Chan Poker

It’s finally happened. The iPhone has made its way into every of facet of our lives, why should gambling be any different? Yes, it’s happened, the iPhone is now a cheating device in the casino.com world. You can purchase the Blackjack Card Counter application right over the phone, and download it at Apple’s iTunes online store for a steal at $1.99…emphasis on steal, of course.

So what does it do? The program sets values to high and low cards (sounds like the “21″ scheme) and goes into “silent” or “vibrate” mode, where the phone vibrates when the unplayed cards have a favorable (high) ratio of high-value cards. So, of course, anything favorable to the players would have to be unfavorable to the casinos, and thus a drag on their final take at the end of the day.

Sounds super cool, right? But it’s just another in a long line of schemes and high-tech plots to rip off the casino, whether it be blackjack, magnets on slots.com machine or bending cards in poker.

One of the more famous methods of shady blackjack dates back about 30 years, where these folk would actually wear tiny computers on them that tracked card values through slight movements of a person’s digits…fingers and/or toes. Hidden in doctored shoes or inside the thigh, they turned your typical Joe six-pack player in an expert with perfect memory, imagine that.

Of course, you can still use your brain in Nevada to count cards. That’s legal. But everything else will get you a few broken bones, a lifetime casino ban, and possibly up to six years sharing a bunk bed at Nevada State Correctional Institution.

Think a chance at a few hundred extra bucks is worth an extended stay in prison and a prime time special on MSNBC’s Lockup? As much as I love the show, I’ll stick to losing all my money like a man, and so should you.

But it’s unreasonable to think everyone walking through to play some cards with a new touch-screen phone is a potential cheater, but that’s just what the casinos have resorted to.

Some say that’s absurd, and that casinos should do just the opposite, claiming they’d take in more but allowing the opportunity for everyone to count.

Huh?

Yeah, the logic is that people are more or less retards, and most players aren’t nearly as smart as they believe. But when you bring flawless computers into the mix, that wonderful theory just goes down the drain, and the reality of a hard line against cheaters sets in again.

And if you have a phone, it’s guilty until proven innocent.