As Mark Estes, 28, played blackjack at a table in Nevada’s Las Vegas Hilton casino one day, he counted the cards. This involved remembering the cards dealt during each game and using a mathematical formula to calculate the odds of success of betting on any given hand.

Suddenly, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas grad student found himself in a back room on the property, being told he’d “wind up in the desert with a hole in his head” if he was caught counting cards again at the Hilton, Estes alleged. Because he refused to leave the casino after this threat, the staff had him arrested for trespassing.

Card counting was legal then, and Nevada gambling authorities didn’t regulate it. House rules of many of the state’s casinos disallowed the practice, and these enterprises could and did eject card counters and take other actions, like extra card shuffling, to impede their efforts.

Right To Play Cards

Estes, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Hilton, the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC), the Nevada Gaming Control Board and the Las Vegas Police Department to try to stop Nevada casinos from refusing to play card games with card counters.

Estes’ complaint asserted the following:

• Card counters had to the right to play cards in a casino in any way they wanted.
• The state of Nevada was obligated to protect card counters.
• Nevada was encouraging unlawful conduct by allowing casinos to throw out card counters.
• Casinos can’t just let people most likely lose play cards in their establishments.

In his suit, Estes asked the court to declare illegal the existing gambling regulation that requires casinos to ban people whom the state deems to be “inimical to the interests of the State of Nevada, or of licensed gambling, or of both,” reported the Las Vegas Sun (Jan. 21, 1977).

“The case, expected to be a landmark for the NV gaming industry, will test the practice of card counting and whether casinos are in their rights when they eject a counter,” wrote the Reno Evening Gazette (Aug. 19, 1977).

Persisting In The Cause

After Hilton Casinos Inc. and the NGC asked the court to dismiss Estes’ case, Judge Joseph Pavlikowski did just that. Based on a previous ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, he determined that nobody has a constitutional right to play cards.

Estes appealed, and two years later, the Nevada Supreme Court heard arguments in the case. Estes’ attorney asserted that blackjack/21 is a game of chance, and players who have a chance of beating the house can’t be banned. Card counters are simply using their intelligence, he said, and casinos can’t kick out better players.

Hilton Casinos’ attorney countered that casinos’ right to ban certain players is a private business decision, one that Nevada gaming regulators recognize.

Ultimately, the high court jurists ruled in the Hilton and, thus, all Nevada casinos’ favor.

Battle Buddies

Before Estes took up the sword, another card counter, Kenneth “Ken” S. Uston, had launched the battle in 1976, when he’d sued Las Vegas’ Flamingo, MGM Grand and Marina Hotel and Casino for $14 million for what he’d claimed was “illegally” prohibiting him from playing cards at their establishments. This suit differed from Estes’ in that it didn’t allege state wrongdoing.

In federal court in 1978, U.S. District Judge Roger Foley decided Uston’s case. Foley ruled that Nevada casinos may disallow card counters from playing cards in their gambling house.

Over the years, Uston filed several lawsuits related to Nevada casinos’ treatment of card counters, but he lost them all.

For Ben Affleck and all other card counters, present and future, these two Davids, Estes and Uston, fought the Goliath of Nevada casinos, but unlike in the Biblical story, they didn’t prevail.

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Do any of you count cards? If so, how much of an advantage would you say it gives you?

Illustration from Pond5.com

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Riviera dice, with crystallized corners

From size to spot design, the basic elements of dice have evolved over time. Much of the changes made to U.S. dice over the last roughly 150 years have been effected with the goals of making it harder for players to cheat and making it easier for gambling house personnel to spot altered dice. Today, casino dice are more varied than ever.

Here’s a look at sharps’ tricks, illegal in the country’s casinos, and how gambling operators used (and still use) dice design to foil cheating attempts:

A bone die from the early 1880s

Rolling The Bones

Around the world, original dice were crafted out of bone (hence, the dice nickname “bones”), ivory and other materials, including bronze, agate, rock crystal, onyx, jet, alabaster, marble, amber and porcelain.

Eventually, opaque plastic dice, through which light can’t pass, became the norm in the States. This type was ideal for cheaters, who could get away with rigging them for an advantage during game play.

Modifications inside a die increased the weight on a certain side, which boosted the user’s chances of the die turning up a desired number.

Cheaters employed various methods to create these weighted, loaded or gaffed dice. They included:

Icing: To ice a die, one inserted a weight or iron filling inside it on the side opposite the desired face. The weighted, or heavy, side was more likely to fall against the table, thereby making the wanted side show.

Variable loading: This more complicated approach allowed the user to throw any side he desired rather than a predetermined one. The process involved hollowing out the die through one of the pips, placing a small weight inside, filling the cavity with a soft wax with a melting point just above room temperature, filling the pip with glue or epoxy and then coloring it to match the other pips.

While in play, the player had to hold the die in his closed first for a moment with the desired face up. This warmed the dice, allowing the wax to melt and the weight to shift to the opposite side. Then he had to hold the die in an open palm so it would cool and the wax would harden and, thus, hold the weight in place.

Tapping: This version of the variable loading method entailed creating, inside the die, a central reservoir and running tubes from it to each of six additional reservoirs created behind each of the faces. Then the central reservoir would be filled with mercury.

During play, a tap of the die against the table or other hard surface would send the mercury into the reservoir behind the face opposite the desired side. The mercury weighted the side it was on and altered the outcome of a roll.

To counteract these cheating methods, gambling operators wanted to be able to see into the die. A solution came in the second half of the 1800s in the form of dice made out of cellulose nitrate, or nitrocellulose, a synthetic and translucent plastic. An added benefit was these dice could be colored by dying them. This composition, though, was problematic. It was highly flammable and, over time, crystallized due to plastic fatigue and ultraviolet light exposure.

Then, nearly a century later, came the advent of dice made out of cellulose acetate, a less flammable and natural plastic manufactured from purified natural cellulose. These are the dice used in U.S. casinos still today.

No Rounded Corners

Casino dice are exact cubes with sharp corners that ensure entirely random rolls. In contrast, dice found in commercial board games, for instance, have rounded corners, which exacerbate any bias in them and skew roll outcomes.

Cheaters sometimes make a die off square by shaving one side to be shorter, which leads to one face predominantly showing on rolls. These alterations are so slight, they can’t be seen by the naked eye. Detecting a shaved die required measuring all sides of it with a micrometer.

Dice sizes and different pip designs

Size Matters

Casino dice size has gradually increased since the mid-1900s. They began at 5/8-inch squares then were increased to 11/16. Today, most are 3/4-inch squares, and each of a die’s dimensions must be true to within 1/2000th of an inch. As the die size grew, so did its pips, or spots or dots.

One reason for the increased size was to make die more difficult to palm and switch out, George Martin hypothesized in Collecting Casino Dice. He added that larger dice were more desirable on the larger craps tables that had become bigger over time, were easier to find on typically colorful, patterned casino carpeting and contained more surface area for printing a name or logo. Any to all of these factors could’ve prompted the size boost.

Shades iI Play

The most common color of casino dice is … yes, red, of various shades with many older dice being deep red or maroon. Whereas red still dominates, other dice colors — blue, yellow, green and purple — are often seen now.

As for the printing on dice, it began with one color, usually a light pastel to contrast with the red dice color. A rarity at the time was Club Primadonna’s (1955-1978, Reno, Nevada) dice, which boasted four colors of print in all, three on one side and a fourth on a second.

The printing on modern dice is usually done in two or three colors, often metallic ones like silver or gold.

Flamingo dice, 3/4 inch square, blue, with solid spot pips, a logo, lot number and internal identifying letter

Logos Prompt No-gos

When gambling establishments first started printing identifying info on their dice, it generally was their name, like “Boulder Club.” That evolved into printing the hotel name, like “Hotel Sahara” and then the casino name, such as “Fitzgerald’s Casino.” Some casinos opted for only a printed object, like a heart, horse, fish or gun, a geometric shape or symbol.

A later trend was dice bearing the possessive form of the casino owner’s surname, like “Harrah’s” and “Binion’s.” Sometimes it had their full name, such as “Milton Prell” and “Del Webb” and at other times, their initials. Eventually, printing identifiers included the casino’s geographic location, such as “Sparks Nevada,” the year, slogans like “Viva Las Vegas,” special event names and more.

These logos help casinos differentiate their dice from others’ and afford them a way to brand and market themselves.

Casinos change their printed logos several times a year and only use dice bearing the latest variation, again to prevent cheating. Cheaters generally won’t get away with swapping into a game old dice with a different logo.

The side containing the single pip is the most common for printing, with the two dot face the runner up, as they offer the most available space.

Not Gladys Knight’s Pips

Misspot dice, used to cheat and today called tops and bottoms, are made with certain numbers duplicated on or omitted from them. For example, one of these might have a one, three and five on it, twice each, but no two, four or six or vice versa.

As such, pips on today’s dice aren’t painted on. They’re drilled into the die then filled with a special paint. The paint’s density is the same as the die’s to ensure all sides weigh the same.

In terms of pips’ appearance, they most commonly are solid spots. Other pip designs of various names — bird’s eye, ring eye, double ring eye, bull’s eye, donut and others — include two concentric circles, one inside the other; a dot inside in a circle; a dot inside two concentric circles; an octagon inside a circle or any combination.

The arrangement of the numbers on U.S. dice is such that those on opposite faces always total seven. This means two mirror image arrangements are possible, in which 1, 2 and 3 are arranged in a clockwise or counterclockwise order about a corner.

This die’s key identifier is “F”

An Ounce Of Prevention

Casinos have added a couple of features. One is a letter or number printed underneath the paint of one pip. It can be seen only when looking into the cube in a certain way, usually through the four spot side toward the three spot side.

This identifier is yet another dice component cheaters have to contend with, and it’s a difficult one to replicate. To up the ante even more, casinos usually change this code with each new dice issue.

Each fresh dice lot also gets a new number, which is printed on every die in the batch, usually between the two rows on the six face.

When casinos take dice out of action permanently, they mark them, most commonly with a 1/4 inch in diameter circle stamped into the plastic on the four spot side. Sometimes they use an “X,” numbers or letters instead, even “void.” This allows anyone to easily spot the unacceptable use of retired dice in a game.

An Ongoing Battle

While the design of today’s casino dice goes a long way in counteracting cheating, it doesn’t eradicate it. For instance, some skilled players like Dominic “Dice Dominator” LoRiggio, can control how they throw dice so they land on certain numbers. Some cheaters use magnets to control their roll, one inside the dice and another under the table.

What ingenious method will someone concoct next?

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Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and his famed Las Vegas hotel-casino

1947

“The Flamingo Hotel, one of the nation’s most elaborate establishments, was [Benjamin] Siegel’s baby and was set to be the operating headquarters for his syndicate which embarked on a program to control gambling in Nevada as well as Los Angeles, San Francisco and other spots in the west,” read a Nevada State Journal op-ed piece (June 22, 1947).

Among other various criminal enterprises, Siegel was involved in trying to establish the Mob-run Transamerica race wire service on the West Coast.

The well-publicized murder of Siegel, Mobster, hitman and gambler, on June 20, 1947 led to restrictions on who received a Nevada gambling license. The Silver State tightened control to filter out the undesirables and, thus, clean up the industry.

“It is up to the authorities to protect the state against the invasion of gangsters. Gambling attracts them but vigilance and honest enforcement of the gambling law and particularly the license provisions of it will keep them out, wrote an NSJ opinion writer (June 22, 1947).

Licensing At The Start

When the Nevada Legislature approved gambling in 1931, responsibility for granting licenses fell to the counties or cities; the state wasn’t involved. The only requirement for obtaining a license was that the applicant be a U.S. citizen. Licensees paid two monthly fees: $25 per table game and $10 per slot machine.

Fourteen years later, in 1945, state legislators shifted gambling licensing to the then two-person Nevada Tax Commission and, simultaneously, instituted a state gambling license fee equal to 1% of gross revenue for enterprises doing more than $3,000 worth of business quarterly. Cities and counties still could issue gambling licenses, too but only after an applicant obtained one from the state.

Changes In 1947

The tax commission established licensing-related guidelines based on the opinion of the Nevada Attorney General Alan Bible, which he delivered in October 1947.

According to Bible, the commission had the power to:

• Investigate a gambling license applicant’s background, including their character, habits, associates and the like

• Require license applicants to provide proof of citizenship

• Deny an applicant a gambling license when they are deemed to have an “unsavory character,” when granting a license wouldn’t serve the public’s interest or when another just reason warrants it

• Revoke a gambling license if the holder is determined to have an “unsavory  character,” if the licensee is acting against the public’s interest or if some other sound reason exists

“All applicants must now present complete evidence of past records, current business associates, dormant or active, and must submit themselves to an investigation if such is required by the tax commission,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Jan. 24, 1948). “If evidence is presented that any operator is knowingly permitting cheating in his establishment, his license is subject to immediate revocation.”

Immediate Repercussions

When the tax commission held its subsequent meeting, in January 1948, it granted 1,000 gambling licenses but denied five, for reasons not made public.

Two of the denials went to existing bookmaking enterprises, the Turf Club in Las Vegas and the Reno Turf Club in Reno.

Turf Club in Las Vegas

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1970-1972

Meyer Lansky was the puppeteer behind the scenes of the world’s gambling stage from the 1930s to the 1970s, controlling and manipulating the characters, or National Crime Syndicate members, with aplomb.

He capitalized on his brilliant financial acumen to develop and skim from an international casino empire — encompassing various U.S. states, Cuba, England, Haiti, the Bahamas and Lebanon  — that generated obscene amounts of money. At the height of his success in this endeavor, the late 1960s, this Eastern Europe-born immigrant, né Maier Suchowljansky, was worth an estimated $300 million ($2.3 billion today).

New Home Sought

At age 68, Lansky and his second wife Thelma (“Teddie”) moved from Miami Beach, Florida to Israel in October 1970 and four months later, applied for citizenship, as the Mobster wanted to live out the rest of his life there. It’s unknown if the reason was his Zionist beliefs or desire to distance himself from potential future criminal charges in the United States. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

“I don’t want to make money here,” Lansky told the Haaretz newspaper. “I am Jewish and I want to live here.”

At that time, under its Law of Return, Israel allowed all Jews from elsewhere except criminals to move there and become naturalized.

However, by that time, a number of racketeers already were using that country as a safe haven from legal reprisal back home. They included gamblers Morris Schmertzter aka Max Courtney, Al Mones, Hyman “Hymie” Segal and Frank Hitter aka Red Reed, along with other underworld players.

In March, two months after Lansky requested Israeli citizenship, a U.S. federal grand jury indicted him for skimming profits from the Flamingo hotel-casino in Las Vegas between 1960 and 1967. When he failed to appear before the grand jury after being subpoenaed, he was charged with contempt of court. Neither offense, however, required Israel to extradite Lansky under its treaty with the U.S.

The underworld’s financial ace told the newspaper, Maariv, he didn’t intend to return to the U.S. because he couldn’t be guaranteed a fair trial. He added that he was a retired, honest gambler, not a gangster.

In September 1971, after an investigation into Lansky’s background, Israel’s Interior Ministry denied him citizenship on the grounds he “was likely to be a threat to public order” (Reno Evening Gazette, Jan. 14, 1972).

Dissatisfied, Lansky and his attorney took the issue to the Supreme Court of Israel. A temporary injunction allowed the “The Mob’s Accountant” to stay put until resolution of the case.

Both Sides Make Plea

Before the high court, in March 1972, Israel’s state attorney, Gavriel Bach, asked the jurists to reject Lansky’s appeal. Bach argued that granting Lansky citizenship would set a dangerous precedent in that, according to reports from the FBI, Interpol and Scotland Yard, Lansky was deeply involved in organized crime in the States and Canada, with connections worldwide. In fact, the British agency had noted in a report the gaming impresario had tried to arrange a summit with some of his criminal cohorts in Tel Aviv in May 1971.

As if to punctuate Bach’s points, while the proceedings were underway, in June 1972, Lansky was indicted again in the U.S., that third time for conspiring to evade federal income taxes on money received from gamblers on junkets to a London casino. Bach informed the court of that development, too. He noted, however, that Israel wouldn’t deport the accused even if it ultimately were to deny him citizenship.

Attorney Yoran Alrio presented Lansky’s side at the proceeding. Alrio argued that his client simply wanted to retire in Israel out of Jewish religious sentiment, that he lacked a criminal record excluding some minor offenses and that the allegations of a criminal past and connections were simply “rumors, slander and gossip” (Nevada State Journal, March 24, 1972). Alrio quoted an FBI report indicating Lansky had been inactive for seven years.

The Verdict, Implications

Three months later, the supreme court announced its decision; it denied Lansky’s appeal for citizenship, meaning he had to leave Israel.

One and a half months later, at October’s end, with Lansky still not gone, the Interior Ministry gave him two weeks to depart or face expulsion. Technically, it wasn’t a deportation or extradition, as Israel wasn’t mandating that Lansky return to the U.S. Rather, he was free to go where he pleased … assuming the country of his choice would have him.

Within the given deadline, the underworld chieftain left the Holy Land with a Paraguayan visa. Yet, when he arrived at the airport in Asunción, he was prevented from disembarking the plane. He continued on the flight through South America to Florida. By mid-November, Lansky, then age 70, was back in the U.S., again taking up residence in Miami Beach.

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