The Belt Buckle Camera That Forced Nevada to Outlaw Blackjack Computers

The Belt Buckle Camera That Forced Nevada to Outlaw Blackjack Computers

In 1972, Nevada's Gaming Control Board examined a 15-pound wearable computer hidden inside a Sunday
school teacher's dress shirt — and ruled it legal. Keith Taft's blackjack-beating machine, "George,"
was just the opening move in a fifteen-year escalation that forced the state of Nevada to rewrite its
gaming law three times.

Every electronic device carried onto a Las Vegas casino floor today exists in the legal shadow of
Nevada Revised Statutes 465.075 — the felony statute Taft's work made necessary. This is the full
story of how it got written.

Keith Taft was a devout Baptist who taught Sunday school, didn't drink, and didn't gamble — until he
read Edward Thorp's *Beat the Dealer* in 1969 and went to his garage in Tiburon, California, instead
of a casino. He spent two years hand-building "George," a homemade 16-bit wearable computer operated
by toe-switches hidden in his shoes and read through a flashing light wired into his glasses. In 1972
he took it to Reno. The Nevada Gaming Control Board reviewed the device and ruled: what he was doing
was not a crime.

He didn't stop. He teamed with legendary card counter Ken Uston to build "David," a miniaturized
two-player version that won $130,000 from Nevada casinos in a single documented run. He kept
escalating — a computer hidden in a dental mouthguard, copper wire woven into a fake beard — always
one step ahead of Nevada's regulators. Then his brother, Ted Taft, built a camera into a belt buckle
that read the dealer's hole card and transmitted it to a satellite dish hidden in a pickup truck
parked in the casino lot.

That was the device Nevada couldn't write around. In 1985, the state passed NRS 465.075 — the first
law in its history making it a felony to possess or use an electronic gambling device on a casino
floor. Keith Taft was never prosecuted under it; his work predated the statute he inspired. He was
inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2004 and died in 2006, reportedly still tinkering in his
garage.

This is a Vegas story first: a fifteen-year arms race between one man's garage and the Nevada
legislature, fought out on the casino floors of Reno and the Las Vegas Strip.

Chapters:
0:00 Cold Open — The Man at Table 14
2:47 Meet Keith Taft — Sunday School Teacher, Electronics Engineer
4:13 Building "George" in a Tiburon Garage
6:30 1972: George Goes to Reno
6:57 The Nevada Gaming Control Board Rules
8:07 Ken Uston and the "David" Machine
10:19 The $130,000 Run
11:13 Escalation — the Dental Appliance and the Beard Wire
13:19 Ted Taft's New Angle — the Dealer's Hole Card
14:35 The Belt-Buckle Camera and the Satellite Dish
16:27 A Legal Gap Nevada Never Anticipated
17:51 NRS 465.075 — Nevada Criminalizes Electronic Devices (1985)
20:59 Blackjack Hall of Fame and Keith Taft's Death
22:07 Recap — Fifteen Years, Three Rewrites of the Law
23:52 Back at Table 14 — The Legacy

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