How not to mark cards at casinos

I’m dipping here into a criminal case reported by the Times, because I am so amused at the opening paragraphs describing the actions and purposes of a would-be card shark, a quintessential dork, who did not quite succeed in marking his cards with The Invisible Ink That Wasn’t: A Player Pleads Guilty to Marking Cards at a Casino – NYTimes.com.

Here’s how this little tale, written by James Barron, begins:

Bruce Koloshi’s strategy for cheating at poker at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut one night last September was, the authorities said, unusual. He marked the cards with ink that he believed only he could see with the special contact lenses he was wearing.

His reason for doing so was even more unusual. He said he was trying to win enough to make bail in Louisiana, where he was facing felony charges for doing the same thing.

It turned out that others could see his supposedly invisible ink — casino surveillance operators, if they played the video from their cameras in black-and-white rather than color. A surveillance operator at Mohegan Sun did and called in the state police, who arrested Mr. Koloshi.

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