In British feature film Kaleidoscope (1966) Main actor Warren Beatty, aka Barney Lincoln, has a very clever idea: he breaks into a Geneva playing card factory at night and secretly manipulates the patterns on the backs of the cards on the printing plates. The marked models go into print as a series and soon end up on the gaming tables of all major European casinos. Beatty then sits there with great concentration and really pulls the others over the table. In the end he can hardly carry the many chips he wins.
Sure, it’s all a movie, but one thing is certain: card games can give some people some pretty perfidious ideas as soon as they smell big money. A similarly cinematic episode – just in real life – is currently being negotiated at the Dresden District Court, for example. Five men between the ages of 37 and 46 are accused of commercial gang fraud in up to 29 cases because they are said to have marked playing cards on a large scale and in a spectacular way. According to the indictment, the total damage amounts to more than half a million euros. The victims include not only seasoned poker pros, but apparently also the soccer professional and former national player Max Kruse. His soft spot for poker is well known. Kruse, who now plays for Paderborn in the second Bundesliga, recently took part in the Poker World Championships in Las Vegas, as he does almost every year – but without any real success.
The criminals installed cameras at the table
From the outset, Kruse probably had no chance against the accused in Dresden. According to media reports, the five men had provided the narrow sides of the cards with a kind of tiny barcode that could only be seen with infrared light. A camera built into the poker table scanned the codes after they had been shuffled and used software to calculate which player held the winning hand. This information was then transmitted to the card distributor or “dealer”, as it is called in poker jargon, by means of an acoustic Bluetooth signal on an invisible button in the ear. Using prearranged finger signals, he then relayed the information to the knowledgeable accomplices at the table, allowing them to steer the stakes in their favour. The men later shared the profits among themselves.
These marked-card, very high-stakes rounds took place in Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig and Rostock between 2014 and 2017; extensive investigations followed. In the Mickten district of Dresden, a posh poker room is said to have been set up in a commercial building, in front of which fat cars from Berlin and other cities were repeatedly spotted. One of the main initiators of the poker rounds is said to have been a former professional soccer player named Ronny Garbuschewski, nicknamed “Saxony-Beckham”. He played for Fortuna Düsseldorf, Chemnitzer FC and Energie Cottbus, among others. He is said to have used his contacts to lure fellow players and other “liquid people” into the poker rounds for years. It is said that the footballer got into criminal circles, had high gambling debts and had to balance them out.
Max Kruse was one of the first victims
In one of the first rounds of fraud in Hamburg in 2014, soccer professional Max Kruse is said to have lost 5,000 euros. The German entrepreneur and poker pro Jan-Peter Jachtmann was probably sitting at the same table, which makes things even more curious – he lost 20,000 euros. Jachtmann is one of the best and most experienced players in Germany. Just a few weeks ago, he finished fourth out of more than 10,000 participants at the main event of the Poker World Cup in Las Vegas and won three million dollars in one fell swoop. According to the card dealer accused in Dresden, the round with Jachtmann was a kind of test run for the fraud scheme. “If he doesn’t notice it, then it’s relatively safe,” he is said to have told the judge. How the gang was finally found out is not clear from the reports so far. However, the accused are said to have already confessed to the crimes and closed a deal. They were apparently given a suspended sentence of between one and two years. The process will continue on Friday.
Dealing cards has a long tradition among criminals and cardsharps. The term “tines” comes from itinerant craftsmen who marked houses with certain signs or tines in order to leave information about the occupants to the successors. When it comes to playing cards, the classics are: scratches are left on the backs of the cards with fingernails or a pencil, or the patterns are minimally changed by coloring in, darkening or brightening. Again and again cards are treated with certain substances that can only be recognized with certain glasses or contact lenses. In the past, for example, people often used greenish ink that could only be seen with reddish lenses. In order to unmask marked cards, it can be helpful to let the deck of cards rustle through your hands like in a flip book and to look out for irregularities.
In feature film Kaleidoscope Incidentally, the cardsharp and playboy Warren Beatty was quickly unmasked, and from then on he had to go on a criminal hunt with the police in order to avoid punishment. His lover had ratted him out.