There are nine casinos in Greece and some 200,000 people are expected to visit one or more over the end-of-year holidays, December 20 to January 5. Traditionally this period is the busiest in the casino calendar but visitor numbers have already exceeded last year’s total before the season even began. By year-end over 3 million people will have been to a casino to try their luck, and have bet around $3.4 billion. Many Greeks see in the New Year with games of chance ‘for luck’, either in their own homes or at a casino.

The Loutraki Casino, southeast of Athens, is the most popular in Greece and sees about a third of total casino turnover, in the region of $816.3 million this year. However, illegal card games and apartments rented for gambling purposes still abound, particularly over the holiday period, and five cases were investigated in December. Online credit card fraud is also a problem for people betting on the Internet with companies working outside bona fide licensing jurisdictions.

Even the casinos themselves have had problems, both with complaints against the casino and with complaints about the players. Rigged table games, roulette balls and wheels have all been charges laid against casinos in the past. Cell phone scanners, marked cards and corrupt dealers have cost the casinos millions of euros. These days security at casinos is much tighter, and Police Department gambling inspectors ascertain strict adherence to regulations.

There have been no allegations of rigged results recently at any of the casinos. In the old days there were no precautions taken against the casinos being cheated by customers, or corrupt staff or operators cheating customers. Nowadays, the constant monitoring of internal procedures and the use of closed-circuit camera surveillance leaves little to chance, and company record keeping leaves little incentive for involvement in illegal activity.

Of course there will always be those willing to assist Lady Luck by any means possible. New gaming technologies help both the cheats and the casinos, a constant battle for supremacy. So far nothing akin to the Ritz fiasco in London, where the operator’s surveillance arrangements spectacularly failed to the tune of $2.34 million, has happened at a Greek casino, but operators must remain vigilant. Behind one of the casino visitors, seeing in the New Year for ‘good luck’ with a game of chance, there may be a team attempting to turn chance into certainty.

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