This may interest some of you. It's close to half an hour of casino gambling expert Sal Paciente showing clips from movies about cheaters and discussing how authentic the scenes were. I once spent a lot of time learning about this kind of thing for a movie script that I wrote for a studio that closed down two years later. If they'd made my script, they could have been outta business in one.
In connection with it though, I spent a lot of time at Blackjack tables and read a lot of books and talked to a lot of experts and even got some amazing tours. One was of the counting room in one casino and it looked like Uncle Scrooge's money bin in there. There was literally money all over the floor and when I exited, I was just about strip-searched to make sure none of the loot was on my person.
Another was of the surveillance room in another casino — the room from which experts spy on the players and also on the dealers. In this particular gaming establishment, they seemed more "on the lookout" for dealers being in cahoots with players than with players cheating on their own. They also showed me how if a known cheater walked into hotel in town, they were all instantly alerted to his whereabouts.
It was all fascinating…and I also learned enough that while I could card-count and win a few hundred dollars at one casino or another, it was a foolish risk to go much above the "few hundred dollars" level. They didn't mind a guy winning $600 or $700 because they figured (a) he'd resume playing later and give it back or (b) seeing him win that money would inspire other players to play…and they'd lose more than that winner won. But I still gave up Blackjack and, really, all gambling.
Here's the video. You may note the number of ways in which what this man is explaining intersects with my interest in magic…