MY guess is she is NOT going to win the WSOP!

Shimanskaya charged with defrauding casinos
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MADRID, Spain -- A Russian rhythmic gymnast who won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics was arrested and charged with defrauding Spanish casinos of thousands of dollars by cheating at poker.

Vera Shimanskaya and a male compatriot were arrested in the tourist town of Pucol on Tuesday after the owner of the Monte Picayo casino complained the Olympian and her friend were playing with marked cards, police said.

The 22-year-old woman was charged with fraud. She was released Thursday after paying $3,300 in bail, news reports said.

The pair had won up to $9,800 each night during visits to casinos in Alicante and Malaga this summer, the Spanish daily El Mundo reported Thursday. One casino owner in Malaga, wary of her continued success at the poker table, warned other casinos.

Security guards at Monte Picayo trained cameras on the suspects and called police to arrest the pair for cheating at poker. The gymnast and her partner were led away in handcuffs at a hotel.

Shimanskaya was on Russia's gold medalist team at the 2000 Games. By the time she left the sport in 2001, she held two world and two European championship titles. The Russian Sports Agency conferred on her the title of Honored Master of Sports.

Didn't want to say anything at the poker tourney we had but think I saw FatFrank and Lou sneaking in marked decks.

Dumb question, I know, but how do you suppose they cheated? Signals to identify hands?

Sorry, not a big poker guy here.

Reminds of Euchre in HS. $5 a hand, but that was big money back then - it was BEER money

My buddy & I would hold our cards differently based on the number of trump we hand.

Tight spread = 0 trump.
# of fingers extended = number of trump.

Dumb classmated NEVER caught on .. lol and we had lots o' beer

Lander-

Article says they played with marked cards. Not sure if youve ever seen/played with marked cards but the readily available versions (10-15 years ago) have different spots on the backs of the cards to siginal their different values. No signaling needed. If you know the marks you know the value of the cards that EVERYONE holds. In HS a group of us used them to get back at a classmate bookie who we busted one weekend and could no longer book games or pay the full amount. We extracted money from him during our poker games. Really small amounts but what are you going to do, beat him up, he was a classmate and a friend. Geez, we were private school degenerates!!

My understanding is that the professional cheats in higher stakes games use sophisticated techniques to mark cards including special inks that can be viewed with special lenses (contact and glasses). I'm not a big enough player to either have seen this stuff in action or know whether it is true.

Good info Swami.

Man, I thought these kind of scammers only played at Rio ...

but I kind of like the special ink trick - very clever