Originally Posted by redietz View Post
For anyone interested in figuring out if or to what degree mid-level card counters might be tolerated, on July 22 GWAE's podcast featured the back half of an interview with a recently retired surveillance operator who had worked at, among several places over the course of his career, the Mirage.

You can check out some comments regarding data base usage and biometric usage starting at about the 30-minute mark. You will likely learn more from this podcast than from the next 300 posts in this thread. The interview cuts through much of the myth and speculation.
I used to listen to GWAE regularly but now only do when I am directed to something. There were just too many episodes with card counters with very similar stories, most who played slash and burn and have trouble getting a game anywhere after a short time. Also, there is only so much of Dancer that I can take. So now I only listen when directed to something interesting and surveilance interviews is definitely something interesting to me, so thanks redietz.

"Junior" is an interesting character, and one with a very distinct voice (for what it is worth). First thing I would remind people is that Junior worked for the top surveilance outfits at the top strip casinos. The type of places that have all the lastest technolgy, some of which Junior himself indicated don't work very well, like license plate readers. You get off the strip and away from those big casinos with top surveillance and most casinos don't have all that technology and personnel (and TOP personnel). That is one of the reasons I play the strip sparingly. I have strip locations in my regular rotation but selected for different reasons and play sparingly.

So it was interesting to hear Junior mention the CSM play. I made mention of it a couple years ago, after it had been taught to me by a top table game player and received all kinds of hell from different APs. Of course I didn't have an 80% win rate as the player did that Junior was observing. If I did, I would be more focused on that. So moving on before I start getting more hate emails and PMs, it was interesting to hear Junior confirm that most places are not big database participants and even fewer contributors. They all subscribe to the databases, but don't seem to use them much. We sort of knew this, which means when you do get backed off by a casino that does particiapte, and are an entry in the databases, the danger period is very short. It is just for a few days while you are the newer entry. Doesn't take long before your entry gets buried and most places don't look beyond the newer entries if at all. So that was a good confirmation.

Again, Juniors experiences are not typical because he worked for the biggest casinos and best surveillance crews. They are looking for and going after the higher stakes players. Players that spread green to mid balack and play very short sessions aren't registering. There isn't time for them to register. And a quick exit after showing spread, rather than retreat, makes it much harder to confirm anything. THAT, retreating back to a small wager is the biggest tell of any card counter.

Anyway, a player can always learn from these surveillance guys. When you know what they are looking for, makes it easier to avoid that behavior. The old cat and mouse game...gotta love it.