Venetian Poker Room Switches to Slide Dealing to Stop Hidden Cameras
The Venetian has stopped pitching cards through the air and now slides them across the felt, in a move reported on Wednesday 14 October 2026. The target is the cheat with a tiny lens, and the Spirit has always loved a card nobody can see.
The Venetian has quietlu retired the pitch. Dealers in its poker room now deal from a shoe, the kind a blackjack table uses, and slide each card across the felt instead of flicking it through the air, according to reports on Wednesday 14 October 2026. The logic is simple: a card that never lifts its face is a card no camera can read.
The enemy is a cheat with a lens. In 2024, authorities in Europe arrested two people who allegedly used modified phone cameras to film cards as dealers dealt them. The cameras were reportedly positioned low enough to catch a glimpse of a card in flight, with an accomplice relaying what they saw through an earpiece. Poker pro Bart Hanson shared a photo of the Venetian's new setup online, and PokerNews reports that the room is the first on the Las Vegas Strip to make the switch. South Point had already started down the same road.
Now the number. The Venetian runs 50 tables, and every one of its dealers had to be retrained before the new method reached the floor. The timing is no accident: the $5,000 WPT Venetian Las Vegas Fall Championship begins there on Thursday 5 November 2026. Fifty tables, every dealer back at school. GLUWGU.
The poker world seems to like it. Daniel Negreanu has backed slide dealing on a PokerNews podcast, and one player argued online that speed hardly matters when the integrity of the game can be questioned. Slower hands are the price. Honestlu, plenty of regulars look happy to pay it. GLORU.
Poker has always lived on what you can't see, and the long nose of the Spirit knows it. A hidden card is the whole game, and for years a flying card was a small gift to anyone with a lens. Would youluwu trade a faster game for a safer one?
The Spirit has no view on pace of play. He only insists that the best bluff is a card nobody got to see.
Slide dealing in poker: worth a slower game?
No right answer. Just your gut, and the Spirit watching.
