Seems like it would be eazy it would just be getting someone on the table that would be difficult

Expertmagicican

that, will not work. the cable is RF shielded and there is more than one cable, which means the signal would be further scrambled.

Sodman12, yes that would be the most difficult, as not all tables are set up with pocket cams... only featured tables.

one would have to survive elimination tables to make it to a featured table.

Halcon

I would venture to say it depends on who you are and who you know, and who you're working with.

For the average bedroom-cheater Joe, sitting at home, it's nearly impossible to have any sort of go at tapping the cam system. If you're one of the boys working for their technical crew, then that's another story.. Anyway, this is dangerous stuff, because it's moving into the realm of actual cheating, which revolves very little about how nifty your fingers are, and more around massive collusion, which ends with big prison sentences.

Andrei

Halcon,

Without too much effort I found the information below....basically is says that it is VERY difficult to provide electronic shielding. In addition, it sounds like any shield may be easily compramized with a sleight cut or break in the shield. This can be easily done with a coax cable (unless it is inside steel conduit).

While I am not an engineer, I strongly suspect that developing a tap for a shielded coax cable is not onle possible...but, someone is probably doing it already.

I may be wrong...(I'll admit that)....but, still think tapping is possible.

Tech article:

*********************

Electromagnetic Shielding


Electromagnetic emanations can be reduced or even suppressed entirely by use of appropriate electromagnetic shielding. Gauss's law says the surface integral of a closed contour surrounding an object is only proportional to the charge enclosed. If that contour is unbroken and electrically conductive, an internal electrical field with no net charge will cancel itself out so there will be no net electrical field outside the contour. This also means that any electrical charge on a closed conductive surface resides entirely on the outside of the surface.



Therefore, to eliminate emanations, we should put computers in metal boxes (Faraday cages) made of conductive materials such as copper, aluminum, or steel. A variety of materials and forms (solid metals, conductive coatings, adhesive foils, conductively filled materials, etc.) suffice (Molyneux-Child, 1997). However, perfect protection assumes the conductive enclosure is unbroken. Because there usually must be gaps for ventilation, power lines, keyboards, and network connections, these gaps may permit signals to leak out (Warne & Chen, 1992). Consequently, significant gaps must be minimized. A key factor is the ratio of the diameter of the gap to the wavelength of the signal frequency one wishes to suppress (Hoffman Enclosures Inc., 2003). As a rule of thumb, it has been suggested this should be 1/10th or less to prevent significant radiation from escaping, and 1/100th to provide 60-db reduction (Molyneux-Child, 1997). Waveguides in the form of conductive pipes through the gaps can further reduce the emanations at these gaps, as can making the gaps into meandering channels. Power lines through these gaps can be filtered, and fiber optic cables through the gaps can supply communications signals without providing an electromagnetic channel. Monitor screens can be coated with a conductive film, but keyboards are tricky to protect. A number of vendors supply such specialized hardware. Such shielding is difficult to do on laptop computers, where weight and space are at a premium.



To simplify construction, the conducting box is often constructed with a grid of wires like a cage. This works well if the gaps between the wires fulfill the wavelength constraints, and it permits better ventilation than a closed surface. Rooms and even buildings can be built using these conductive grids (Hemming, 1992).



Cables provide special problems for shielding because an unshielded and unbalanced electrical cable can be much like an antenna. Fiber optic cables are the best solution although they are more expensive per unit length than electrical cables. They have no electromagnetic emanations along their bodies because they are coated to prevent the escape of light. Their only weakness is on their ends where light is converted to and from electrical signals. Long fiber optic cables such as long-distance telephone lines also need to be periodically boosted electronically along their length, and the booster is susceptible to eavesdropping.

Expertmagician (and others):

I would like to comment here as this relates directly to what I do for a living and have done for quite some time.

The information the Expertmagician has posted is true. Unfortunately, it applies mainly to audio and not video signal that is going across the coax. Modifications of any type to cabling done for video is going to be much more readily apparent than for audio only.

Yes, you could tap into the video cables. Numerous specialized tools would be required (to cut, strip, crimp and splice the cable). After that was done, you would need a specialized splitter so that the "cable loss" you have created is not too great on the backend as to cause problems that would be recognized. You would then need to run the split signal into another device to transmit it to you. for that you would really want to do it via wireless RF signal so that it makes it more difficult to track to you if your midnight modifications are found. You then need a method of wireless communications to your team that is going to act on the information. Difficult, yes. Impossible, no.

The other thing to keep in mind is that most major casinos do have electronic detection and countermeasures available to them. I don't know how much they monitor big poker tournaments like the WSOP and WPT events, but broadcasting out a spurious RF signal (and in this case it would be signals) could be a dangerous thing. Those more in the know on casino security would have to speak up on that.

Hope that is of some interest.

Michael

Even if you were able to do all this and you got at the table it would only give you an advantage and not enable you to win 100% of the time. plus it might be obivious that you know what everyone had if you continued to make plays that were asome.

All this sounds great in theory....But, not worth a felony charge when caught

Sodman12,

CC has posted before a bad call is what'll ruin you

I think if you could get that far and had access, why not just install a mini wireless cam next to the actual cam so that theres 2 sources and theres no tapping into lines... does this make sense??

Iamslow, No it doesn't make sense. I know what your saying, but it will not fly. it is far more risky than my solution. my way, if done correctly, will be almost impossible to trace back to the source.

Halcon

Easiest way to do it is buy off someone in the broadcast production company that will be viewing the differnet cameras. He can mumble to himself who has what, but he is wired to an outside party via RF. Since he is in the truck, he won't be picked up on the casino countermeasure equipment. The person he is speaking to is then set up with a wireless RF burst device. Using this, the casino countermeasures would have a tough time picking up on what was happening. The burst transmissions would only look like brief spikes of RF "noise". Of course, you would want to go with the high end equipment that would encrypt the transmission, just in case someone got curious and had nothing better to do and pushed the issue.

I'll be playing in the WSOP at the end of June...email me if interested (I am really playing but just kidding about the email me part...lol).

Michael

Meijin,

Don't forget the daub or better yet "juice dust"

And you better use the good stuff

Kidding ... we still want to read your messages on the Café...can't do that from jail

Are these things broadcasted live?... if they were, even with a delay. the person can act like they are making a decision when really they're waiting for the delayed results of what their opponents have. but this would make things a little too easy to cheat with..

also there is an audience... now I know it's hard to see with the lights and that the audience probly has no lights on them. but someone could probly work out a system with say.. the light from their watch. like moris code maybe.. or something more discrete... because the audience can see the hands as well can they not?

also there has to be monitors around somewhere... maybe if someone had some kind of reflective serface sign.. like a typical go team type sign. but with morror finish letters, and they stood next to the monitor, someone might be able to catch a glimps of the other hands.

No, they are not live.

Halcon

Yeah its like 2 or 3 month delay
there was once a live tounry on FSN it was boring for most people to watch so they only did it once but it was on a 5 min delay so it would last longer than any hand. plus it was high stakes and I belive only pros at the table so I doubt there was anything fishy going on with it

they don't show the hands to the crowd. they would have to be morons to do that. I mean someone would just yell it out. the tv screens for the WSOP and the WTP are just close ups for the crowd and plus it looks cool to have 10 flat screens hanging around for no apparent reason

Just a thought

Why would they need all of this stuff that ya'll are talking about?

Just imagine 1 million contestants (exaggerating a bit) joined a poker tournament and paid $20 for admission fee now that's $19 million that the tournament people got excluding the 1 million for the winner. The winner of the tournament if he/she wins gets $1 million dollars. At the moment the tournament givers just grossed $19 million from the admission fees alone now to get the last million.

Get Rod the Hop to be the dealer at the final table and let him make win the person who you hired to win for you. (I'm using this scenario because of the DVD of him dealing with them plastic cards on the Road....with Paul Wilson) Huh...

Question: Would you play in a tournament if someone hired you to play for $100,000.00? I would. Now after you win the the million dollars you give it to the guy who hired you and then he pays you your $100,000; then he pays the dealer his $100,000 now those who were down with the TOURNAMENT SCAM clears $19,800,000.00 and no videos were required. The T.V. viewers and poker audience are all happy and the scammers got their loot and gone. There's no evidence except for skill alone.

Just a thought....just a thought

Doc

P.S. If a nobody can think of something like this imagine what they're up to.

That's a cool idea Doc. That is set it up a comp so your guy wins.

Roughly tournaments work like this: If each of 100 players enters for $100 the prize pool is $10,000 and the 1st 2nd and 3rd get a share of the full $10,000. So lets say the winner gets $7000 the 2nd $2000 and 3rd $1000.
The casino make money, say $500 by charging each contestent say $5 each extra to enter, so really it cost the contestents $105 to enter not $100.
In this example you would need say ten tables at say 10 a table to seat all the players.
You could do it with as little as one table: With 100 have ten heats and a final heat I suppose. That way you only need to fix two heats. Making your guy the winner of his heat and then the winner at the final table.

Even though it doesn't affect the casino directly who wins the poker tounry. it your reputation get runied it can be over forever.

doc I doubt that the casino would take 19 out of the 20 million. usually they will have a buy in and then a fee out to the side. ex a 10,000 buy in would be 9,500 + 500

Sodman you're probably 100% correct I was just throwing that out there to make the readers think.

Doc

Of course!