 hours 22 min ago:
How could more cheating avenues not equal a more likelihood of
being caught?
Car analogy--I never had to take my 1976 Olds Cutlass in
because the key fob got out of sync or because the touchscreen
got fried or the electronic power steering module shorted or...
or .. or
More points of failure = more failure.
dghlsakjg wrote 19 hours 19 min ago:
Is a 76 olds the car to use to make a point about
reliability?
cestith wrote 17 hours 0 min ago:
Not regarding the paintjob, certainly.
otherme123 wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
Some professional poker player told me this anecdote: he was
playing at a table with a celebrity. He quickly noticed he has a
tell (he did something with his chips when he had a powerful hand
or was bluffing, don't remember), and half the table also noticed
the same or similar tells. They proceeded to clean his stash.
At the table statistics matter between pros, but if you are not
aware of your flaws, you might as well play with your cards face
up.
jimbokun wrote 21 hours 18 min ago:
This sounds similar to an article I read about major league
pitchers, who must learn to avoid "tells" for the pitch they are
about to throw, while opposing teams pour over video of their
previous outings looking for those tells.
Some pitchers even said they would deliberately perform a "tell"
that opponents had identified then throw a different pitch.
theturtletalks wrote 19 hours 45 min ago:
Same thing happens in football with audibles. I wonder how many
teams are feeding videos like these to AI and asking it to find
patterns that might be tough for humans to see. If an AI thinks
there's a pattern, verifying shouldn't be too hard either.
alargemoose wrote 13 hours 30 min ago:
My personal favorite example of this in football
HTML [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=g4SEPufzG7s
AceyMan wrote 8 hours 40 min ago:
Legendary variation from pro tennis between to HoF players,
HTML [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/andre-a...
untilted wrote 20 hours 37 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcoB3G2Gj7w
ecshafer wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
The FBI is going to take time building up the case, flipping
people, getting recordings, and trying to get as many people
involved to not just stop the games but hopefully take down the
entire crime families involved. LA Poker pros will start talking as
soon as they suspect something fishy.
solean wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
Matt Berkey called out this exact game a couple years ago:
HTML [1]: https://x.com/RTNBA/status/1981433175390687603
_the_inflator wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
Exactly. Structures, men behind, organizations involved, networks
and other crimes indicated or discovered for example money
laundering, betting.
It takes time to build a case. Some laws need people working
together and a one time event testing a new table and
accidentally having lots of cash in the bags as well as so-called
famous people showing up can simply happen by chance.
It is complicated.
JohnMakin wrote 21 hours 1 min ago:
I'm not sure I believe this. It seems you can just walk into
one of these places and roll the whole place, confiscate
electronics, and make all the necessary connections fairly
quickly. These games aren't a secret and never have been.
I don't like the private (illegal) scene because it's killed
action in casinos and games I used to love playing in. The risk
to me of breaking the law, being robbed/scammed, or worse is
not worth it to play in these games and I wish they'd go away.
Even the mafia angle - the NY families must have fallen a long
way if they're resorting to high profile but ultimately petty
scams like this. This seems like PR for the FBI and nothing
more, like I said up thread this has been common knowledge for
years.
busyant wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
It's all petty crimes. I've known a handful of low-level
"members" and they were all morons (imo) running the most
absurd scams.
Things like: "Hey I'm organizing a trip to Vegas. $1000 /
head. Great hotel, meals paid, etc. etc."
Then the organizer has the great misfortune of being "robbed"
of all the money he collected by a masked assailant.
Maybe the higher level guys were were brighter, but I kind of
doubt it.
mrandish wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
> NY families must have fallen a long way
I spent a fun few hours a couple years back deep diving into
what has become of the old-school "Goodfellas"-style mob
these days. Looking into both media reports as well as posts
by 'mob fans' - niche forums of those who obsessively follow
mob and mob adjacent activities via open-source intel methods
- I got the sense the traditional Italian mob families have
indeed shrunk to a smaller, sadder version of what they once
were due to being eclipsed by new, different kinds of
organized crime.
Guys who are known "made men" getting out of prison after
doing 10-15 and then ending up doing relatively nickel and
dime crimes like daylight armed robbery of a jewelry store
themselves for lack of enough income. 25 years ago guys like
that wouldn't normally do that stuff themselves. Others have
even sunk to basically LARPing being old-school mobsters on
social media.
It seems there are two key drivers behind the decline: the
real money in organized crime has shifted to new kinds of
activities which scale better and can grow much larger.
That's attracted new competitors. Some are smarter, some more
brutal and some which are both. There's also an aspect that
these new, bigger opportunities are far more complex,
long-term and can also require successfully operating
legitimate businesses as one necessary component. I guess
it's not surprising. Even illicit industries undergo
accelerating change over time. The old crime families still
exist and can certainly still be dangerous - they're just no
longer the top of the criminal food chain in terms of
earnings.
philistine wrote 19 hours 50 min ago:
> the NY families must have fallen a long way if they're
resorting to high profile but ultimately petty scams like
this
The presence of petty scams does not indicate they have
stopped their large scale operations. The Mafia has always
done scams like this; it's basically the bush leagues to
train for the really big stuff.
mattmaroon wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
They almost certainly already have done much of this if theyâre
going public now. What makes it to the media in the beginning is
only ever the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Aurornis wrote 19 hours 26 min ago:
> They almost certainly already have done much of this if
theyâre going public now.
Normally I'd agree, but this administration is known for
pushing to release public distractions whenever they can.
duped wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
The FBI is also struggling for legitimacy at this point in
history
mrandish wrote 16 hours 51 min ago:
This did strike me as quite a small scale crime for all the
attention it's getting. I guess the notable part is using a
couple celebrity athletes to recruit marks for rigged
high-stakes poker games. If you think about it, poker games
don't scale up into a truly big money. After paying off
everyone involved, maybe they clear a few hundred grand in
cash? That's chump change in modern organized crime.
parineum wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
Name a decade without a major FBI scandal
dragonwriter wrote 19 hours 36 min ago:
The difference it that what used to be a decade-defining
major FBI scandal is more like monthly in the current
administration.
DonHopkins wrote 20 hours 28 min ago:
Name a less competent FBI director ever.
yieldcrv wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
I think theyâre also doing good investigations into local
crime rings that the states and prior administrations didnât
touch
The political prosecution vendettas are dumb but here in LA
they are disrupting âArmenianâ crime rings
binarymax wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
You can spend the time to learn the odds, and play the odds. Most
people don't have even that basic skill.
robocat wrote 19 hours 24 min ago:
You are ignoring why people play the game: reading people and
avoiding being read (lies, misdirection). I would predict your
job is technical rather than people oriented. There's plenty of
other card games where learning the odds matters, but poker has a
bit more depth.
bn-l wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
It seems like so much work for relatively so little payoff. Thereâs
a lesson here for non criminals also.
breakpointalpha wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
The profit from a scheme like this would likely be in the high tens
of millions of dollars.
The poker game itself in high-roller situations could be a million
plus per night depending on the stakes.
Then there's the whole "you owe the Mafia" angle with NBA players
and coaches. It's a pretty clear line to the Mafia making tens of
millions of dollars on rigged NBA games.
jimbokun wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
Seems pretty clear to me the risk and excitement of the scheme was
probably a big part of the appeal for these people, as much as the
total cash amount they took home.
BolexNOLA wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
> In what sounds like an Ocean's Eleven film plot, prosecutors say
these "unwitting" victims were cheated out of at least $7m
(£5.25m) in poker games - with one person losing at least $1.8m.
Definitely a lot of work but that seems like a half decent payday
to me.
SV_BubbleTime wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
Wasnât there just a pair of people that walked $100 million
euros out of the Louvre?
elicash wrote 22 hours 8 min ago:
More than 30 arrests, and the scheme dates back to as early as
2019.
The article says "A cut OF THE PROFITS went to those who helped
in the plot," implying that the $7m wasn't truly profit but
actually revenue? The writing is unclear to me. I'm not sure if
this is before paying out to 30+ people over several years, or
after, but article implies before, that it's how much was taken
from victims. That I think makes the difference on whether or not
it was a decent payday. The profit would be how much supposedly
went to fund their other operations, which the article does
allege some went to.
Scoundreller wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
There may be more victims. I doubt itâs based on a thorough
audit of accounting, just those that put in a complaint. But
how do you verify a complaint?
BolexNOLA wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
Honestly I imagine a lot of this just became chasing yet
another thrill that net you maybe tens of thousands of dollars.
I could totally see why someone would be in to that. Most
hobbies drain your bank account after all lol
Same reason there are people out there who shoplift even though
they donât need what theyâre grabbing. The thrill of the
act.
elicash wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
I can definitely imagine a scenario it was worth it (a) just
to fund them getting to hang out with NBA players, and/or (b)
make connections with other wealthy folks in ways that are
beneficial towards other ends.
And that they just didn't want to operate it at a loss.
kasey_junk wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
An nba coach was one of 30 people indicted in the scheme. He made
about 5m a year at his straight job.
evan_ wrote 21 hours 17 min ago:
$5M is a lot unless you have a crippling gambling addiction.
kasey_junk wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
Itâs not so much the absolute amount as the comparative
one.
Just extorting Chauncey Billips seems like a better ROI than
the whole caper if youâve got some hold on him.
BolexNOLA wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
Extortion risks exposing you in a way that quietly taking
their money through cheating at cards does not. Itâs also
strikes me as a far more serious crime but I could be
wrong.
kasey_junk wrote 18 hours 44 min ago:
I was replying to the premise that his involvement was
under duress for gambling debts. If so itâs
extortionate either way.
prodigycorp wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
I think it's revealing of how diminished the la costa nostra is. This
is such trivial work and, yet, this was a multi-family operation.
rhcom2 wrote 19 hours 51 min ago:
Highlighted perfectly in The Sopranos when they try to extort a
Starbucks, it's a different world.
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rtnSe0eKmdI
mschuster91 wrote 22 hours 21 min ago:
Diminished? More like, matured into white collar crime. There's no
need to murder people on the street any more, that kind of dirty
work is left to some random Southern American cartels, and the
white collar crime brings in more than enough profit while also
being way less risky should the feds catch up on it.
actionfromafar wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
Probably going into crypto, the federal government even encourage
it now.
prodigycorp wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
I don't know if I buy that. If we were to put this in white
collar terms, we'd all be questioning Tim Cook if he decided that
selling ice cream was a great resource allocation decision.
jimbokun wrote 21 hours 7 min ago:
What business would you take your organized crime organization
into for maximal returns?
Just stick everything in the S&P 500?
skeeter2020 wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
I'd get dirt on the sitting president, then leverage him to
make decisions with obvious market implication. Examples:
give me a day's notice that the federal government is going
to invest in a dinky mining company, or tariffs are coming on
foreign electronics... except next week are exempt. You
gotta believe people on the inside are making fortunes as the
markets continue to make big swings up & down.
mschuster91 wrote 19 hours 13 min ago:
> You gotta believe people on the inside are making
fortunes as the markets continue to make big swings up &
down.
Yeah but that's friends of the emperor, not organized crime
(although granted, the distinction between these two groups
is getting smaller by the day).
Organized crime? That money is literally everywhere.
Restaurants, real estate, cars, the stock markets... the
only place you'll rarely spot it is, ironically, gambling,
way too many chances of getting caught on a paper trail. A
lot of it is also invested in art pieces stored in one tax
haven/freeport or another, really easy to launder money or
evade taxes.
cool_man_bob wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
> More like, matured into white collar crime.
Honestly this is the first âadvancedâ mafia scheme Iâve
heard of in a while.
Last time I heard about a mafia crime it was a very sloppy hit
that sounded more like what you hear from teenagers in Chicago
shooting at each other.
Though tbf it could easily have always been like that and Iâm
just blinded my media bias about a group of people Iâve never
known form a time Iâve never known.
comrade1234 wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
X-ray table? That can't be good for your balls or ovaries.
jajuuka wrote 15 hours 11 min ago:
Nothing like a night of high profile illegal poker while getting
blasted with radiation. /s
mrandish wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
I don't think it's literally "X-Rays". A couple years ago I saw an
infrared transparent table being demonstrated as a product prototype
by a distributor of magic props at a conference for professional
magicians. I played with it a while because I thought it was quite
remarkable and had never seen anything like it. The top surface was a
half-inch thick hard black plastic which appeared completely opaque.
It was perfectly convincing as it even had faux wood grain texturing
on the surface. It looked for all the world like a table you'd see at
IKEA or Target. I put my phone's flashlight on full brightness under
it pointing up and couldn't see any light coming through, even
shading the spot with my hand.
The table had a bunch of IR emitters pointed up built into the
supports holding the table surface but they were at least two feet
away and well-obscured into the table leg design by more
normal-seeming smooth plastic I associate with being IR-transparent.
Of course, if you suspect the use of IR, it's quite easy to detect
with your camera phone. There was a camera hidden into the middle of
the table supports looking up which transmitted the image wirelessly
to a monitor nearby. My own face-down playing cards were visible on
the camera plain as day, so it doesn't require special cards.
Interestingly, the magic distributor showing it wasn't giving out any
info on who made it, what it cost or when it might be available. They
just said they were "showing it to gauge interest" and might carry it
at some point in the future. They're a large, long-time, reputable
distributor of other people's products so I don't think they were
involved in creating it. It hasn't made an appearance at subsequent
conventions, so they must have decided it wouldn't be popular with
magicians - which makes perfect sense. It would have been expensive
and pretty technically involved for a limited-use magic prop. Good
magicians have a many easier and cheaper ways to learn the identity
of hidden cards :-). But the fact such a thick, textured, optically
opaque surface could be IR transparent was pretty nifty.
As a former magician I was surprised to read the gang was using
'reader' cards (backs marked with ink visible to special glasses). No
one uses those anymore as there are so many better ways to do the
same thing. Seems like this gang was just into various tech toys and
kind of lazy. In reality, once you control the environment, cards and
have confederates in the game - cheating to win is trivial without
any tech if you know what you're doing.
Aurornis wrote 22 hours 32 min ago:
The table didnât actually use X-rays. Theyâre using X-ray to mean
it could be seen through with special cameras, perhaps IR sensitive.
rs186 wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
I looked up the term "X-ray table" but couldn't find anything
relevant except very recent results about this specific news.
Sounds like FBI invented this very stupid/confusing name for the
story when they could have used much something much better and
clearer. X-ray really has nothing to do with this.
dboreham wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
I remember as a kid seeing comics imported from the US that had
ads for "x-ray specs". My first clue that the US advertising
standards were not quite the same as other countries. Perhaps
it's a similar idea to that?
nimbius wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
i wonder if we're not conflating xray with terahertz radiation
perhaps? the former being used by a company called corrections one
that produces a horrifying whole-body X-Ray of a prisoner to detect
contraband (certainly not healthy.)
Terahertz radiation is used in airports with (arguable) safety and
efficacy. the resolution is sufficient to read protest statements
written under a passengers shirt in metallic ink. I wonder if it
could read cards should they be specially crafted similarly.
consp wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Looks like near-IR of some sort but media calls everything x-ray
since it's what people know. X-Rays would go through cards anyway.
But you'd get nice pictures of peoples hands though, and cataracts
after a night of play.
edit: now I think of it: if the cloth is thin enough you don't even
need near-IR. Old fashioned IR camera's (those without any fancy
filter) from the '00 showed though some relatively thin opaque
synthetic material with a tiny IR source so ...
runjake wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
From the photos it looks like regular IR photos to me. Also note
you donât see the bones in the hands at the top of the photo.
consp wrote 19 hours 15 min ago:
Yes, my conclusion as well. Especially with a bright enough IR
source. The bones reference was as a bit sarcastic reference if
they'd used x-rays but since nobody got seriously ill that did
not happen..
CGMthrowaway wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
Could also be mm wave maybe? Cheap mm wave security gates and
similar tech are ubiquitous now
swores wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
I'm pretty sure it was just marks on the back of the cards that
glasses/contacts then converted into an xray-like view, not any
actual technology for seeing through the cards.
jackric wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
Next podcast sponsor fad: lead-lined underwear. PbUndies
The_President wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
Bundies! Mascot should be Al Bundy.
brianbreslin wrote 22 hours 23 min ago:
wasn't tim ferris promoting one of these products years ago? was
like a faraday cage for your nether region.
Arrath wrote 17 hours 48 min ago:
My cousin (submarine nuke plant operator) has stories of his
compatriots using lead foil to line their pants.
breckenedge wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
Gotta call them âWeighted Undiesâ
y-curious wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
I canât help but think this recent Wired video[1] has some accidental
overlap with how they cheated.
1:
HTML [1]: https://youtu.be/JQ20ilE5DtA?si=_MHmhjKGMKk4sobB
mckirk wrote 22 hours 32 min ago:
Sorry to be completely off-topic, but: I'm really reluctant to click
on anything with these 'share IDs' and usually remove them from any
link I share with anyone. I don't want to make it even easier for the
platforms to build networks of associated accounts.
daveevad wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
Sorry to be pedantic but if you're clicking the link, YT gets the
referer header even without the share id url parameter.
throwaway314155 wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
I believe the Firefox extension CleanURLs helps with this.
hsuduebc2 wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
I do the same thing!
ClarityJones wrote 22 hours 53 min ago:
This is silly.
People used to play poker, and cheat, and the whole thing was illegal.
Now, people play poker, and cheat, and they want the government to
police their poker games and make sure they're fair.
Complete waste of resources.
micromacrofoot wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
you're right, they should outlaw gambling as a business because it's
inherently predatory, rigged ("the house always wins" isn't just a
cute phrase) and has addiction issues that disproportionately impact
the poor
Aurornis wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
> Now, people play poker, and cheat, and they want the government to
police their poker games and make sure they're fair.
No, if you personally run a poker game in your house and cheat your
friends the government doesnât care. The FBI isnât going to be
interested.
If you join the mafia and run an organized crime ring that operates
poker games as a business which systematically defrauds people for
large amounts of money and funnels the proceeds to organized crime
through money laundering operations, the FBI will be interested.
If you look at this story and only see âsome people cheated at a
poker gameâ youâre missing the real story. This was a full on
organized crime business operation
ClarityJones wrote 21 hours 57 min ago:
Okay, a lot of people cheated at a lot of poker games? I feel like
we're being redundant here.
So, their cheating was organized and systematic? Yeah, you can't
really cheat consistently without having a scheme.
Did anyone really think the mafia were running fair backroom poker
games?
gdulli wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
It's not even lunch yet and "the mafia should be allowed to build
onto their tower of crimes in peace" is a take that I don't think
that will be beat today.
AndrewDucker wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
If there's a business that's being run fraudulently then I want them
to be held accountable for that.
sigwinch wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
Iâm expecting some pardons will shape the expectation that this
all could have been avoided with strategic political donations. In
this era, what would you accept as a substitution for
accountability?
vharuck wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
The poker games were run by the mafia, who pulled in a lot of cash by
luring and cheating suckers. I want the FBI to stop scams that
funnel money to criminal organizations.
Noaidi wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
Yes, these corporations need to be stopped. Like Wells Fargo. Still
trading in the market. Maybe we should go after the stock market as
well.
HTML [1]: https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/wells-fa...
nicce wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
Situation is pretty bad if you can jail mafia only based on the
cheating on poker.
tw04 wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
A lot of cash? It says âat least $7mâ over 6 years across
supposedly 4 crime families and how many people? Theyâd have
been better off opening up a Jimmy Johnâs franchise.
Aurornis wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
The key is a lot of cash, or cryptocurrency.
If you run a Jimmy Johnâs, most of your customers will pay with
credit cards. Everything runs through banks. You canât launder
that easily. Itâs all traceable. Itâs all taxable.
Run a poker operation and you can get your marks to give you
crypto, cash, or small transfers.
$7 million in pure cash and crypto proceeds from a poker game is
a lot more valuable than $7 million in revenue from a sandwich
shop for an organized crime operation.
mb7733 wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
> If you run a Jimmy Johnâs, most of your customers will pay
with credit cards. Everything runs through banks. You canât
launder that easily.
You don't need to launder it, it was acquired legally
le-mark wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
Fast food franchises arenât generating $1M a year either.
Ok a McDonaldâs in a high traffic area can, but a sandwich
shop anywhere? Nope.
tw04 wrote 18 hours 59 min ago:
Weâre supposedly talking about 4 major crime families, it
wouldnât be one McDonalds it would be dozens and dozens.
And all legal.
Nothing about this story makes sense other other than as
yet another headline to try to get people talking about
something other than Epstein.
Did illegal gambling take place? Iâm sure. Were 4
different crime families investing significant resources to
take home barely $1m/year? Iâm extremely skeptical and
given this is coming from Kash âI always look like I just
did a line of cokeâ Patel, Iâd say itâs more likely
than not weâre getting incomplete, if not bad information
bbstats wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
"previously people could cheat, now they can't" ?? how is that bad.
fukka42 wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
I'd appreciate it if the police could help stop cheating in my
kids' soccer game as well. One of those brats keeps pretending to
be injured! Lock him up.
f1shy wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
I think the comment goes more in the direction: âpreviously
playing poker was a totally private thing, didnât cost me a dime,
now part of my taxes is used for thatâ
ClarityJones wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
That's not the part that's bad. I don't care whether they cheat or
not. I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in
a poker / NBA / etc game.
I think arresting people for cheating legitimizes backroom / mafia
gambling. All the other rings (and those left from this one) can
say "Look, those other guys got arrested. The law protects you. We
don't want that to happen to us. Our game is definitely fair." Of
course, they too are cheating.
The only reason the FBI cares here is probably because one of the
victims had pull. If you or I get cheated, the FBI won't care about
that.
pton_xd wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
> I think arresting people for cheating legitimizes backroom /
mafia gambling. All the other rings (and those left from this
one) can say "Look, those other guys got arrested. The law
protects you."
Disagree, this case demonstrates the exact opposite -- you think
your underground game is legit because there's celebrities
playing? Think again, it's a far more sophisticated scam
operation than you could imagine.
> The only reason the FBI cares here is probably because one of
the victims had pull.
Again, I doubt it. Likely it's because the mafia is involved, and
according to the indictment "the defendants and their
co-conspirators used threats of force and violence to secure the
repayment of debts from illegal poker games."
bbstats wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
did you read the article?
cwillu wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
While I agree that they're probably not arguing in good faith,
âDid you even read the article?â is explicitly called out
in the hn guidelines.
Aurornis wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
> I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in
a poker / NBA / etc game.
Operating a business that defrauds people is the domain of
government enforcement.
I think youâre trying to reduce this to some sort of small
scale friendly poker game between friends. It was not. It was an
organized crime business operation that was systematically
committing fraud.
Fraud is illegal and within scope of government enforcement.
ClarityJones wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
The raison d'etre for the offense of fraud is to protect
commerce.
The state / society needs to enforce a basic level of trust for
Business A to buy widgets from Business B, and for Customer C
to be employed, etc.
Betting on sports / poker / etc. is not part of that. Nobody is
creating anything of value when you spin the roulette wheel. At
best, the house wins and most players lose... and that is a
harm to society. At worst, the house cheats or some subset of
players cheat, and most players lose... and that too is a harm
to society. (Edit: At worse worst, it leads to violence,
extortion, etc...)
Gambling does not deserve the legitimacy of being policed.
im3w1l wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
If the police don't police it then the marks will pay someone
to whack the cheaters.
Mistletoe wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
Between all these recent gambling stories with coaches and players and
the Kawhi thing I think Iâm done with the NBA. The NBAâs gambling
push has done nothing but gross me out. Greed unbridled. They saw the
1919 World Series and said âLetâs bet on this shit.â
xbar wrote 20 hours 57 min ago:
NBA stopped being an interesting sports entertainment product to me
by the year 2004. It has generated a handful of interesting
narratives since, but not really enough to keep me engaged in the
face of its enshitification.
sojournerc wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
This interview with a former Turkish NBA player who protested things
happening in China with simple statements on his shoes convinced me
the NBA has no morals whatsoever.
HTML [1]: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LUPh7waoWtydoiwjEgP16?si=-...
tclancy wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
Eh, even as a Celtics fan I would be cautious of taking what Enes
Freedom has to say as gospel. He definitely has a narrative heâs
pushing
sojournerc wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
What's the narrative? Human rights abuse is bad, speaking out
about it got him fired? I have a hard time seeing some nafarious
angle to what he talked about other than China doesn't want their
shit called out.
deelowe wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
It's been like that forever. Makes it very hard to take the NBA
seriously.
prodigycorp wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
This plus a lot of the soft greed. The insistence on a foul-centric
game that leads to over 50% longer games, the ridiculous lack of
investment on its own broadcast infra, the refusal to shorten the
season (which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's
season, despite being less than half the games), and the
consultant-driven management decisions - I have so much contempt for
Adam Silver for making me hate the game I love most.
Everything Silver did grew revenue fourfold. By every metric, heâs
a good commissioner. And yet I donât know a single person in real
life who actually likes the NBA. People I talk to find the NBA
anywhere from inaccessible to an outright turnoff, due to load
management (and player pay), tanking, a glacial pace of play, and so
on. And so the only way I can engage the game is by listening to
podcasts about it. Podcasts that now belch gambling ads at me
constantly.
drdec wrote 20 hours 42 min ago:
> which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's
season, despite being less than half the games
You are clearly referring to calendar time, in which case the NHL
season is longer
typpilol wrote 21 hours 25 min ago:
There was over 90 free throws shot in 1 game yesterday
It was crazy
svachalek wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
I stopped watching a couple of years ago but I assume they're still
doing this: dealing out every game to a different network. You
needed like 4 sports subscriptions just to be able to watch the
season, sometimes even to watch the championship. For me that was
the bridge too far.
bluedino wrote 20 hours 15 min ago:
NFL isn't far behind
NFL Network, ESPN, Prime, Peacock, YouTube...
prodigycorp wrote 18 hours 51 min ago:
A large portion of NFL games can be viewed on network TV. The
same cannot be said for the NBA.
rkomorn wrote 18 hours 47 min ago:
"for now" seems like a reasonable thing to add to that
sentence.
The number of games you can watch on network TV is decreasing
slowly but steadily.
rkomorn wrote 20 hours 2 min ago:
All that mainly because some streaming services are willing to
pay a more competitive amount of money for single (albeit
national) weekly game broadcasts to sweeten their offering and
get more subscribers.
Of course the NFL isn't gonna turn down $1B per year from
Amazon for TNF. They get ~$2B from CBS and Fox each for the
combined 10 Sunday games, then another couple billion from NBC
for one Sunday night game, and another couple billion from ESPN
for Monday night.
I think it's unlikely a single broadcaster would spend
$12+B/year for exclusive rights to all games.
codyb wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
That is _nuts_ that the basketball season is longer than the MLB
season. I never would have guessed that.
Let's go Jays! Looking forward to this World Series.
Also not a fan of the constant inundation with gambling ads even if
they have literally no interest to me. Just seems like a net
negative for a society that realized cigarette ads are bad, but
can't seem to figure that out for alcohol or gambling.
At least the public education campaigns have started earlier, I
definitely see ads talking about where to get help if you're having
an issue fairly frequently.
whycome wrote 18 hours 16 min ago:
Public education is one thing. But kids aren't protected from the
ads and can't even have reasonable discussions about it. They're
just being brainwashed around it. They see superstars and
celebrities endorsing it all. Then all the language around it is
"play" and "game" and "fun" and "win" which has very specific
appeal to children. The prominence also makes it seem vetted and
okay in a kids eyes (if it were bad, it wouldn't be in these
places). I'd legitimately rather my kids see ads for smoking
cigarettes. The conversations to be had around it are much much
easier. Gambling and other psychological addictions are tougher
to convey, but potentially very damaging nonetheless.
codyb wrote 16 hours 59 min ago:
I understand, and am against the constant advertising of it.
But it's also important to remember just how successful the
smoking psa campaign has been. Especially given the cost! Rates
have fallen dramatically, just by telling people to "watch
out!" in public spaces that reach young folks ears.
whycome wrote 15 hours 19 min ago:
I don't think it's easy to attribute it to any specific part
of the 'campaign' -- it's multifaceted. Making it illegal to
smoke in public spaces may be the single most important part
of reducing smoking in subsequent generations. There's also
taxes. And removing it from media (we hardly see people smoke
on camera unless it's for a 'period piece'). And just
straight up treating it like a health issue.
We could be doing equivalent things for gambling (and we have
in the past) so this erosion will have consequences for
decades.
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