Aria's eye in the sky

This article provides an interesting description of Aria's video surveillance. Most of it I was aware of, but the article makes a few points that I find surprising:

1) Not all of Aria's video cameras are digital, they still use analogue cameras for some tasks. (Even if the cameras themselves are analogue, I'm assuming the footage is digitized and stored on a harddrive because I can't imagine a fancy joint like Aria amassing an enormous collection of VHS tapes.)

2) Facial recognition software is unreliable and basically useless. No word on whether they're using software to identify patrons based on their gait (style of walk.)

3) But for me the most surprising claim in the article is this: "Ultimately, catching cheaters is a small part of what casino surveillance teams do. There simply aren’t that many cheats out there, compared to the number of purse-snatchers and pickpockets." Pickpockets? Really? Aria has 1,100 cameras. If I was a pickpocket, I would not be working in a building with 1,100 security cameras. A card cheat needs to work where the table games are, so they are forced to sit at a table with 5 cameras pointed at it. But a Vegas pickpocket could easily work the sidewalk in front of Bellagio's fountains or Mirage's volcano. The sidewalks on the Strip probably still have security cameras, but there are fewer of them dispersed farther apart and not many security guards around. Escaping quickly out of Aria with a stolen purse would be a nightmare compared with running down the sidewalk. And surely the sidewalks have just as many drunk tourists.

OK, so this post may be off-topic, but it is based on the image shown in the original post.

I am not a roulette player, but my eye was caught by the roulette (I think) table layouts shown on the third fully-visible monitor from the left in both the top and bottom rows. What is that elongated horseshoe (?) pattern, on the left of the layout on the bottom monitor and the right of the layout on the top monitor?

Ever notice how there's never a cocktail waitress around when you want one? When you finally say something, the dealer says "She was just here..."

That kind of focused attention to the point of not noticing anything else is a paradise for pick-pockets.

People on the streets are more aware of their surroundings.

Doc:
The Horseshoe thing is called the "Racetrack". The numbers are laid out in the same sequence as on the wheel, making it easy to bet on neighbors and sections.

What DJ said. As well as the fact that people tend to give themselves a false sense of security as soon as they enter a casino. Knowing that all those cameras are in place, as well as security personnel allows them to become a bit more lax in their own personal protection. Kind of like how people who live in gated communities make some assumptions that they are safer and/or their homes are safer, when statistics have shown that gated communities have similar crime rates as non-gated communities. Primarily because of the fact that people take their safety for granted. Combine that with the mass of crowded people in a casino, and it's a pickpocket's wet dream.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

The Horseshoe thing is called the "Racetrack".

Thanks. I said I am not a roulette player, and perhaps I proved it. I even checked the WoO site before posting, looking at the layouts there including the Bovada game. I suspect I have never seen a roulette layout with a Racetrack on the layout before. To me, those bets sound as rational as any other roulette bets.

The "track" bets can make it convenient for a player to call a bet that covers a certain section of the wheel. The player doesn't place their own chips on this track but instead will place a stack of chips (no less than 5 and divisible by an odd number) beside the track and call the bet. For example, if you place 7 chips beside the track and call "19 and neighbors" you will get 1 chip on the 19 and 1 chip each on the 3 numbers to the left and to the right of the 19. Or you could place 21 chips and call "19 and neighbors, 3 high" and get the same track bet but each number will have 3 chips instead of 1. This is why the number of chips must be no less than 5 and must also be divisible by an odd number - the dealer must place the same number of chips on either side of the number called (minimum of 2 chips on either side), even if it is in multiples of 2 or more.

That is the "racetrack" for a croupier to keep track of "announced bets" (all that European stuff about Tiers and Neighbors and Orphans ... now extremely popular). A player calls out a bet and produces the chips for it , but does not position them since it would take forever and the croupier merely notes a shorthand version of the bet on the racetrack. IF the bet wins, then the croupier will pay out all those happy neighbors and orphans and the like.

ALL places have legacy camera systems of some sort. Not all cameras can zoom pan and tilt since some are so vital you want constant focus anyway.

ALL surveillance departments are primarily tasked to watch for cheating employees and employees in collusion with players. Its part of looking for "the unusual" that surveillance departments will also see some "rubbernecker" look all around him and then lunge at a slot player's hand bag. The purse snatcher is simply following Willie Sutton's old adage "I rob banks because that's where the money is". A distracted slot player is a target. Sure a purse snatch on the sidewalk is a possibility but the "ore" is better inside the casino and the purse owners are less alert inside the casino. Think of that gambler on the East Coast who was a second year medical student and also a sex addict. He was playing several black chips at a time in Connecticut but still couldn't keep his eyes on the cards instead of a woman's breasts. He also was foolhardy enough to think that "a working woman" would give up her earnings somewhat readily. He was luring prostitutes to hotels with several expensive video surveillance systems because outcalls to hotels is an easy way to get hookers. Its sort of a Willie Sutton update: "because that's where the hookers are". The casino wants patrons to think its a crime free atmosphere so all surveillance and security work is done as quietly as possible but is still a requirement that it be done because a casino is where drunks, money, alcohol and women are located. So if you want to run a profitable casino, you had better be running an alert security department or you will soon be running an empty casino. Thieves want to mine "high grade ore". Sure things happen in the shadowy recesses of distant locations but that is low grade ore, the high grade ore is the crowded and brightly lit areas of the casino and the bars. Gaming Regulations mandate a certain level of surveillance ... and its simply a "given" that if you want to protect "Vegas" you have to make sure that each licensee does what it can afford to do to protect their own customers. The Gaming Board wants to protect the industry and that is why some of those regulations are so burdensome.


Face recognition software is not useless but its still in its infancy. A face is electronically rotated to a standard viewing angle and digitized and automatically compared mathematically to twelve standardized faces. This generates a humungous number as an index number which becomes the starting point for any later search. Alot of felons do flee to Vegas it seems. No one is turning off the facial software, its just that no one is really gaining all that much from it.

Quote: FleaStiff

Gaming Regulations mandate a certain level of surveillance ... and its simply a "given" that if you want to protect "Vegas" you have to make sure that each licensee does what it can afford to do to protect their own customers. The Gaming Board wants to protect the industry and that is why some of those regulations are so burdensome.

No, the big casinos would have sophisticated video surveillance regardless of the gaming regulations. The cameras and security personnel are certainly expensive, but not as expensive as leaving the games vulnerable to thieves.

Quote: Doc

OK, so this post may be off-topic, but it is based on the image shown in the original post.

I am not a roulette player, but my eye was caught by the roulette (I think) table layouts shown on the third fully-visible monitor from the left in both the top and bottom rows. What is that elongated horseshoe (?) pattern, on the left of the layout on the bottom monitor and the right of the layout on the top monitor?

Also interesting that Aria is still allowing 'track betting' at their Roulette tables. Most every place in the Midwest has removed their Tracks from the layout. Perhaps for fear that a few dealers sometimes can, in fact, hit an area of the wheel on more than a simple 'randomized' basis?

Nah! Couldn't be!

Last year, on the Destination America channel, there was a program called "Cheating Vegas." One of the episodes was devoted to what they called the Surveillance 360 system installed at Aria. Because the place is over saturated with cameras; they can use computers to perform the type of fly-by-wire observations that you're used to seeing on CSI and the old Vegas series. They cannot do this in real time however, because of the computational horsepower the system uses.

Quote: FleaStiff

Face recognition software is not useless but its still in its infancy. .

They've been saying that for the last 15 years.
The only place it worked was 10 years ago on the
TV show Vegas and it was fiction.

Face recognition software can track a person from 1 camera to the next with great accuracy. They can also find people not being tracked by scanning their face and comparing to another image. While this is not perfect it's getting better. This tech is used by social networks quite well. What I understand the weakness of the software to be are the cameras themselves. You need high resolution, the better the pic the better the result. since the Aria is new this would not be a big deal.

I would not say the tech is in its infancy, I would say the images used need to be good quality.