Cheating Vegas is a documentary television series previously airing on Destination America. The series is about the illegal industry of cheating in casinos, [1] featuring interviews with several infamous cheaters and informative information, topped off with real security camera footage of cheaters in the act. The show also includes talks from Nevada Gaming Control Board members about the different cheaters involved. [2] The show debuted in 2012, [3] and is currently not airing any new episodes.
The show is a compilation of security camera footage, phone calls to prisoners known to cheat in Vegas, and talks with Nevada Gaming members. As casino employees have noticed, if there is money involved, there are unscrupulous people out there willing to grab it. Real security camera footage probably unseen anywhere else allows viewers to have a look at the daily cheaters' main job. Many forms of cheating are included, such as point shaving, rigging slot machines, and manipulating the game of craps. [4]
Not addressed is the matter of casinos cheating patrons, although the Nevada Gaming Control Board certainly has such cases in its files.
| Episode number | Title | Run time | Air Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Insiders" | 44 minutes | August 19, 2012 | |
Casino employees and other "insiders" commit gaming crimes. | ||||
| 2 | "Game Changers" | 44 minutes | August 26, 2012 | |
Casino security must stay one step ahead of the "game changers," cheats who are constantly creating new scams. | ||||
| 3 | "Hall of Fame" | 44 minutes | September 3, 2012 | |
The most brazen cheaters in Vegas including Dennis Nikrasch, an infamous slot cheater who reigned for 22 years. | ||||
"It's a riveting look at the world of high-stakes deception and the cat-and-mouse game between the casinos and those who would fleece them. It's also a series that provides cautionary tale after cautionary tale for anyone out there who might be thinking of taking those fantasies of beating Vegas at its own game out for a spin in the real world." wrote Channel Guide. [5]
A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shops, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, concerts, and sports.
A slot machine, fruit machine, poker machine or pokies is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers.
Las Vegas is an American comedy-drama television series created by Gary Scott Thompson. It was broadcast by NBC from September 22, 2003, to February 15, 2008, airing for five seasons. It focuses on a team of people working at the Montecito, a fictional hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The employees deal with various issues that arise within the working environment, ranging from casino security to restaurant management and valet parking. Las Vegas starred James Caan, Josh Duhamel, Nikki Cox, James Lesure, Vanessa Marcil, Molly Sims, Marsha Thomason, and eventually Tom Selleck. The series originally centered on Ed Deline (Caan), a strict ex-CIA officer who serves as the president of operations for the Montecito. Former Marine Counterintelligence/HUMINT (CI/HUMINT) officer, Danny McCoy (Duhamel), who is Ed's protégé, later becomes the Montecito's new president.
Circus Circus Las Vegas is a hotel and casino located on the northern Las Vegas Strip in Winchester, Nevada. It is owned and operated by Phil Ruffin. Circus Circus includes the largest permanent circus in the world. It features circus and trapeze acts, as well as carnival games, at its Carnival Midway. The resort also includes the Adventuredome, an indoor amusement park.
Bally Technologies, Inc. is an American manufacturer of slot machines and other gambling technology based in Enterprise, Nevada. It is owned by Light & Wonder.
The Casino is an American reality television series broadcast on the Fox network in 2004 which followed two dot-com millionaires, Thomas Breitling and Tim Poster, as they manage the Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino, located in downtown Las Vegas instead of the more popular Las Vegas Strip.
Cheating in casinos refers to actions by the player or the house which are prohibited by regional gambling control authorities. This may involve using suspect apparatus, interfering with apparatus, chip fraud or misrepresenting games. The formally prescribed sanctions for cheating depend on the circumstances and gravity of the cheating and the jurisdiction in which the casino operates. In Nevada, for a player to cheat in a casino is a felony under state law. In most other jurisdictions, specific statutes do not exist, and alleged instances of cheating are resolved by the gambling authority who may have more or less authority to enforce its verdict.
Ronald Dale Harris is a computer programmer who worked for the Nevada Gaming Control Board in the early 1990s and was responsible for finding flaws and gaffes in software that runs computerized casino games. Harris took advantage of his expertise, reputation and access to source code to illegally modify certain slot machines to pay out large sums of money when a specific sequence and number of coins were inserted. From 1993 to 1995, Harris and an accomplice stole thousands of dollars from Las Vegas casinos, accomplishing one of the most successful and undetected scams in casino history.
Breaking Vegas is an American television series that premiered on the History Channel in 2004. The series covers the great lengths people have gone to make money, sometimes illegally, from casinos.
American Casino is an American reality television series which tracks the daily events of the managers and employees of the Green Valley Ranch Casino resort in Henderson, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas. The show began airing on the Discovery Channel on June 4, 2004, but was moved to the Travel Channel in June 2005. In other countries including Europe, the show continued to air on Discovery.
Vegas Vacation is a 1997 American comedy film directed by Stephen Kessler in his feature directorial debut. It is the fourth installment in National Lampoon’s Vacation film series, and was written by Elisa Bell, based on a story by Bell and Bob Ducsay. The film stars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid, Wayne Newton, Ethan Embry, and Wallace Shawn. It tells the story of Clark Griswold taking his family to Las Vegas to renew his vows to Ellen as the series' usual hilarity occurs. The film opened at #4 at the box office and grossed over $36.4 million domestically. Vegas Vacation is the first theatrical Vacation film not to carry the National Lampoon label or a screenwriting credit from John Hughes. Also, this is the final film released before National Lampoon magazine folded. This was also the last Vacation movie to be released until New Line Cinema, a production company of Warner Bros, produced a reboot that was released 18 years later in 2015.
Fremont Street is a street in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada that is the second most famous street in the Las Vegas Valley – and Nevada – besides the Las Vegas Strip. Named in honor of explorer and politician, and coordinator of the Sacramento River massacre John C. Frémont and located in the heart of the Downtown casino corridor, Fremont Street is today, or was, the address for many famous casinos such as Binion's Horseshoe, Eldorado Club, Fremont Hotel and Casino, Golden Gate Hotel and Casino, Golden Nugget, Four Queens, The Mint, and the Pioneer Club.
Binion's Gambling Hall & Hotel, formerly Binion's Horseshoe, is a casino on Fremont Street along the Fremont Street Experience pedestrian mall in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. It is owned by TLC Casino Enterprises. The casino is named for its founder, Benny Binion, whose family ran it from its founding in 1951 until 2004. The hotel, which had 366 rooms, closed in 2009. TLC reopened 81 of the rooms as a boutique hotel called Hotel Apache in July 2019.
Michael Shackleford, also known as "The Wizard of Odds", is an American mathematician and an actuary. He is best known for his professional analysis of the mathematics of the casino games. He is also an adjunct professor of actuarial science and mathematics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He became interested in the mathematics of gambling at a young age after reading John Scarne's Guide to Casino Gambling.
John Grochowski is a gambling columnist and author. His weekly newspaper column began at the Chicago Sun-Times and is now syndicated nationally. In 1994, the monthly Las Vegas Advisor reported that Grochowski was the first casino gambling columnist at a major U.S. newspaper. In 2012, he also began a weekly Sun-Times column on baseball sabermetrics, the first of its kind in a daily newspaper.
La Bayou was a casino located on the Fremont Street Experience in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada.
Jerry's Nugget is a locals casino in North Las Vegas, Nevada. It was opened in 1964, by Jerry Lodge and his brother-in-law Jerry Stamis, and continues to be owned and operated by members of the Stamis family. In 1968, Jerry's Nugget moved down the street to its present location: a larger building which previously operated as the Bonanza Club from 1956 to 1967. Jerry's Nugget underwent further expansions in 1983 and 1996. The casino includes 32,511 sq ft (3,020.4 m2) of gaming space.
Casino security refers to the measures that are taken at casinos to protect the establishment's money, property and patrons. The security protects the casino and its customers from violent crime, theft, and other inappropriate behavior.
Caesars Palace 2000 is a gambling simulation video game developed by Runecraft and published by Interplay Entertainment. It was released in North America and Europe in 2000 for the PlayStation, Dreamcast and Microsoft Windows' PCs. It is named after the famous Caesars Palace luxury hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mike Goodman was an American professional gambler, a pit boss for a Las Vegas casino, and an author of books that gave advice on gambling and told stories of gamblers and their escapades. He is most known for his 1963 book How to Win: At Cards, Dice, Races, Roulette, which went through many printings and sold over a million copies.