Tullie scratched his right ear and frowned for a moment before answering.
“They’ll catch the casual cheats easy enough,” he said. “As to the pros, I don’t know. Your boys are good, but the grifters who can do you real damage have been polishing their routines for years. Some of ’em you can’t spot even if you know what you’re watching for.”
“Like a good sleight-of-hand magician,” Armstrong observed.
“Exactly,” Tullie said. “Some of these mechanics even show you what they’re going to do-that they’re going to `second-deal’ a card and when they’re going to do it-and you still can’t see it when they work it at normal speed. I can’t, and I’ve been training my eye for years.”
The commander frowned. “So how do you catch them?”
“Sometimes you don’t,” the instructor admitted. “If they don’t get greedy just hit once or twice and keep moving they can get away with it clean. About the only way to spot bad action is to watch the patterns. If one player starts beating the odds on a regular basis, or if one table starts losing more often than can be explained by a bad run, you’ll know you’ve got problems. Just remember not to get hung up on trying to figure out how they’re doing it. You can lose a lot of money waiting for proof. If something doesn’t ring true, shut the table down or run your big winner out of the casino. Of course, if you’ve got an experienced staff of dealers and pit bosses, they should be able to handle that without coaching from you.”
“If you say so,” Phule said, grimacing a little. “I just wish we didn’t have to rely so heavily on people outside our own crew.”