MGM casinos

CBJN shows that pretty much all the MGM owned casino in LV have facial recognition and bj software. While I'm sure the facial software is not much of a problem as I haven't even gone to LV yet (and from what heard, is very "beatable"), is the bj software Mindplay? Or does it refer to something else?

I thought MindPlay had lost most of its users. Seems to me I read that Bally's, one of the early users, had dropped it back in 2007. I'd think that if Bally's dropped it, assuming it was a larger corporate decision, that all casinos in the chain would follow suit. As for face recognition....beating it may or may not be easy but keep in mind that much of the research and development is coming out of government work and not just in the USA. My point is that it's evolving and improving. There's a part of me that would like to get good enough that a casino would be that worried about me and there's a part that says if I get that good I hope I don't wind up on some database as a blocked player. Buying wigs, glasses, mustaches, etc., to hide my identity is probably a bridge too far personally.

While I'm not familiar with exact systems, my understanding is that both facial recognition and blackjack software are both too cumbersome to use on every single customer - that is, you need to arouse suspicion first, and then they'll target you with software. If you don't arouse suspicion, you're clear.

Mindplay does not exist in Vegas

An earlier reply had Bally Gaming confused with Bally casino. Bally and Alliance Gaming sold or leased Mindplay first to the Hilton (where the use of Mindplay resulted in blackjack suicide by the casino) and then Flamingo. Dismal failures that resulted in losses of players and incomes to casinos that used Mindplay in Vegas. You would immediately know a Mindplay table because after the shuffle the cards are placed in a recepticle that scans each card, so the machine knows the exact order of each card to be dealt during the shoe, making this a device which can be and was used (El Dorado in Reno) to cheat all the players. Anyway, since Mindplay was designed to reduce pit jobs and cut comps to players, it appears the pits were not too friendly to it and the players just refused to play. It could catch a novice counter (not really what it was designed to do) but it had no defense against counters who understood it and teams, so besides the average player refusing to play they also took a few big hits against advantage players.

MGM uses a computer program to evaluate players from the eye. It is not used for everyone but generally the pit will call the eye and then they would evaluate you. My understanding is that to have any chance of an accurate read on your ability it must go through a minimum of 3 shoes, hense another reason to keep sessions short. Common sense tells me that it is run more often on players playing bigger limits and those playing MGM's better DD games.
As a rule I keep my sessions on DD down to 45 minutes but no more than an hour.
On the shoe game, 1.5 hours or 30 minutes after my first spread to a max bet.

ihate17

I have no idea how facial recogonition works in real life, but on an episode of Vegas, they were able to id a guy walking thru the casino by matching him up to a ten year old drivers license photo.

The facial recognition software I've seen (not in a blackjack context, it was a friend's electrical engineering project) uses certain invariant characteristics of a person's face, such as the distance between their eyeballs or the height of the ears on someone's face, which makes age and disguises irrelevant.

The problem was, and I bet is still, that the software requires a fair amount of data to be accurate (multiple shots from multiple angles, the software demo I saw actually used a scanning device to make a 3D model of one's head) which makes it unfeasible to do as a routine measure to screen everyone coming into a casino, but feasible if you wanted to scan player #3 on table 302-A and player #3 stuck around for half an hour so you could take shots from multiple cameras as he looked around nervously.

I doubt that facial recognition software will ever be a major deterrent to card counting, but may find application in ID'ing someone in custody who has been in custody before. In my opinion, RFID-embedded chips will be a much more potent weapon against the card counter.

My bad, it was Bally not Bally's that stop supporting MindPlay. I stand corrected.

I bet you think Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason could really shoot pool, too!

Don't know about Paul Newman but Jackie Gleason was a pool hustler as a kid and did do his own shots in The Hustler.

Indeed you are right! Paul Newman knew nothing about shooting pool, however.

Actually I think face recognition technology is further along than we'd like to think. One of the leading companies is L-1 Indentity Solutions with their FaceIt software and system. (Dead link: http://www.identix.com/)

I have a feeling that was for TV. Driver's license photos are usually so poor and low resolution, it's hard to imagine it would work.

I read an article online recently that was an interview with the head of security at Foxwoods. He said they scan everyone as they walk in the door!