Dealers in Collusion with Another Player.

I've seen this a few times. I was once at a downtown casino in the early morning hours and playing at a double deck game. The reason the game interested me in the first place was that the sole occupant of the table had a huge pile of chips in front of him, sloppily placed as if he had a pyramid in front of him. This was very unusual, and should have been a red flag to the dealer or floorman. I sat down in the seat next to third base. The player was two seats away. I cashed in a couple of hundred dollars (it was a $5 table) and made a bet of $5 without knowing the count. The decks were almost depleted. I won the first hand as did the player.

The cards were reshuffled. They were given to the player to cut. There was a glance I caught between them, as though I had interrupted something. It's the same look you see when you stumble upon a friend talking to a woman he has something with. You're in the way; you see how they look at each other, so you pack up and go. But I wanted to see what this was all about.

It was about 3:30 A.M. and I had nothing better to do. I was living in Vegas and used the 24-hour town as my oyster. I was up and about at all hours. Nothing happened for the first three rounds of play. The player stood when the dealer showed a 10. I hit my hard 14 and busted. The dealer turned over a stiff hold card and busted, then turned over the player's two cards. The player had stood on a hard 12!

And this player, a young guy with a hard look about him, was betting big. He shoveled the last chips he received on his pyramid. Then he was dealt a blackjack, and pushed his cards across his chips, when turning over the cards. A player can't go near his chips once a hand is dealt. What he had done was past post, that is, by keeping some chips in the palm of his hand, he pushed his palm open and dropped the chips onto the stack of chips he had just bet, increasing their value after the fact.

Strategy: This was really something. The dealer would have to be blind not to see that one. Now, I started making bigger bets. What I would do, I decided, was mimic the player.

I couldn't quite see his cards, but I noticed that there was eye contact between him and the dealer on some hands, and none on others. The eye contact came only at certain times when the dealer showed a 10 or ace as his upcard. Thus it came after he peeked. He was giving the player a signal, which I picked up after another ten minutes. And I could see the player was also keeping the count, and really making big bets when it was a plus. He seemed to have a no lose situation.

I looked around. The floorman, a florid character in a wild checkered jacket and wilder shirt, was chatting up a bored cocktail waitress at the end of the pit. No heat here at this hour. Now that I caught the signal, I started making the same offbeat plays, hitting and standing seemingly at random, doubling down with crazy soft totals, and winning.

Without ever saying a word to the dealer or other player, I played for almost an hour at the table and won $700, then left, leaving them doing their same waltz.