Is a cell phone ban the answer to major poker cheating allegations?

Following allegations of cheating at the Hollywood Park poker room in Los Angeles, which banned electronic devices at its tables, Station Casinos is following suit. The cheaters are accused of using hidden cameras to collaborate with external accomplices and transmit hole cards in real time.

Cheating allegations have led a Los Angeles poker room to take a strict stance on electronic devices at poker tables, and Station Casinos in Las Vegas has begun to follow suit.

A listener on Bart Hanson's Crush Live Poker YouTube channel claimed that multiple cash game players at Hollywood Park, a popular poker room in Southern California, had been colluding to cheat.

These allegations forced the poker room to implement a ban on all electronic devices on the tables. PokerNews confirmed that staff regularly patrol the tables, asking players to remove their phones. Cell phones, iPads, laptops, and all electronic devices are strictly prohibited from being placed on the table during gameplay. Players are not allowed to send messages or check Instagram during their hands, and must leave the table if they need to use their phones.

The Red Rock Casino at Station Casinos in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas has also implemented a partial cell phone ban. Players are not allowed to make calls at the poker table, and cell phone use is completely prohibited during a hand.

Suspected methods of cheaters

The caller in the initial video, "Joe," explained that he suspected some Las Vegas poker room players were using technological advantages to team up and cheat. He claimed that one player had installed a camera inside a hat that could identify the hole cards dealt by the dealer and then transmit the information to another player.

"Usually this is a team of two. What happens is that one person sits at the edge of the table in seat 1, 2, 8, or 9 so they can capture the angle from which the dealer deals the cards. They are equipped with a camera that transmits the image to an external location where someone can watch the image in real time and see and identify what cards the players are dealt, and then transmits it back to the players sitting at the table," Joe claimed.

South Point in Las Vegas recently implemented a new technology common in Europe, where dealers slide cards on a cloth instead of the standard dealing method, a potential way to combat the cheating techniques described by Joe.

In Los Angeles, local professional poker player Peter O'Neill shared his experience of a similar cheating scandal on Twitter. The Southern California poker player shared some of the things he and others noticed in games at Hollywood Park Casino and Gardens Casino.

The tweet was posted on July 31, but Hollywood Park has since banned electronic devices at poker tables. In a comment to his post, O'Neill stated that the cheaters targeted hands of $5/$10 and below, and that they had previously played at Commerce Casino.

O'Neill recently called into the Crush Live Poker show, sharing similar stories about players teaming up and always sitting in specific seats. Cheating isn't limited to Las Vegas and Los Angeles poker rooms; it can happen and has happened all over the world. So, how should poker rooms deal with the fact that modern technology makes cheating easier?

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