Is cheating in Vegas using ESP illegal?

Disclaimer - I in no way believe in any paranormal abilities. My question is about the law.

As I understand it, cheating in a casino is not only against the house rules, but is actually a criminal matter for which one may be prosecuted. And by “cheating”, I mean creating an unfair advantage for yourself - things like using hidden cameras or accomplices to see other players cards, adding chips to a stack after the roulette wheel comes up black, etc.

So what happens if you win in a way which is statistically enormously unlikely, but the house cannot find any cheating going on? Say you bet on black or red at roulette all day long, and win 65% of the time? They’ll probably ban you, but are there any laws on the books that would allow for prosecuting you if there’s no evidence of cheating beyond the statistical improbability of your winning?

Since you winning is always statistically improbable, no, they can’t arrest you. They can, however, ban you from the establishment.

In the absence of evidence, I don’t see how they could even begin to prosecute you (although I suppose a sufficientlt driven and amoral casino could always manufacture and plant fake evidence. Not that anything like that would ever happen.) It’s more likely that the casino would simply ban you and pass the info on to other casinos, effectively ending you career, at least in the US. They don’t need ironclad reasons for that.

More likely they would offer you a job. :smiley:

Card counting is a good analogy here. Of course, the advantage of counting is not nearly as high as winning 50/50 odds 65% of the time, but it gives a slight advantage. Since it only involves using your brain, it’s strategy, and so is not illegal. But Las Vegas casinos can ban you for pretty much any reason, and will happily do so if they suspect you of counting.

Without proof that you’ve somehow cheated at roullette, they can’t prosecute you, but they can ban you for being too lucky for their taste.

Unlike card counting, your setup gives a huge advantage to the player. That actually makes it far easier to get away with than something like card counting, where the advantage is there, but slim. For instance, if I could guess the color of every roulette spin, I’d have retirement money (over 5 million) from a $5 bankroll long before being banned from the casinos. With no house maximum, you could do that in 20 hits, spread across multiple casinos. Even with house maximums, you could probably pull it off in 40-50 hits. By comparison, you could execute card counting flawlessly for that many hands, and still come out in the negative.

This is one of those “Show me the page in the rulebook where it says a mule can’t kick field goals” situations.

There are no laws against ESP use because no one has thought it important enough to pass such laws, because few people believe ESP exists. Casinos can ban you, but they don’t ban everyone who wins, the love winners because winners come back and gamble more. Big winners are often comped suites and meals, because the casino hopes they’ll stay a bit longer and gamble away their winnings.

From what I understand, casinos can ban consistant winners, not because they broke any laws, but because casinos are considered private establishments and can ban you just because they don’t like your face.

And if you always knew what roulette number was going to come up, “cheating” is easy. You just put your money on the winning number.

Card counting is more difficult, because you have to keep playing, but bet high when the deck is in your favor and bet low when the deck is against you. So people who play consistently but swing between high and low bets are watched as suspected card counters.

If you have ESP, you just put your money on 23, or whatever you see coming up, and win. Then you put your bankroll on the next winning number. And again. At 17 to 1 odds that money multiplies fast, not like blackjack where each winning hand only puts you up a small amount.

But you probably aren’t going to be able to walk into a casino and put a million dollars on 23. There are table limits, and the purpose of the limit is to limit the casino’s exposure to a freak win. The more trials there are, the greater the effect of the house edge.

It’s true because I saw it on the teevee…

A few years back there was a family that tracked winning roulette numbers, based on miniscule imperfections in the wheels. They consistantly bet the numbers that came up most often. Roulette tables even provide forms to track such things. Anyway, this family was coming out way ahead. IIRC, they were not only banned, but roughed up. The law looked the other way.

No, I have no cite.

If you’re talking about the same show I saw, which was “Breaking Vegas,” then that was Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo and family. They tracked tilted roulette wheels in casinos all over Europe. I don’t remember their getting roughed up but they did get banned from a number of places, and in one instance forced the local government to force the casino to let them back in.

Your post is my cite.

On a similar theme, here is a snippet from this morning’s (London) Times:

In 2005 a Hungarian woman and two Serbian men made £1.3 million at the Ritz in London with a scanner hidden in a mobile phone. The device calculated the speed of the roulette ball and where it was likely to land. Although the trio were arrested they were never charged, and as there had been no interference with the table they kept the money.

That’s all.

No it isn’t.

Original story here.

Cheating by using ESP would appear to consitute a violation of the laws of physics.

They’re not just a good idea.

Which one?

I am not a lawyer, but I believe that casinos will bar you for card counting, even though you are doing nothing wrong.
It’s their fault for using a game where a skilled player can get an edge. (Of course they didn’t know this until Edward Thorpe published his book on blackjack.) The casinos also use more decks, and change them before the supply of cards runs low, thus lessening the advantage of card counting.

If you had ESP, then poker would be the game to play.
I understand the casinos take a cut for providing the facilities, so they wouldn’t lose money.
The other players would lose heavily, but how would they tell you weren’t just a brilliant player who was spotting subtle ‘tells’?
Since the 2006 World Series of Poker offers a first prize of $12,000,000 for just one event, why bother messing around with roulette? (I’m not sure how ESP helps here anyway - presumably you mean forecasting the future.)
Certainly an ‘unknown’ has won the first prize before, so that’s clearly your safest move.

don’t you meant the laws of psychics?

17-1 on a single number? You are playing at the wrong casino.