Playing Card Security System (PCSS) By John Connolly

Every casino I am invited to consult to or to conduct an internal audit at in the world or every casino I have worked in over the past 40 years in management, has a different system of accounting for the playing card stock. In a lot of cases it is a mess.

Daily, weekly or monthly playing card inventories are time consuming and sometimes left up to the honesty of one or two individuals who have or are given access to the card storage room.

Cards are moved by hand from table to table to pit desk and across the casino floor and sometimes out of sight or optimal range of camera coverage and then into the back of house.

Playing cards as we know are one of the most important assets of the casino environment but are too often neglected and made to be very vulnerable. We have heard very recently of a casino being fined $100k by gaming regulators for dealing with short decks. Another instance was when pre-shuffled playing cards were stored in a locked cupboard in a designated player area where cheats obtained access to the cupboard.

The incidents where playing card protection has been compromised are too numerous to mention here.

Playing cards are today being marked with invisible dye or video luminous paint which can only be viewed through special contact lenses or through a video monitor.

The protection of playing cards is vital to the profitability of the casino.

Hand muckers, card switchers, card markers, cold decks being introduced onto table games – these are just some of the methods used to cheat the casino out of important revenue. Remember money lost to cheating in a casino is seldom recoverable.

Cristian Curelea has invented and has a patent application for the playing card security system (PCSS) which would help to protect and standardize playing card usage throughout the whole process of card delivery, acceptance, storage, issuance and manual or machine distribution on the gaming table and including the destruction process. Each card and deck is scanned and given a unique coded numerical algorithm, this code is not visible to the naked eye. (see fig.1)

Playing cards which have presumably been sent to be destroyed cannot enter back into the system, any card which would leave the designated area would be alerted to and any cards which had left the house altogether cannot enter back into the system. The system has also a patent application pending in Macau, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

This PCSS has a patent application in the Unites States as illustrated in these images pictured and also with WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization).

Imagine a world where the same card protection system is throughout every casino in your group, giving credibility, security, efficiency and customer assuredness as well as staff usability.