Sometime in the distant future, maybe the year 3225 or so, when historians are studying ancient Western society (or what will be ancient Western society by the time), they will marvel at one particular human enterprise perhaps more than any other: the epic, money-sucking efficiency of casinos.
The way casinos have turned the act of separating us from our money into such a marvel of precision and ingenuity is every bit as awe-inspiring as the Egyptian pyramids.
“I could give you a guaranteed method to go into a casino and come out with a small fortune: go in there with a large one,” laughs Sal Piacente, a former casino dealer and security staffer who now runs UniverSal Game Protection Development, a company that trains casino staff members. He and other casino insiders know that casinos exist to not only take our money, but to keep as much of theirs as possible — both by offering games that are tilted in the house’s favor and by having air-tight security measures designed to catch thieves and cheaters.
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So Yahoo Travel talked to Sal and other casino experts with decades of experience in the industry to get some dirty little secrets of casinos. Not only are these secrets juicy — knowing them might help you keep a little bit more of your money during your next casino trip. But probably just a little bit.
1. Some games are way more of a ripoff than others — even by casino standards.
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It’s common knowledge that just about every game you’ll find in a casino is tilted in the house’s favor. But Sal says some games are worse than others. “A lot of these games are designed so that the player can’t win,” says Sal. “That’s why the players have to realize they need to stay away from certain games.”
The top of his list: so-called 'carnival games,” which are table games other than the traditional casino fare such as blackjack, craps, and baccarat. “Three-card poker, Let it Ride, Caribbean Stud — all these games have high house advantages where the casino has a strong edge,” Sal says. “People like these games because of the bigger payouts: They get paid 9-to-1, 8-to-1, 250-to-1. But you’re going to lose a lot more than you’re going to win in those games.”
Sal has particular disdain for Double Exposure Blackjack, which he considers a particular ripoff, thanks to strict rules on when you can double down and the fact that if you tie with the dealer without a blackjack, the dealer wins. “That’s over a 9 percent house advantage,” Sal says. “The dealer should be wearing a [robber’s] mask when he deals that game!”
2. Some games are “good” games — or at least better.
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“There are games tourists can play that they have better chances at,” says Derk Boss, a licensed Nevada private investigator and casino security surveillance expert. For one, he points to traditional blackjack. “You can reduce the house advantages by being a skilled player or studying the game,” he says. He also likes video poker. “That’s a game where there are strategies you can study,” he says. “It doesn’t guarantee you’re going to win, but it gives you a much better chance. It’s going to reduce the house advantage and put things a little bit more in your favor.”
3. Everything you see is designed to keep you in the casino.
A couple of gamblers drinking a glass of champagne (iStock)
Anyone who’s spent time in a casino knows they are designed to make sure you’ll lose track of the time (and of the money you’re probably losing). That means no windows and no clocks. “Two in the morning is the exact same thing as two in the afternoon,” says Sal. Some casinos have gone to desperate, and sexy, measures to keep you there and gambling. “They have stripper poles, they have party pits,” Sal says. “You go to Vegas right now, it looks like a gentlemen’s club. You see girls dancing on the poles. It keeps the guys at the table.”
And don’t be fooled by the “free” food and drink offers you might get. Those have the same purpose. “I love when people say, ‘Sal, they gave me a $20 buffet for free!’” Sal says, laughing. “You sat at a blackjack table, you lost $200 and they gave you a $20 buffet.” That’s what you all a good return on investment.
4. Security is probably watching you… for your entire stay.
Security camera (iStock)
If you’re in a casino, you can assume you’re being watched. “Casinos are very well-covered with surveillance cameras,” says Derk. “Once someone arrives at our property, if we needed to put together their movements over their entire stay, we could easily do so. We would be able to track their movements on the property just about wherever they went — except for like the bathroom and into their hotel room.”
Casinos generally use surveillance to look out for criminals who prey on tourists and the cheaters. And, yes, Derk says they can actually zoom in on your cards if they wanted to. So somewhere in the casino, in a locked, high-tech room, a security guard you’ll never see might be telling you to “hit.”
5. And if you win big, they’re definitely watching you.
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You can bet on it: if you hit a big jackpot, or get on a major hot streak, security has its eyes on you. “When someone is winning a lot of money, they’re always going to get checked by us,” Derk says. “They’re not going to know it, of course. Say a guy wins $100,000 on a blackjack game. I just want to make sure that it’s legal, that he didn’t cheat, that he didn’t count cards or something like that.”
Derk says in that instance, security will do a player evaluation: They will review his/her play on video for signs of cheating or card counting. Then they’ll check out the player. “We have a database of bad guys that are out there and what kind of scams they pull, so we’re gonna check for that,” Derk says.
Slot winners get the same scrutiny. “Say someone wins $500,000 on a slot machine jackpot,” says Derk. “We’re going to review it but we’re just going to make sure everything’s okay — that they didn’t open the machine or do something to it.”
But don’t worry: Security isn’t out to harass winners. “As long as it’s legitimate, we’re okay and we move on,” Derk says. “We want people to win money or else they won’t play.”
6. If you’re cheating, security can tell — they know all the signs.
Gambling and cheating. Ace of hearts from the sleeve (iStock)
Poker players know all about “tells,” behaviors that give away a certain action or intention. Card counters and cheaters have tells, too, and security is on the lookout for all of them. “We look for cheating tells,” says Derk. “Those are just behaviors that, when you’re trained to spot them, they stand out a little bit.” While Derk didn’t want to give away too many of these tells, he did spill a few of them:
--Two guys sitting close together — Derk says two guys playing blackjack at the same table rarely sit close together, especially when there are empty seats. “Most guys just don’t sit like that,” he says. “Women will, most guys will not.” Derk says when you do see that, it’s a potential sign that the pair may be secretly switching cards. “They’re trying to make one strong hand — which, believe me, happens,” he says. “They sit close together and have their arms folded after they’re handed their cards. We suspect that [indicates] they’re switching cards, so that’ll get our attention.”
--Strange or extreme money management — Say someone is betting $100 for three or four hands, then from out of nowhere, bets $10,000. “That to us is an indicator that maybe they’re receiving information,” says Derk. “Maybe they can see the hole card, maybe they’re card counting, maybe they’re tracking a clump of cards. They’re waiting for a certain condition to arrive in the game, so they’re going to play minimally until that change happens and once that happens they’ll hit.” Derk says that’s a major red flag.
--“Rubber-necking” — A dead giveaway of a slot machine saboteur. “If somebody is cheating a slot machine, invariably, they’ll sit at it and they don’t really have to look at the machine because they know what they’re going to cause it to do,” says Derk. “So they’re usually looking around, from one side to the other, looking for security. That’s what we call 'rubber-necking.’ That’s a big tell for us because [normal] slot players don’t do that — they play their machine and they don’t want to be bothered. So if you look around like that, that’s going to get out attention and we’ll stop to figure out why.
7. One place the casino probably isn’t watching you too closely: the poker rooms.
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“Believe it or not, we don’t spend a whole lot of time on poker at all,” says Derk. For one, since poker players play against each other, and not the house, the casino doesn’t have much money at stake. The poker players themselves, do, however, and that’s the second reason why casino security staffers don’t need to monitor poker rooms that closely.
“The players really police themselves,” Derk says. “When you get people who play poker all the time, they know when someone is screwing off or trying to take advantage of something and they’ll say something. They pay attention to it better than anybody.”
8. Dealers would rather you bet your tips for them.
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Online Casino That Don't Report To Others Get
It’s a basic bit of casino etiquette, but tip your dealers. “Dealers make minimum wage or in some places might make a little bit more than minimum wage,” says Sal. “A dealer’s salary is all tips.”
Sal’s wife and business partner, Dee — a former casino dealer herself — agrees. But she says that despite common casino policy, most dealers would prefer that, instead of handing them a chip or two as a tip, players just put the tip up as a bet. “If a player asks you if you want to bet it or if you just want to take the tip, you’re supposed to just take the tip,” Dee says. “But most of us want to bet it because you have chance of doubling your money.”
9. The dealers feel bad for you.
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When someone loses their shirt, you can expect some silent pity, but not much else. “I can feel sorry for the guy, but I can’t say, 'Sir, you’ve lost enough, you’d better walk away,’” Sal says. “It’s not my job. There’s nothing I can do.”
Still, Sal admits dealers do find themselves following the players’ success, or lack thereof. “If a guy’s tipping, you don’t want him to lose,” he says. “If a guy’s not tipping, you’re rooting for him to lose!”
10. Yes, dealers sometimes steal.
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What’s the most common case of casino malfeasance Sal has dealt with? Hint: It’s not 11 tech-savvy scammers led by George Clooney. “This is not as Hollywood as you would think, but honestly, it’s dealers just reaching in, grabbing a chip and shoving it in their pocket,” Sal says. “Nothing sophisticated.” That’s the reason behind all those strange rituals you may see dealers do. “Everything the dealers do was put in place for a reason,” Sal says. For example, when a dealer leaves a table, they have to “clear their hands.” “They clap their hands and turn their hands palm up and palm down for the camera to show, 'I’m not stealing nothing,’” says Sal.
If a dealer is stealing, Sal says there are many different ways security will handle it, depending on where the casino is. “In Vegas, they’ll arrest you right at a table,” he says. “They’ll actually handcuff and walk you right out so everybody gets to see you. They call it 'The Walk of Shame.’ Some places, they don’t want the negative publicity. They’d rather do it off the game. So maybe they’ll call you to the manager’s office and arrest you there.”
Sure, it’s no secret that in a casino, the game is rigged, numerically, at least. “The longer you’re there, the more the numbers are going to take over and the casino’s going to make money,” says Dee. “Let’s be realistic; they’re in it to make money.” But even though we know the score, that doesn’t take away from how much fun casinos are. “People come there to have a good time,” says Dee. “So if you’re having a good time along the way and you win a few bucks or you lose a few bucks, great.”
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-->Sharing is a good way to give a few people access to your dashboards and reports. Power BI also offers several other ways to collaborate and distribute dashboards and reports.
With sharing, whether you share content inside or outside your organization, you need a Power BI Pro license. Your recipients also need Power BI Pro licenses, unless the content is in a Premium capacity.
You can share dashboards and reports from most places in the Power BI service: Favorites, Recent, My Workspace, and Shared with me, if the owner allows it. You can share from other workspaces, too, if you have the Admin, Member, or Contributor role in the workspace.
When you share a dashboard or report, the people you share it with can view it and interact with it, but can't edit it. They see the same data that you see in the dashboard or report, unless row-level security (RLS) is applied. The coworkers you share with can also share with their coworkers, if you allow them to. The people outside your organization can view and interact with the dashboard or report, but can't share it.
You can't share directly from Power BI Desktop. You publish reports from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI service. However, you can share a dashboard from the Power BI mobile apps.
Video: Share a dashboard
Watch Amanda share the dashboard with colleagues inside and outside Amanda's company. Then follow the step-by-step instructions below the video to try it out yourself.
Share a dashboard or report
In a list of dashboards or reports, or in an open dashboard or report, select Share .
In the top box, enter the full email addresses for individuals, distribution groups, or security groups. You can't share with dynamic distribution lists.
You can share with people whose addresses are outside your organization, but you'll see a warning. Read more about sharing outside your organization in this article.
Note
The input box supports, at most, 100 separate users or groups. See Share with more than 100 users in this article for ways to share with more people.
Add a message if you want. It's optional.
To let your coworkers share your content with others, check Allow recipients to share your dashboard (or report).
Allowing others to share is called resharing. If you let them, they can reshare from the Power BI service and the mobile apps, or forward the email invitation to others in your organization. The invitation expires after one month. People outside your organization can't reshare. As the owner of the content, you can turn off resharing, or revoke resharing on an individual basis. See Stop or change sharing in this article.
If you select Allow users to build new content using the underlying datasets, they can create their own reports in other workspaces based on the dataset for this dashboard. Read more about creating reports based on datasets from different workspaces.
Select Share.
Power BI sends an email invitation to the individuals, but not to groups, with a link to the shared content. You see a Success notification.
When recipients in your organization click the link, Power BI adds the dashboard or report to their Shared with me list page. They can select your name to see all the content you've shared with them.
When recipients outside your organization click the link, they see the dashboard or report, but not in the usual Power BI portal. Read more about sharing with people outside your organization in this article.
See who has access to a dashboard or report
Sometimes you need to see the people you've shared with, and see who they've shared it with.
In the list of dashboards and reports, or in the dashboard or report itself, select Share .
In the Share dashboard or Share report dialog box, select Access.
People outside your organization are listed as Guest.
In this view, you can stop or change sharing permissions in this article.
Share a dashboard or report outside your organization
When you share with people outside your organization, they receive an email with a link to the shared dashboard or report. They must sign in to Power BI to see what you shared. If they don't have a Power BI Pro license, they can sign up for a license when they click the link.
After they sign in, they see the shared dashboard or report in its own browser window, not in the usual Power BI portal. To access this dashboard or report later, they must bookmark the link.
They can't edit any content in this dashboard or report. They can interact with the charts and change filters or slicers, but can't save their changes.
Only your direct recipients see the shared dashboard or report. For example, if you sent the email to Vicki@contoso.com, only Vicki sees the dashboard. No one else can see the dashboard, even if Vicki forwards them the link. Vicki must use the same email address to access it; if Vicki signs in with any other email address, Vicki won't have access to the dashboard.
People outside your organization don't see any data at all if role- or row-level security is implemented on on-premises Analysis Services tabular models.
If you send a link from a Power BI mobile app to people outside your organization, clicking the link opens the dashboard in a browser, not in the Power BI mobile app.
Allow external users to edit content
Your Power BI admin can allow external guest users to edit and manage content in your organization. If so, your external users won't have that consumption-only experience. They can edit and manage content within your organization. Learn more about distributing Power BI content to external guest users with Azure AD B2B.
Stop or change sharing
Only the dashboard or report owner can turn resharing on and off.
If you haven't sent the sharing invitation yet
- Clear the Allow recipients to share your dashboard (or report) check box at the bottom of the invitation before you send it.
If you've already shared the dashboard or report
In the list of dashboards and reports, or in the dashboard or report itself, select Share .
In the Share dashboard or Share report dialog box, select Access.
Select the ellipsis (...) next to Read and reshare and select:
- Read to keep that person from sharing with anyone else.
- Remove access to keep that person from seeing the shared content at all.
In the Remove access dialog box, decide if you also want to remove access to related content, such as reports and datasets. If you remove items with a warning icon , it's best to also remove related content. Otherwise, it won't display properly.
Limitations and considerations
Things to keep in mind about sharing dashboards and reports:
- In general, you and your colleagues see the same data in the dashboard or report. Thus, if you have permissions to see more data than they do, they see all your data in the dashboard or report. However, if row-level security (RLS) is applied to the dataset underlying a dashboard or report, then each person's credentials determine which data they can access.
- Everyone you share your dashboard with can see it and interact with the related reports in Reading view. In general, they can't create reports or save changes to existing reports. However, if you select Allow users to build new content using the underlying datasets, they can create their own reports in other workspaces based on the dataset for this dashboard or report.
- Although no one can see or download the dataset, they can access the dataset directly by using the Analyze in Excel feature. An admin can restrict the ability to use Analyze in Excel for everyone in a group. However, the restriction is for everyone in that group and for every workspace the group belongs to.
- Everyone can manually refresh the data.
- If you use Office 365 for email, you can share with members of a distribution group by entering the email address associated with the distribution group.
- Coworkers who share your email domain, and coworkers whose domain is different but registered within the same tenant, can share the dashboard with others. For example, say the domains contoso.com and contoso2.com are registered in the same tenant and your email address is konrads@contoso.com. Both ravali@contoso.com and gustav@contoso2.com can share your dashboard, as long as you give them permission to share.
- If your coworkers already have access to a specific dashboard or report, you can send a direct link by copying the URL when you're on the dashboard or report. For example:
https://powerbi.com/dashboards/g12466b5-a452-4e55-8634-xxxxxxxxxxxx. - Likewise, if your coworkers already have access to a specific dashboard, you can send a direct link to the underlying report.
Share with more than 100 separate users
At most, you can share with 100 users or groups in a single share action. However, you can give more than 500 users access to an item. Here are some suggestions:
- Share multiple times by specifying the users individually.
- Share with a user group that contains all the users.
- Create the report or dashboard in a workspace, then create an app from the workspace. You can share the app with many more people. Read more about publishing apps in Power BI.
Troubleshoot sharing
My dashboard recipients see a lock icon in a tile or a 'Permission required' message
The people you share with may see a locked tile in a dashboard, or a 'Permission required' message when they try to view a report.
If so, you need to grant them permission to the underlying dataset.
Go to the Datasets tab in your content list.
Select the ellipsis (...) next to the dataset, then select Manage permissions.
Select Add user.
Enter the full email addresses for individuals, distribution groups, or security groups. You can't share with dynamic distribution lists.
Select Add.
I can't share a dashboard or report
To share a dashboard or report, you need permission to reshare the underlying content; that is, any related reports and datasets. If you see a message saying you can't share, ask the report author to give you reshare permission for those reports and datasets.
Next steps
- Questions? Try the Power BI Community