Why U.S. Poker Rooms Are Switching to Slide Dealing

The slide deal is starting to make it way through American poker rooms.

Recently, the Venetian changed to slide dealing. It's the largest poker room on the Las Vegas Strip, with 50 tables. It became the first Strip room to switch from pitching cards to sliding them. It's following South Point off the Strip over the summer. MGM Resorts is reportedly weighing the same move. And, on October 26, Lee Jones told dealers plainly that the change is coming whether they like it or not.

A technique Europe has used for about two decades is rapidly becoming the U.S. standard. The main push is prevention of hidden camera cheating.

Adoption is speeding up.

Take South Point, a 30-table room several miles south of the Strip. It began training its dealers to slide in August 2026, becoming the first Las Vegas room to make the move. In mid-October the Venetian followed, running slide dealing across its 50-table room. It's the first major Strip room to do so. MGM Resorts has also signalled it's considering a wider rollout across its properties. However, there is no timeline yet.

None of this is new to Europe. The slide has been standard for roughly 20 years.

The European Poker Tour announced a shift to sliding as part of game-integrity changes in 2024. The main change 2026 is that the resistant U.S. cash-game rooms are changing. They are long attached to the traditional pitch.

The driver, by every account, is cheating technology. Crews using tiny concealed cameras to capture hole cards as they're pitched. A high pitch can briefly expose a card's face. It's then relayed to an off-table accomplice and back to a player. Lee Jones described cameras "the size of a breadcrumb" feeding hole-card data to a confederate running solver software. It's a setup that's influencing rooms.

Several of these cases are allegations rather than proven incidents. However, it's worth seeing the use cases:

• An unconfirmed account described a coordinated pair at the Aria using a hidden camera and an earpiece. The room has not yet confirmed it.

• In Australia, police alleged that a couple at Crown Sydney used a pinhole camera. The camera was concealed in modified clothing to feed an accomplice running a solver.

• Las Vegas pro Mike Holtz publicly alleged, in early 2025, that collusion exploiting high dealer pitches was widespread.

• In Europe, arrests were made tied to modified phone cameras and earpieces in casinos.

Neither South Point nor the Venetian has said it caught a cheating operation at its own tables. The switch was purely a proactive one, a response to a rising general threat.

Here is what the two methods look like.

Pitching is the long-standing U.S. style. The dealer flicks or tosses each card through the air to the player. It looks fast and fluid, but a high, arcing pitch can lift the card's face just enough for a well-placed camera to read it.

Sliding, the Euro-slide. Keeps each card flat on the felt and slides it across the table to the player. The face never leaves the surface, so a hidden camera has nothing to catch. It also cuts down on flipped (boxed) cards.

The main objection is pace. Critics argue sliding is slower than pitching and will cost hands per hour.

Advocates, Jones among them, call that largely a myth. A dealer who's pitched for 20 years will be slower at first. But, a trained slide dealer can match or beat pitch speed. And, removing the stoppages caused by flipped cards can actually add hands to a down. For cash-game dealers, that means more tips.

Also, retraining takes time, and some dealers are understandably wary of the change. Expect the "is it slower?" argument to run for a while.

Big names have lined up behind the switch on the integrity point. Daniel Negreanu has said that sliding makes it much harder for cheaters to operate. Which, at the end of the day, is rather the point.

How far will slide dealing spread?

We have South Point and the Venetian in, and MGM signalling interest. The rest of the Strip is the obvious next adopter. If the biggest room on the Strip can make the change stick, surely others will follow.

There's a near-term test, too. The Venetian hosts the $5,000 WPT® Venetian Las Vegas Fall Championship starting November 5. This will put its new dealing method in front of a major tournament field and a lot of cameras (the good sort).

The direction seems imminent. The slide, a European habit for two decades, is becoming the American standard.