Cell Phones in Casinos

Are casinos becoming more paranoid about smart phone use?

I’ve been rebuked at table games a few times, but generally no one gives me an issue if I turn my back to the table to check the time or answer a quick text message.

Last night I was at Borgata with my girlfriend. If you’ve never been to Borgata, they have really cool glass sculptures everywhere. My girlfriend was taking a photo of one, we were standing about 10ft from a Tiles game with our backs turned away.

Next thing I know the dealer completely shuts down his game and starts screaming at me to take my girlfriends phone away as if she’s my child or something.

I wasn’t in a good mood to begin with, so I told the dealer in so many words to piss off. I feel kinda bad since its really out of character for me to be rude to anyone in public, but he also over reacted a bit.

The only smart phone cheats I remember reading about are slot related. So it’s ironic they are hyper paranoid at table games, yet literally give you a phone charging port at the slots.

In reference to taking pictures in a casino, many people do not want to appear in that photo so no pictures are ever allowed.

Quote: Commish

In reference to taking pictures in a casino, many people do not want to appear in that photo so no pictures are ever allowed.

I’m sure there’s a very small percentage of patrons who care, but you’d have a hard time convincing me that game protection isn’t 1000% the reason casinos care.

I’ve heard the patrons not wanting to appear in pictures reason given before. They usually don’t want them near table games. I don’t think casinos are more paranoid about it than before I’d generally say some are becoming slightly less paranoid about it over time and some are staying the same as they we’re before, now you’ll find every once in a while a casino that allows phone use at the table (can remember one in both Missouri and Louisiana.) I’d be pretty confident your experience is a relatively isolated incident of a dealer who’s really anal and really has their panties in a bunch than thinking it’s an indicator of casinos in general becoming more paranoid.

I asked a dealer once, off the record of course, and he said that they were afraid that the phone camera could somehow, however unlikely, catch the dealer’s down card. I got the feeling that he didn’t buy into it and neither do I.

I play table games very infrequently, and typically have little reason to check my phone if I am playing. As I recall from two casinos, they just wanted you to stand up and take a full step back from the table. I don't even think I was checking messages, or anything, just looking at the time.

***I mean, I would also simultaneously see if I had received a text, but was primarily to check the time.

You'll occasionally get someone on the internet who doesn't know much about table game action who asks us genuine table game players to post detailed pictures of everything from winning hands to markers at the moment they are being pulled out (no pit boss would allow all that), but my experience is that I may sneak a picture of my chips to show the over all win at the end of the session, and also sometimes of the final Baccarat board (but while trying to take even those pictures occasionally a pit boss will step in and declare politely that there is "no photography allowed in a casino").

Additionally, no serious gambler has time to think about or should be wasting time thinking about photography mid-session. Big money is at play and we need to concentrate on the action, not documenting it. In any case, life is the reality we view as it happens - pausing to take pictures doesn't make it any more real and in fact detracts from the experience. What's more important? taking in the Parthenon or taking pictures of it?

Cell phone use - at Baccarat, as long as you slide your chair back some distance from the table, I've never seen pit bosses voice any concerns. At Blackjack, those chairs do not slide so you'd need to get out of your chair and step away from the table to use your phone. The concern, in theory, is that you might be receiving or transmitting a wager in connection with whatever action is going on in the casino, which would violate federal law. This applies to both voice and text.

But beyond that, if there are other players at the table, no one wants to hear your voice on the phone.

I am fairly sure, most casinos have some kind of restrictions of on photography/filming on gaming floors (most don't care off of the floor). Normal you need permission in advanced.

I am sure there are a multitude of reasons for this including security and customer comfort ( some people don't want to be seen at a casino).

I have been told not to text at blackjack tables before, but outside of actively playing a table game, it's not an issue (nobody cares if you text on VP). Even so, it's usually pretty laid back like you say like "please step away from the table if you need to take a call or text", I have never seen somebody actually kicked off a table for texting even after multiple warnings....

As for pictures taken after being told to stop, it can be less forgiving (depending on the casino and who responds).

In AC right now with less capacity (hence more eyes on you) it probably makes sense that you will get "caught" taking pictures that you may have in the past...

I mean you got shouted out in front of your GF, which is no fun, but its not like you got kicked out or anything, so I don't see the huge deal....

I got backroomed for writing down slot backglass payouts into a tiny notebook. They wanted to see my license, I had an out of state ID. They wanted to know who the mayor of my village was, I didn't know. This was like my 2nd visit to the casino in 1993.
I would like to use my camera phone to document slots & slot payouts because they are so damn interesting.
The casino I went to in the '90's banned cell phones in 1994, probably a day after I got backroomed for carrying an electronic device to measure oxygen concentration. It read 21% and they thought it was a blackjack cheating device, lol.
Nowadays I just leave my phone in the car when I go in the casino, but I'm not sure it can handle temperature extremes. I've had numerous times when the car broke down and I would have been lost for days without a phone on the road.

Quote: Gandler

I mean you got shouted out in front of your GF, which is no fun, but its not like you got kicked out or anything, so I don't see the huge deal....

It’s not a huge deal.

To be clear I didn’t make a scene at all. We were standing about 10ft from a Pai Gow table with our backs turned, and he shouts across the floor “Sir no photos you need to stop her” 2 times. I ignored him because we were starting to walk away and then he started shouting it a 3rd time. Normally I would just apologize but I thought he was being rude so I interrupted and said “Stop it with that dude we aren’t even looking at your game” and we walked away.

I didn’t post the thread because I’m bent out of shape about it. I remember 5-6 years ago it wasn’t unusual for dealers and pit bosses to freak out whenever they saw a cell phone, but for a while it seemed (to me) to be a relaxed rule at most establishments. So I am wondering what others experiences have been recently.

Cell phones at blackjack have been blocked for years. At other tables games they have also been blocked to preserve identities of players.

Pressure increased because of Covid. Regulators have used YouTube videos to come down on casinos.

However I have never heard of a slot or VP player being stopped for shooting photos or videos of their own play.

Some casinos get touchy about seeing these slot videos on youtube without permission.

Alan, you'd know about this stuff as well as anyone. If you record video at slots/video poker with your phone, do the casinos require you to get permission first? And does that permission include following instructions they might give you? I could see, for example, the casinos requiring tight shots with nobody in the frame except the machine and its occupant.

The follow up question -- when journalists use camera-in-hat or whatever when they go into businesses or other private property, how are they able to use that footage without first getting permission to shoot it? It is private property after all. And finally, if somebody uses the same camera-in-hat or whatever in somebody's home, is that under the same legal aegis as when walking into a business?

just look at slot lady

she has her camera only on the slot or only on the felt, blurred backgrounds, faces, etc.

The one thing i dont know for sure is if the streams are on a delay because anyone giving advice in the chat could be counting perfectly.

Although she doesnt seem to care about major mistakes so im sure the casino doesnt care

Quote: ChumpChange

....I got backroomed for carrying an electronic device to measure oxygen concentration. It read 21% and they thought it was a blackjack cheating device, lol.

Have you ever gotten a different reading above ground than 21%?

There was a forest outside the casino in the summer and I got a reading of 22.3%. When the leaves fall down and it's 70 degrees with no leaves on the trees, I get 20.8%. An unventilated apartment building has worse readings in the bitter cold because nobody dares open a window, so that reading could get down to 20.2%. The readings have to be calibrated by elevation and barometric pressure and air temperature. I was having severe troubles breathing below 21.3% because of some flu I got and all the severe air pollution in my hometown then. My windows were open year round, but 1/8th of an inch when it was below zero outside; 3" in the summer. So opening my apartment door was like going from 21.4% to 20.5% which is like going up a thousand feet of elevation into thinner air instantly. I probably shouldn't be above 2500 feet elevation, and I was at 1000 feet elevation. I could really feel that on a bus trip across the country, and I have no tolerance for underventilated vehicles or buildings. Minnesota came up with a building code in 1999 that all new houses & buildings have to replace 1/3rd of the air every hour, or a full replacement every 3 hours (to cut back on rampant mold problems). I'd do better to stay away from sub-zero weather. But there's centuries of old buildings with no ventilation. People who survive this COVID-19 with impaired breathing are really gonna need ventilated buildings in their life.

Quote: ChumpChange

There was a forest outside the casino in the summer and I got a reading of 22.3%. When the leaves fall down and it's 70 degrees with no leaves on the trees, I get 20.8%. An unventilated apartment building has worse readings in the bitter cold because nobody dares open a window, so that reading could get down to 20.2%. The readings have to be calibrated by elevation and barometric pressure and air temperature. I was having severe troubles breathing below 21.3% because of some flu I got and all the severe air pollution in my hometown then. My windows were open year round, but 1/8th of an inch when it was below zero outside; 3" in the summer. So opening my apartment door was like going from 21.4% to 20.5% which is like going up a thousand feet of elevation into thinner air instantly. I probably shouldn't be above 2500 feet elevation, and I was at 1000 feet elevation. I could really feel that on a bus trip across the country, and I have no tolerance for underventilated vehicles or buildings. Minnesota came up with a building code in 1999 that all new houses & buildings have to replace 1/3rd of the air every hour, or a full replacement every 3 hours (to cut back on rampant mold problems). I'd do better to stay away from sub-zero weather. But there's centuries of old buildings with no ventilation. People who survive this COVID-19 with impaired breathing are really gonna need ventilated buildings in their life.

My advisor/mentor at Penn State was Bob Gannon, adventure editor for Popular Science at the time. He wrote a book called, "Why Your House May Endanger Your Health." As part of the book project, he went to an island somewhere and built a small, properly ventilated house. Of course, proper ventilation on an island means things get in that you don't want to get in and all that. Anyway, he was ahead of the curve on this stuff about indoor air pollution and health issues.

I've got ionizers and humidifiers for winter. But you know what indoor air pollution we'll have this fall as opposed to last fall? That's right, COVID-19! So they only let restaurants open at 50% full or 25% full, and maybe the air won't get so stale from so many people in the room.

Quote: heatmap

just look at slot lady

she has her camera only on the slot or only on the felt, blurred backgrounds, faces, etc.

The one thing i dont know for sure is if the streams are on a delay because anyone giving advice in the chat could be counting perfectly.

Although she doesnt seem to care about major mistakes so im sure the casino doesnt care

Slotlady generally delays those videos. Partly for what I suppose are required protection reasons, partly to edit them down and cut out the shuffle/betting time, and partly so that she can chat in real time with people who are seeing the videos for the first time when they "premier" on YouTube.

MG21 tapes at Mohegan, MGM Springfield, and HardRock Tampa pretty frequently. They have different rules. Mohegan allows filming of one machine at a time, on an individual approval basis (so, moving machines requires re-approving the filming). Springfield allows the filming of bonuses only. Tampa doesn't care what is filmed (at least, on machines), as long as no other patrons are in the shot.

Red Rock has a similar policy to Tampa. Tape anything you want, as long as it doesn't include any part of another person. That makes the intro/outro taping hard for the folks that do that, like SlotLady and NGSlots. I watched MG21 and Slotlady do a joint livestream a few months ago. It was pretty funny - they just taped the floor as they walked around at Red Rock.

It's a slow migration, but more and more casinos are relaxing their stand on photos. They are starting to realize that not only is social media huge, but it's free advertising.

For example, the Strat encourages selfies and jackpot photos so much so that they have their hashtag printed on the felt (or is it their twitter handle?)

At least one casino downtown (Four Queens?) that has signs encouraging social media photos.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

It's a slow migration, but more and more casinos are relaxing their stand on photos. They are starting to realize that not only is social media huge, but it's free advertising.

For example, the Strat encourages selfies and jackpot photos so much so that they have their hashtag printed on the felt (or is it their twitter handle?)

At least one casino downtown (Four Queens?) that has signs encouraging social media photos.

This seems like a very logical trend. If people want high stakes privacy, the high limit areas provide that. I assume both high limit slots and table game areas would continue to veto any video recording. The rest of the casinos are really just entertainment areas, and with the floor space changeovers from table games to slots, I can see video recording becoming generally tolerated without special protocols.

Having said that, I can also see places like, say, the Orleans or Westgate or even the Wynn being slow to shift to tolerance. The last thing they need is for the ubiquitous 2 A.M. working girls to show up on Youtube over and over.

It used to be that there were severe restrictions on filming, photographing or audio recording in a lot of different places. Like everything else, technology has outpaced the rules so as to make them obsolete. I can carry a cell phone in my shirt pocket and capture a sloppy, unprofessional "bodycam" recording of everything I do and anywhere I go. It probably wouldn't be fun to watch or reliable as to documenting anything, but there really is not much anyone can do about it since it's so unobtrusive.

I don't need any special equipment or training to do that, but for next to nothing I can add a small buttonhole camera to the collar of my shirt that improves things quite a bit. Wireless. Limited battery life, but I'm not Ken Burns. The quality can be improved, right out of the box, not to mention what can be done back in the room or at home with whatever's been collected. Wireless also means that nobody is going to erase the record by seizing the camera and destroying it.

Technology has always been what drives change.

Rodney King only happened because of cellphone cameras. Otherwise we would have never found out what went on.
Replays in sports? Only because the networks could afford to put thirty cameras around the field of play instead of one or two, each the size of a refrigerator, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Like so many things, it's only illegal if you get caught. It's less and less likely that someone making a recording in a casino will get caught. Call that being "more tolerant" if you want, but what other option do they have?

Quote: racquet

It used to be that there were severe restrictions on filming, photographing or audio recording in a lot of different places. Like everything else, technology has outpaced the rules so as to make them obsolete. I can carry a cell phone in my shirt pocket and capture a sloppy, unprofessional "bodycam" recording of everything I do and anywhere I go. It probably wouldn't be fun to watch or reliable as to documenting anything, but there really is not much anyone can do about it since it's so unobtrusive.

I don't need any special equipment or training to do that, but for next to nothing I can add a small buttonhole camera to the collar of my shirt that improves things quite a bit. Wireless. Limited battery life, but I'm not Ken Burns. The quality can be improved, right out of the box, not to mention what can be done back in the room or at home with whatever's been collected. Wireless also means that nobody is going to erase the record by seizing the camera and destroying it.

Technology has always been what drives change.

Rodney King only happened because of cellphone cameras. Otherwise we would have never found out what went on.
Replays in sports? Only because the networks could afford to put thirty cameras around the field of play instead of one or two, each the size of a refrigerator, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Like so many things, it's only illegal if you get caught. It's less and less likely that someone making a recording in a casino will get caught. Call that being "more tolerant" if you want, but what other option do they have?

I agree with Racquet, and from everything I've read there is absolutely nothing illegal about recording inside a Casino. It is only against casino policy, which means pretty much nothing. If you are clearly using your phone to record, all they can do is ask you to stop or leave the premises. If you are using a small device, they would first have to search for it (which is highly questionable legality itself) and then at best trespass you for violation of their policy, which they dont even need a reason for that.

Rodney King was recorded on a camcorder, way before videophones.
A decade ago there was the Google Glass phenomenon. They were about $1500 and could surreptitiously record whatever you were looking at, but they became so recognizable there was a public backlash against them. Nobody wants to be recorded.

They all generally prohibit pictures of the gaming area. As far as using the phone to check messages, etc while playing, depends on the casino. Here in Reno, I can play UTH at the Eldorado using my phone for whatever reason but I go to a different casino I can't even hold the damn thing. Playing machines seems to be the exception.

I remember the days when you couldn't use your phone in the sportsbook. Or couldn't even read a newspaper or anything for that matter when you played poker. How times have changed.