Thousands of poker and casino cheats have plied their crafts since poker
rooms, casino table games and slot machines have been in existence. These
poker and casino cheats are the best in poker and casino cheating history,
and their lifetimes spent in poker rooms and casinos are fabulous stories.

TOMMY GLENN CARMICHAEL

Tommy Glenn Carmichael was born in July, 1950, and is considered the second best slot cheat of all time. An ingenious inventor, he conspired with an elite group of thieves to bilk millions from casinos. For almost 20 years Carmichael designed slot cheat devices that made it possible for him to steal from slot machines across the Caribbean and the United States.

Carmichael began his first “operation” in 1980 with the device, bilking a 5-cent machine at a casino near the Vegas strip, proudly strolling out with $35 in nickels. But Las Vegas had begun replacing the old machines with newer ones, forcing him to the smaller casinos around him. He was caught at one of them and was sentenced to 5 years in jail. Inside, Carmichael met Mike Balsamo. They agreed to find each other after their release, but when freedom came in 1987, Carmichael found the machines replaced. Bally and International Game Technology had begun rolling out a new high-tech slot and video poker machines, which used microprocessors and random number generator software. Undaunted, Carmichael purchased an IGT Fortune One video poker machine. He invented the monkey paw (slider) made from a guitar wire and spring steel, which he inserted into the machine through the payout chute to trip a switch. This caused the release of coins from the hopper, the bucket holding in the quarters.

By 1991 the slider was useless, owing to the computerization of the machines. Fooling a manufacturer into thinking he was a customer, Carmichael was shown the inside of the latest slot machine. From there, he learned how to beat it. He bought one and in a few days invented a new device – the light wand. The wand was built with a camera battery and a miniature bulb, used to shine into the machine and blind a sensor, causing the hopper to pay out coins. It was nearly undetectable, and Carmichael made a fortune selling it to other cheats, although that money-making idea may not have been a good one in the long-run.

On October 4, 1996, Carmichael was caught with the light wand while escaping from security. He was charged with possession and manufacture of a cheating device, which were later dropped. In 1998 he was arrested of similar offenses in Laughlin, Nevada. The following year in Atlantic City, his luck ran out. The authorities had tapped his phone and recorded conversations with other cheats using his device. Carmichael, with six others, was charged and pled guilty to running an illegal gambling enterprise. He lost his two homes and was ordered to stay out of casinos. He is now in Nevada’s Black Book, officially excluded from the state’s casinos. Carmichael is currently tinkering with a supposedly anti-cheating device, the Protector. He claims that his invention will stop all known cheating devices.

 JOE CLASSON

Joe Classon was born in New York City in1933. He and his older brother Henry were introduced to the gambling world in the 1940s by his uncle Stanley Classon, who was a degenerate gambler on New York’s Lower East Side. While Henry honed his poker skills into cheating skills, Joe was drafted and served his country in Korea. During breaks in combat Joe often played poker with the troops, and at the time he was an honest player. His first experience at cheating actually came as a victim, not a cheater. He and his fellow soldiers were regularly cheated out of their money by a crooked corporal dealing seconds. When they finally caught on, they gave the corporal a platoon pummeling that he was never likely to forget.

After the war, Joe fell in with his brother Henry, who had already become a full-time cardsharp and dice cheater. At first Joe was reluctant to get involved with cheating, having his heart set at becoming a stockbroker, but eventually he caved in and joined his brother on a casino cheating venture to Puerto Rico in 1954. There, Henry taught Joe the art of pastposting roulette wheels, which they did very successfully in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Las Vegas. Joe split ways with Henry and began his own casino cheating operation with Jerry Palmer and Duke Swenson. Joe Classon ran the world’s best blackjack, craps and roulette pastposting team from 1969 until his retirement in 1989.

JERRY PALMER

Jerry Palmer was born in 1948 and first became exposed to gambling in the Army, although, unlike Joe Classon, he did not witness any cheating incidents during his military service and had no prior knowledge of cheating at gambling before hearing about it from Duke Swenson, his best high school friend. Upon an honorable discharge from the US Army, Jerry hooked up with Duke in California. In order to finance it, Duke was part-timing with the Classon Pastposting Team. He recounted to his friend Jerry how he’d met Joe Classon through his girlfriend who was working as Classon’s secretary during the short time that Classon actually owned a legitimate financial consulting firm. Duke explained to Jerry how he, his girlfriend and Classon were beating Las Vegas’s and Reno’s casinos with the art of pastposting. He told Jerry that it was really unbelievable, but the casinos were falling for it like dominoes. Jerry, who’d had aspirations of forming a rock band, quickly shelved his guitar and joined up with Duke and Joe Classon.

In 1969 and 1970, the Classon Pastposting Team worked only roulette wheels and craps tables. Jerry sat down at a blackjack table and very calmly did the first blackjack move at the Aladdin in Las Vegas. He marched up and down the pits, hitting virtually every table with the same move and getting paid. Although these moves were done with two or three $100 black chips pastposted under $5 red chips, they soon upped the ante to $500 purple chips and then $1,000 yellow chips, sometimes using $25 green chips as the “cappers,” the chips on top. With incredible success, a payoff rate higher than 95%, the blackjack move became the main weapon in the Classon Team’s arsenal, and was pastposting’s #1 move for twenty-five years until the advent of the Savannah move in 1995. Unfortunately, Jerry did not get to see his blackjack invention being used with $5,000 chips. He died of a drug overdose in 1994, two years after he left the casino cheating business because of his drug addiction. He is credited as the sole inventor of the blackjack move, which has earned millions of dollars in the world’s casinos.