So far, I’m enjoying this show much more than Burnett’s The Casino. Feels significantly less staged, and the players are much more enjoyable to watch. I’ll give The Casino another chance, but the pilot episode was pretty lame.
Anyway, on this past Friday’s episode of American Casino, the security guys were talking about a suspected blackjack counter. One of the guys repeatedly mentioned that the counter was “in the beep book”, with a word beeped over. Now, from what I know of the industry, and what could be made out of the censored word, what they were saying is that the guy was listed in the ‘Griffin Book’; the Griffin Agency being a detective agency employed by many of the casinos to watch for cheating by players and the house, and, unfortunately, also to hassle card counters. The Griffin Book is published by them and distributed to the casinos that hire them; a listing, with pictures usually, of ‘undesirables’.
So, I understand what they were talking about, but I don’t understand why the name of the agency was censored out. Most people with a passing knowledge of the gaming industry (and pretty much all card counters) have heard of the Griffin Agency; they’re not really a secret. So why would the name be censored?
I thought it was probably because he said goddamn book, or fucking book.
Hmmm… I defintely heard a ‘g’ sound at the beginning of the word just before it was beeped, so it wasn’t ‘fucking’, but you could be right; maybe it was ‘goddamn’. I’m almost positive it was ‘Griffin’, but unfortunately, I’ve deleted it from my Tivo, so I can’t go back and verify. Maybe you’re right; maybe I’m overthinking it.
It was probably the ‘Griffin Book’. The Griffin detective agency is employed by almost all major casinos to help spot and stop cheats, card counters, and other undesirables. They maintain a ‘book’ of photographs of such people, and make it available to the casinos. The photographs are taken clandestinely, or snapped from the security videos of the casinos.
When a suspected cheat or card counter is found, casino security will got to ‘the book’ and look to see if the person is in it. I’ve never seen the book, but I imagine it’s probably cataloged by physical trait so it’s easier to find people.
Erm… you didn’t read my entire post, did you, Sam? 
I’d already suspected it was the Griffin Book… I just didn’t know why it was censored.
:smack:
Sorry about that. I started reading it, saw the responses speculating on other words, and wrote a response. My bad.
I would guess that the word was censored becase the casinos try to keep these things semi-secret. Or at least, they don’t like to talk about them. The Griffin agency in particular is a bit controversial because of the privacy aspects of what they do, and because the Griffin book has been known to be wrong on many things. The Griffin Agency itself is very secretive, and doesn’t like details about its operation being made public. They won’t even dislose how many employees they have, or who their clients are.
There have been several lawsuits in the last few years involving Griffin’s book. You can wind up in it based on little more than hearsay, and have the information used against you in many ways - I think it’s even been admitted in court in cheating cases.