- By using a smartphone camera and a mirror, cheaters are able to sneak a look at cards as they’re being dealt.
- An accomplice can then relay that card data to the player via earpiece.
- Casinos are looking into new dealing strategies to mitigate this vulnerability.
Have you ever used your smartphone to cheat? Maybe you stole a quick glance at Wikipedia during a round of bar trivia? Were you extra clever and managed to squeeze a whole sheet of crib notes onto your tiny smartwatch screen? Powerful portable technology can be used for good just as easily as nefarious purposes, and this week we’re learning about a very clever and also very immoral way to use smartphone hardware to win at poker.
There are a lot of different ways to cheat at poker, but the vast majority of them come down to a question of knowledge: Who knows the most about what cards everyone’s holding? And while in the past, attempts to surreptitiously gain that knowledge might have involved the use of marked cards, a modern approach highlighted in a new report from Wired involves a clever smartphone-based hack.