Peek and burn

This technique also comes from Mr. A., who claims to have seen it used in Las Vegas. After finishing hitting his own hand, the dealer peeks at the top card. Various ways of peeking are explained in the many books and videocassettes on cheating. If the top card is an ace or 10, the dealer sloughs it off when picking up the used cards. If the top card is a not an ace or 10, the dealer does not discard it, but deals it out in the normal manner.

Mr. A. says the peek and burn was used against a high-stakes blackjack player who was playing alone at a table. The effect is he got considerably less than his fair share of good hands since many of the aces and 10s he should have gotten instead ended up with the discards. First base at a busy table would suffer the same fate. The other players at a busy table would be hurt to the extent that they would be playing with a deck poor in aces and 10s, but they would not be hurt as badly as the first player to receive cards.

You undoubtedly have heard of dealing seconds, and you might be wondering why a dealer who wants to cheat would bother with the peek and burn because peeking and dealing seconds gets the money faster. The answer is that dealing undetectable seconds is a difficult skill to master. Sloughing off a card is easier. So a dealer who wants to cheat but who does not want to devote the time to master seconds might attempt the peek and burn.

Dealer Can Cheat By Hitting Busted Hands

Dave Douglas shares a method of cheating that he may have encountered in a Strip casino. The incident was over so quickly that he is not certain whether what he thinks he saw is what really happened.

Douglas thinks the dealer looked at the next card out of the shoe as he was getting ready to pick up a hand that had already busted. The dealer saw that the card was a 10, put it on that hand, and quickly scooped the busted hand into the discard tray. Douglas was doubling down on eleven; a 10 that possibly should have gone to his hand may have been slapped on a hand that had already busted.

Sounds like Douglas ran into a variation of the "peek and burn." My advice for a situation like this is do not be shy about asking to have a hand recreated from the discards.

Burning a Card

A reader says:

At a small casino in Sparks, the lady on graveyard with short red hair would sometimes burn a card — and sometimes not — after the shuffle. I do not believe it was intentional — except once the card was a 10 (the only card I actually saw) and she suddenly "remembered" it was to be burned, and I therefore did not get it.

Elsewhere

Though most blackjack games outside of Nevada and Atlantic City are honest, you run a much greater chance of being cheated in jurisdictions where there is no gaming control board to protect you. Suppose you are playing blackjack in a casino on an Indian reservation and something happens that you think is not right. To whom do you complain? The local police probably have neither expertise nor jurisdiction. A local Indian police force probably has no expertise, and may be biased in favor of the casino. The FBI should have more important things to do than investigate reports of possible cheating at blackjack. You may have no recourse if you are cheated.

The situation is even bleaker when the casino is not banking the game, just charging players by the hand or by the hour. Then the casino has insufficient incentive to run an honest game. A reader described seeing one of his opponents capping a winning bet with an extra $50. What do you think happened to that cheater? In Nevada he would have been arrested. On an Indian reservation in California he was told to return the $50, but was allowed to continue to play. To the casino, the cheater was a paying customer.

This article is part of the series: Cheating by the dealer, you can read the previous article or continue with the following one.