Bellagio poker room cage robbed

https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2017/nov/28/police-poker-cage-at-bellagio-robbed-suspect-sough/

Anyone ever run into James Wood’s while playing poker?

Quote: gamerfreak

Anyone ever run into James Wood’s while playing poker?

Apparently, him and Negreanu are having a lovers quarrel.

Woods broke out of area 51:
https://youtu.be/WIQy0oI6Ijc

Quote: gamerfreak

Anyone ever run into James Wood’s while playing poker?

Oh yeah, the make-believe character on Family Guy? Mhmmm, I'm sure he's there alllllll the tiiiiiime!




Interesting how on twitter he said it was smooth and quiet and like no one knew what was going on. I'd have to think if I were in the staff's shoes, I'd be like, screw dis, I'll give you all the money you want, I ain't dying or getting shot over this, it ain't even my money.

Quote: gamerfreak

Anyone ever run into James Wood’s while playing poker?

I dealt to him in the 2004 WSOP. Actually I dealt him the hand he busted out on upstairs when they used to let you go upstairs. I also dealt to Raymer early in the tournament along with Bobby Baldwin and many others... no big whoop. The nice thing was they still paid you shares so I had my connections get my pal and myself out a few days early but we got paid the same as the schmucks working deeper into the tourney. A few years later Harrahs screwed that up and started paying you for downs so the dealers who are better connected get more downs. Personally when I dealt I would call in constantly to get on the EO list. Now here's something I did at the Rio for many years working graveyard. I'd come in for the dealers meeting and sign in and request satellites... I'd take a break and go to the EDR and after that I'd go to my car and go to the Stardust or some other Casino and play full pay VP on the clock... getting paid from the Rio to play VP... now that's plus EV!!

Not very often but occasionally the dealer coordinator would spot me and pull me out and put me in some live action game. You could get screwed the whole night in the line up like that. Your only chance is to pray for your table to close down to get rerouted so you could slip out.

Is James Woods in trouble financially? Why would he praise the cage staff?

Is James Woods in trouble financially? Why would he praise the cage staff?

I feel like they have security, everywhere... How did a masked and armed man make it IN the casino and all the way back to the poker room cage without anyone so much as taking an interest in him?

p.s. Even 'ol texas dolly is on twitter... I feel like I almost have to now.

Quote: Romes

I feel like they have security, everywhere... How did a masked and armed man make it IN the casino and all the way back to the poker room cage without anyone so much as taking an interest in him?

p.s. Even 'ol texas dolly is on twitter... I feel like I almost have to now.

Wasn't the last armed "masked" robbery a couple of years ago at the Bellagio also? Remember that guy (I believe he turned out to be an employee) who wore a motorcycle helmet in and out of the casino and robbed the main cage, IIRC?

Oh good grief this stuff on this forum is just asinine:

Quote: Romes

I feel like they have security, everywhere... How did a masked and armed man make it IN the casino and all the way back to the poker room cage without anyone so much as taking an interest in him?

p.s. Even 'ol texas dolly is on twitter... I feel like I almost have to now.

"Feel" being exactly the correct term. The "how" is the same way as many others, again and again, duh. This is NOT a particularly unusual event. Not even at that one specific property. Are you similarly shocked that criminals commit crimes at shopping malls and on city streets in popular nightlife districts?

The notion of casino security that's apparently popular in the imagination of some people on this forum is just a ludicrous fantasy. There are NOT large armies of security people, they are almost never armed and haven't been in years (and be glad of that - most aren't remotely trained for handling any such thing at all), they do NOT exist for the the purposes you fantasize, they are NOT there for public safety functions or to perform police activities to stop crimes - they are instructed to do nothing but watch in most circumstances and are usually forbidden to even call police directly (in most places they are told in no uncertain terms that they can only notify their dispatcher and/or supervisor - who may or may not call the real police after consulting with others up the food chain).

The notion of armies of omniscient & omnipotent security existing to make the casinos bastions of great safety comes from entertainment programs made up for movies and television. and most people who are not living in ridiculous internet forums know this. But people who are determined to believe otherwise will now quickly go back to ignoring this and flushing it down the hatch of their minuscule gambler's attention span, as they do all of the other reality that keeps slapping them upside the head as it has time and time and time again, and continue to believe whatever nonsense you're determined to "see" and "know."

Quote: Las Vegas Sun

...<SNIP>...

In March, Sebastian Gonzalez was one of four men who wore animal masks during a heist at a high-end jewelry store at the Bellagio, police said. He told investigators that he was threatened by unidentified men who he said had said to him they’d hurt his family if he didn’t participate.

In July 2014, police arrested a suspect they said robbed $45,000 from the Bellagio, and spent a “wild night on the town.”

In 2010, Anthony Carleo, known as the “biker bandit,” robbed about $1.5 million in casino chips at gunpoint and ran out of the Bellagio wearing a motorcycle helmet.

And that quickie Sun list is a small fraction limited to a few incidents they apparently feel are especially like this one. Among the many other events happening amidst the fantasy ghost armies of security, just those at Bellagio alone and limiting it to some of those that have been so widely publicized that you'd think even a forum "AP" stoner might even notice: the shootout between rival pimps that began in Bellagio's valet parking and ended with multiple barbeque'd dead people (most of them innocents passing by in taxis) in several exploding vehicles in a fireball in the middle of Flamingo Rd & Las Vegas Blvd; or the body of the murdered guy that nobody got around to noticing in the Bellagio hotel hallway for about two days until the smell eventually forced their attention; or the table games dealer who was repeatedly stabbed on the casino floor by her stalker; or the especially heavy worldwide reporting of the two very obvious numbskull street criminals who followed former WSOP champion Greg Raymer from the poker room cage to the door of his Bellagio hotel room, where Raymer (who is fortunately a pretty big beefy guy) managed to successfully fight for his life; or the not quite so world famous guy robbed and killed on the way out to his car there, and on and on...

Folks should start to get a clue already: casinos are popular with many flavors of criminals just as they are with other folk, and they are no more or less safe than going to a shopping center or downtown street of most major cities. Quit with spewing the fantasies; it helps get people hurt or killed when they think "someone" is watching and looking after everything. "Someone" isn't. YOU are someone. If there's a problem, you need to do this: call 9-1-1 to get the real police on the way. There aren't vast magical armies of them either, camped out in the Strip resort corridor available to respond to everything everywhere instantly, but regardless of whatever unrealistic fantasy someone may be carrying around about that, that is what the actual police are for, and that is what you and others need to be prepared to do.

Part of this is the old rejoinder to the question of why do you rob banks. Willie Sutton replied ''cause that's where the money is'.
Casinos have money and anyone going into a casino will have money, some coming out of a casino even have some of that stuff left.

Casinos have cameras and radios and usually can handle things but gunplay is not desired,. Guards, even if armed, are notoriously lousy shots particularly under stress. Many security guards are in seersucker jackets but even The Big Burly team with a ton of equipment on their belts are mainly there for show. Four big beefy guys surround a team of cheaters and things will remain quiet.

cruise ships, casinos, Disney land, .... they are crime free only in the Press.

Guards watch for unusual behavior. One husband and wife encountered each other in the casino and realized there had been miscommunication as to who was gambling and who was watching the kid in the stroller, so the husband started running at full speed for the main entrance. That attracted the attention of the guards (he might have just snatched some high value chips) but they calmed him down and told him that's okay, we have the kid in our office. Any unusual behavior usually comes to the attention of someone, but well concealed professional criminals are no match for twenty dollar an hour monitor staring types half way thru a boring shift.

I think everyone in the know knows that Casinos in Vegas get held up a lot. The way I understand it is employees are instructed to do nothing but call the police and let them handle it. I know for a fact they keep it out of the press as much as possible. This is also true about people getting hit and killed by cars on the boulevard or in the streets in general. In the last 20 years I have watched them install fencing all over the valley to deter jaywalking... especially drunken jaywalking.

Quote: gamerfreak

Anyone ever run into James Wood’s while playing poker?

Like 10 years ago at Commerce I was playing a midstakes game and this INCREDIBLY beautiful woman is on the next table.

Female players are in in the minority. Some of them are attractive. But there's a certain point past which girls are just not going to be interested in stuff like poker very often, I guess, because, why bother? The world already revolves around you. And this girl was well past that point. I'd lived in LA most of my life and seen many an actress and model and this is one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen.

So anyway, everyone is sitting their gawking at her, maybe thinking that if she likes poker, they have an in and James Woods comes walking up and gives her a kiss on the cheek. At that point it all fell into place. He wanted to play so he put her in the game so she'd have something to do.

The moral of the story is, become a movie star.

Quote: FleaStiff

Part of this is the old rejoinder to the question of why do you rob banks. Willie Sutton replied ''cause that's where the money is'.
Casinos have money and anyone going into a casino will have money, some coming out of a casino even have some of that stuff left.

Casinos have cameras and radios and usually can handle things but gunplay is not desired,. Guards, even if armed, are notoriously lousy shots particularly under stress.

My understanding is that, in a situation like this, just about everybody is a lousy shot. Plus, bullets can pass through people and stuff like that.

Rolling over a table, spinning to your feet and shooting the bad guy between the eyes is movie stuff.

No amount of money you can steal will equal what the casino has to pay out to an innocent guest (or their family) who was shot by a guard.

So, I think it's probably fairly easy to get into a casino, rob it and get out. But you and your car are going to be extensively recorded, and you still have to get away from the strip before the police show up. So that part is harder than banks.

But, if this guy stole the car, he might be in pretty good shape.

Quote: FleaStiff

Casinos have cameras...

Which are mandated by Gaming Control, to store recordings of sensitive cash handling transactions to be available for later review and eventual auditing by Gaming Enforcement agents, originally for the purpose of suppressing skimming (organized insider theft) from the casinos by the mob, and now also used for internal game control purposes.

Get the omniscient camera fetish out of your head already. There are NOT any human eyeballs looking at anything from most of them most of the time. What those cameras will do for you is if you are robbed or happen to get yourself killed in a gaming area, it is reasonably likely that you or your surviving heirs will later have the satisfaction of them being somewhat more likely to get identified and charged with the crime, eventually, after any recording of it gets used by law enforcement. Just as it is with robberies of filling stations, convenience stores, supermarkets, liquor stores, and the like that have cameras recording what happens at the cash register. Except that convenience stores and filling stations and the like are more likely than most casinos to also have cameras recording other areas on their property than the spots where transactions are expected.

Quote: Rigondeaux

...<SNIP>...No amount of money you can steal will equal what the casino has to pay out to an innocent guest (or their family) who was shot by a guard...

There were several of those, with that result, about the time many casinos' policies on that changed. I'll mention one off-Strip in particular because IIRC from past discussions on other stuff you'll probably have walked on the exact spot where it happened, and may also know a few people who were working and possibly playing there at the time: It involved an incident that began in the Boulder Station poker room, then violently spilled out to the slots near the poker entrance, and resulted in someone apparently not involved in any of it in any way getting killed in the response of one of the security people. If you still ever stop in there once in a while, ask some of the longer-tenured individuals who are still there after more than a decade and they'll certainly recall it.

Quote: FleaStiff

Casinos have cameras and radios and usually can handle things but gunplay is not desired,. Guards, even if armed, are notoriously lousy shots particularly under stress. Many security guards are in seersucker jackets but even The Big Burly team with a ton of equipment on their belts are mainly there for show. Four big beefy guys surround a team of cheaters and things will remain quiet.

"Most members of MGM security are disarmed. Only supervisors have weapons — and they are in their offices or the control room. If there’s trouble, the guns are far away. That leaves unarmed guards unable to defend guests or themselves for long periods of time. Guards feel helpless.

There is a petition at this very moment from MGM employees demanding guards be armed because employees do not feel safe at work. Security guards are so upset they are planning to try to unionize at MGM properties." --Review-Journal

The RJ is a rag owned by a guy who is in competition with MGM. They've gone over the top with their recent attacks on anything MGM related.

Quote: billryan

The RJ is a rag owned by a guy who is in competition with MGM. They've gone over the top with their recent attacks on anything MGM related.

Are MGM guards armed or not?