As cheaters at casinos get more and more tech-savvy, and their methods more and more advanced, so too do the methods used by casinos to catch them. Casinos would much rather stop a cheating incident from happening at all, than catch someone cheating and cause a scene while everyone is having fun. They like to keep operations running smoothly. One of the ways they do this is to identify likely cheaters before they even sit down at the Blackjack table.
Introducing Biometric Facial Recognition Technology
If you’ve ever been to a casino, you’ve probably noticed many surveillance cameras positioned all over the place. Some of these are simply high megapixel cameras that security personnel use to compare to images of known cheaters,but a new, much more advanced technology is beginning to make its mark: biometric facial recognition. This technology uses cameras to photograph the faces of every single guest the moment they enter the gambling area. “Dumb” systems do simply that, and it is left to the human security to compare the images to those of undesirables.
However, it is the “smart” systems that are really changing the game of casino surveillance technology. These analyse the faces of each guest and compare them with a growing database of the faces of known cheaters and suspicious people. Each time a cheater is found out, their face is added to the database. If the face of a guest matches the face of a known cheater, security will be alerted and the previous and potential offender will be booted out. If the individual seems suspicious in some way, or has engaged in cheating activities but not serious ones and not often, they may not be kicked out but simply watched extra closely by casino staff and security.
This technology is not only used to prevent cheaters from doing their dirty work. It is also often used to identify favoured guests and high rollers, so that casino employees can give them extra special attention.
Is Biometric Facial Technology the Future?
Although this technology offers the potential to revolutionise casino security, not everyone is convinced it is all that. They point out that because most cameras are on the ceiling and just below, the angle they are photographing from is above the casino guests heads, not the best place to get the most reliable image. However, this seems like a small problem for a system with such advanced analysing technology.
Biometric facial recognition is a new kid on the block, and so is not yet used by all. However, its ability to analyze and match images of faces to each other is unparalleled. We can only assume that it will grow in popularity as time goes on, as its ability to catch cheaters before they cheat gets more and more superior to all other surveillance cameras. So watch out, cheaters! Casinos who have installed this tech will have you out the door before you can so much as order a martini.