I DID NOT WRITE THIS ARTICLE. IT WAS SENT TO MY SITE TODAY BY CDC GAMING REPORTS. I FOUND IT INTERESTING AND THINK YOU MAY TOO. THE ORIGINAL STORY WAS WRITTEN BY BRENDAN KOERNER. IT MAY EXPLAIN WHY SOME CASINOS DO NOT ALLOW FILMING FOR YOUTUBE -- SEE WHAT MISSOURI AUTHORITIES FOUND A 37 YEAR OLD RUSSIAN NATIONAL NAMED MURAT BLIEVE WAS DOING WITH HIS CELL PHONE WHILE PURPORTEDLY PLAYING PELICAN PETE!


Because the original article is 8 pages long, this excerpt is just part of what Mr. Koerner is reporting in his article. If you attended G2E, you may find the article in your mailbox. If not you can read it all here: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russia..asinos-no-fix/ or on my Blogger site. The excerpt that follows begins about 2 paragraphs into the story…


….”Unlike most slots cheats, he didn’t appear to tinker with any of the machines he targeted, all of which were older models manufactured by Aristocrat Leisure of Australia. Instead he’d simply play, pushing the buttons on a game like Star Drifter or Pelican Pete while furtively holding his iPhone close to the screen
He’d walk away after a few minutes, then return a bit later to give the game a second chance. That’s when he’d get lucky. The man would parlay a $20 to $60 investment into as much as $1,300 before cashing out and moving on to another machine, where he’d start the cycle anew. Over the course of two days, his winnings tallied just over $21,000. The only odd thing about his behavior during his streaks was the way he’d hover his finger above the Spin button for long stretches before finally jabbing it in haste; typical slots players don’t pause between spins like that….”


….”two of Bliev’s accomplices from St. Louis had remained in the US and traveled west to the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, California. On July 14, 2014, agents from the California Department of Justice detained one of those operatives at Pechanga and confiscated four of his cell phones, as well as $6,000. (The man, a Russian national, was not indicted; his current whereabouts are unknown.)
The cell phones from Pechanga, combined with intelligence from investigations in Missouri and Europe, revealed key details. According to Willy Allison, a Las Vegas–based casino security consultant who has been tracking the Russian scam for years, the operatives use their phones to record about two dozen spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in St. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, the St. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.
“The normal reaction time for a human is about a quarter of a second, which is why they do that,” says Allison, who is also the founder of the annual World Game Protection Conference. The timed spins are not always successful, but they result in far more payouts than a machine normally awards: Individual scammers typically win more than $10,000 per day. (Allison notes that those operatives try to keep their winnings on each machine to less than $1,000, to avoid arousing suspicion.) A four-person team working multiple casinos can earn upwards of $250,000 in a single week…”


Read the whole story. Then ask yourself what the casinos are going to think about allowing YouTubers to film slot games after reading this.