Card Counters Say Casinos Stack the Deck to Exclude Them

LAS VEGAS — Moments after Kevin Lewis sat down last summer at a high stakes blackjack table inside an Atlantic City casino, the pit boss got the word: Lewis was a card counter.

Soon the "bad news guys" arrived, and Lewis was done playing.

"It was obvious that somewhere and somehow I had been made," said Lewis, 30, once part of a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who won millions of dollars at blackjack by keeping track of the aces and face cards played. The practice is legal and it improves players' odds, which is why casinos dislike it.

How security pegged Lewis so quickly was no mystery. The casino, like others throughout the world, relies on an outside detective agency that supplies an extensive list of suspected cheats and highly skilled gamblers, called advantage players.

The Griffin GOLD's five volumes contain thousands of names and mug shots and can be accessed online. It uses a sophisticated facial recognition program and sends out alerts that notify casinos when a swindler or card counter is on the prowl.

The Griffin's efficacy is legendary.

"I always feared it," said Lewis, who uses a pseudonym to hide his identity because he still plays blackjack.

But the oft-praised and much-dreaded Griffin is not without its critics, who claim that the secretive detective agency is prone to errors and smears people without proof.

"In my opinion, it is an incredible compilation ... peppered with mistakes and falsehoods based on some of the grossest hearsay," said lawyer Bob Nersesian of Las Vegas.

Two of Nersesian's clients are suing Griffin Investigations after they were arrested on suspicion of cheating based on information that came from the Las Vegas company's security database.

Griffin Investigations was incorporated in 1967 by Beverly S. Griffin and her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Robert R. Griffin, state records show.

In the beginning, the agency battled small-time casino crooks and relied on shoe-leather detective work, not high-tech gadgets to expose people. Griffin investigators collected intelligence on gamblers who tossed loaded dice, rigged slot machines and marked playing cards. These were cheaters who broke the law.

Card counters, although unwelcome in casinos, operate within the law. They don't influence the game's natural outcome; they just calculate the probability of cards yet to be played.