The Department of Justice has indicted thirty-one people over the high-tech rigging of high-stakes poker games. > In a typical legitimate poker game, a dealer uses a shuffling machine to > shuffle the cards randomly before dealing them to all the players in a > particular order. As set forth in the indictment, the rigged games used > altered shuffling machines that contained hidden technology allowing the > machines to read all the cards in the deck. Because the cards were always > dealt in a particular order to the players at the table, the machines could > determine which player would have the winning hand. This information was > transmitted to an off-site member of the conspiracy, who then transmitted that > information via cellphone back to a member of the conspiracy who was playing > at the table, referred to as the “Quarterback” or “Driver.” The Quarterback > then secretly signaled this information (usually by prearranged signals like > touching certain chips or other items on the table) to other co-conspirators > playing at the table, who were also participants in the scheme. Collectively, > the Quarterback and other players in on the scheme (i.e., the cheating team) > used this information to win poker games against unwitting victims, who > sometimes lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. The > defendants used other cheating technology as well, such as a chip tray > analyzer (essentially, a poker chip tray that also secretly read all cards > using hidden cameras), an x-ray table that could read cards face down on the > table, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked > cards. ...

The basic strategy is to place a device with a hidden camera in a position to capture normally hidden card values, which are interpreted by an accomplice off-site and fed back to the player via a hidden microphone. Miniaturization is making these devices harder to detect. Presumably AI will soon obviate the need for an accomplice.