
Fuller House: Exposing high-end poker cheating devices (2016) - Jerry2
https://elie.net/blog/security/fuller-house-exposing-high-end-poker-cheating-devices/
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pmoriarty
Anyone interested in this would do well to read _Gambling Scams_ [1] by Darwin
Ortiz and _How to Cheat at Everything_ [2] by Simon Lovell. There's also an
interesting _Real Hustle_ episode where they manage to cheat their way in to
winning a high stakes game against some famous professional poker players.[3]

The books mentioned above talk in detail about cheating methods in all sorts
of games, not just poker, and have solidified my own determination to never
gamble for money. It's way too easy to be cheated -- and the cheaters don't
need any high end devices to do it either. Plenty of methods are very simple,
very cheap (if you don't count the medical, legal, or funeral bills if you get
caught), and very effective.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Gambling-Scams-Detect-Protect-
Yoursel...](https://www.amazon.com/Gambling-Scams-Detect-Protect-
Yourself/dp/0818405295/)

[2] - [https://www.amazon.com/How-Cheat-Everything-Simon-
Lovell/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Cheat-Everything-Simon-
Lovell/dp/1560259736/)

[3] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63jgfmgqkO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63jgfmgqkO0)

~~~
iamkroot
> (if you don't count the medical, legal, or funeral bills if you get caught)

I see this anecdote/joke tossed out every time a gambling cheating story
appears, but I don't think I've ever seen evidence that such retributive
tactics are used with regularity. _Especially_ by the major casino
corporations.

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hgibbs
Incidentally, while having a look for Ruelle's book on thermodynamic formalism
I stumbled upon a book title something along the lines of "the dynamics of
roulette". I expected something about rare events in probability theory,
perhaps betting strategies for optimising expected profit for certain levels
of risk, but it ended up being on the mechanics of the roulette table itself -
pages upon pages of hefty calculations of roulette balls including spin,
velocity etc etc. It is crazy how much effort people put into getting an edge
at a game.

~~~
dreamcompiler
You might want to look for a book called "The Eudaemonic Pie." It's about a
bunch of chaos theorists who analyze roulette and figure out how to gain a
statistical edge.

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inflatableDodo
> _" Note that taking a screenshot of the cheating app turned out to be more
> difficult than expected because the ROM is hardened against analysis. In
> particular, they removed the ADB server (Android debugging) and the ability
> to take a screenshot when the phone is operating in cheating mode. However,
> with a bit of work, I was able to re-establish the functionalities needed to
> take the screenshots of the app used in this section."_

I'd have used a camera.

edit - this got me thinking, taken as an average, each playing card's face is
a unique colour. As a card is placed face down onto a table, if you point a
camera at the patch of table where the card is being placed, you should be
able to work out which card it is if you look carefully at the change in the
colour of the light reflected. As it gets really close you can also pull out
some pattern.

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beerdoggie
Nice tear down and a remarkable device, but how could one ever expect to get
the marked cards into circulation?

~~~
q3k
This is for scammers who are cooperating with the house.

~~~
randomvectors
More commonly this happens in private games, not in casinos.

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crazypyro
Richard Turner always talked about how much he had to turn down offers to fix
home-games.

A machine doesn't have any pesky ethics or morals.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Turner_(magician)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Turner_\(magician\))

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Animats
The concept is very simple - a marked deck, marked with a bar code in IR-
reflective ink on the card edges. The readout device is a modified phone. It's
nicely implemented, but you have to be able to get your own deck into the
game.

~~~
Scoundreller
A less sophisticated version could work if you were able to mark decks
yourself with some IR redlective and sweat.

You may not be able to mark all 52 cards uniquely, but knowing the 10s and
face cards from the non- should be a huge edge in some games.

I could think of more dangerous but lower tech ideas, but my imagination isn’t
free!

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769819)

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nacho2sweet
This makes me glad I stayed away from the house game circuit when I played
professionally (never mind the collecting lent money aspect). Usually the idea
with house games is they are a little more loose with money, rules, drinking,
weed etc, so you wouldn't be calling people out for having devices on the
table.

He shoulda got KEM cards or other real plastic cards though if he was serious
about ripping off a game!

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Cyndre
I can see something like this being more developed for the magician doing card
tricks and then brought in as a way to fix poker games.

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ncmncm
This is outstanding tear-down work.

I wonder how they read out the ROM. JTAG?

And what was in the part of the phone where the camera and LEDs are now?

~~~
rtkwe
Maybe nothing. With all the phone manufacturing going on in China it'd be
pretty easy to take an existing cheap phone design and shuffle around the
internals or design a main board from scratch with the necessary space.

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thekevan
They lost my interest and intrigue what I learned you had to get the dealer to
use a marked deck.

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sysbin
I'm surprised how well an engineer needed to make this device, would actually
go ahead and make it with the obvious purpose understood.

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skizm
I was getting really excited until I realized you needed the special deck
also. Still a pretty cool piece of tech, for sure, and not easy, but
ultimately, just a slightly fancier QR code reader, right?

~~~
justwalt
That’s how I felt, too. I was envisioning some sort of high framerate camera
that could take an image of the cards as they’re dealt.

