Is cheating in Vegas using ESP illegal?

How come all the fortune tellers and others of that ilk aren’t flocking to Vegas instead of working their scams for reletive peanuts?

The inverse-square law.

Its not 35:1 ?

Uh-huh. :dubious:

From conversations with a couple friends in the industry, it’s my understanding that casinsos LOVE card counters. First of all, as has been pointed out, the relative advantage to the player is sufficiently low and the countermeasures are sufficiently advanced that it is very difficult for an individual to make money counting cards (organized rings of counters are a different animal, and are much more aggressively opposed by the casinos). But more importantly, the mystique surrounding card counting guarantees that for every counter who knows what he’s doing, there will be a dozen amateurs convinced that they can beat the system but will end up losing track of the count three hands in.

Yes it is. Which is why I posted what I posted. Lemur said it was 17-1. If you are getting 17-1 odds on a single number you are playing at the wrong casino. 36 numbers plus 2 house numbers pays 35-1 with a 5.25% vig built in.

I am recalling this from a book I read some time ago so I may get the details wrong (I think it was “The Physics of Star Trek”). For one person to be able to pick up the thoughts of another person those thoughts would have to be transmitted. For the transmission there has to be some sort of carrier wave. The carrier wave would be subject to the inverse-square law and brainwaves aren’t powerful enough to travel any distance outside the skull to be picked up by someone else’s brain.

Vegas hosts lots of conventions. The Amazing Meeting is going on this week I think.

Do psychic organizations ever convene there? Seems like that would be the place for them to go.

Oh it would indeed, if they actually had psychic ability.

Y’know I don’t play roulette, but I somehow had 17-1 odds parked in my brain. I was wrong. The payout for a bet on a single number is 35-1, the odds are 37-1.

There is a bet that wins you 17-1 according to wikipedia, if you bet on “green” or “row 00”, you win 17-1 if the ball lands on 0 or 00, the odds are 18-1.

If I owned a casino I would encourage psychics to play there. I put ads on Montel Williams’ and Larry King’s shows offering discounts.

Speaking of Star Trek, I remember one TNG episode where some of the senior staff were playing poker (I think it was the episode where the Enterprise got stuck in a time loop and kept getting destroyed). I was thinking how much of a disadvantage Riker had when playing against Deanna Troi, who could sense the emotions of all the players; Commander Data, who could remember the exact details of every card played; and Geordi LaForge, who had that “magic visor” that was probably able to read the heat images through the back side of the cards.

Not to mention the fact that in an early episode it was stated he could tell when humans were lying. Troi, Data and LaForge, Worst Poker Buddies Ever. But Riker probably made all his money back playing Commander “I bet fifty!” Worf.

No one is reading thoughts in this case. Although there is no reliable evidence that anyone can see into the future, I don’t think doing so would necessarily break any laws of physics.

Back when I was a young impressionable lad of about 18 , and actually believed that you only use 10% of your brain, I was very interested in developing my paranormal powers.

Not only did I have plans on breaking Vegas using ESP, but I also planned to use astral travel to "check in " on the hotties from my graduating high school class, and use mind reading to delve into the deepest secrets people I didn’t like with an aim to blackmailing them into being my bitches.

Needless to say, I never got rich, I have to satisfy my voyeuristic tendencies on the internet, and I remain, bitch free. The interesting thing is,when I related this story over on another board, I was met by more than a few people who were trying to tell me my motivations we’re “wrong” and that the “natural forces” wouldn’t grant me this special insight because I was going to use it for personal gain.

Damn those natural forces…didn’t they know I was going to donate half my winnings to charity? Shows how much attention they paid to my chants

I just assumed the casinos would be willing victims, ah for the naive days of youth

I was making a funny, but I’ll bite. Otto is in good company; violation of the inverse square law was one of Einstein’s objections to psychic phenomena. The reason ESP appears to violate the laws of physics is that all observable physical interactions in the universe can be attributed to one of four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force. None of those could account for the spontaneous transmission of information from one brain to another, unless you allow for the possibility for some sort of nonlocal “EPR paradox” sort of explanation (ironically, Einstein intended the EPR paradox as a criticism of nonlocality, since it would have to involve a sort of “telepathy”). That would be a real stretch, though, and there’s no evidence for it. Barring that, there would have to be a previously undetected fifth fundamental force in place for telepathy to work, and there’s no evidence any such force exists.

I think if ESP was discovered and there was some way to test for it (that would hold up in a court of law), it definitely count as cheating, and would be illegal without any kind change in the law to prohibit it. From the Nevada Gambling Laws :

Though of course ESP (in terms of telepathy) would only help you on the poker table, which the casinos do not really care about as they get their cut regardless of who wins. I guess some form of telekenesis would be your best bet at craps. Precongnition would be best but them you could also see yourself being busted :)…

As a measure of how strict these laws are. A guy worked out that the Keno (a kind of computerized bingo) was only using the standard ISO C “rand” function (and they didn’t reset the key) so could with enough data (easy to get as you can sit in the coffee shop writing down number for as long as you want) predict the next number to come up. Rather than shrug, get a new program, and admit they had been beaten (he didn’t tamper with machine he just worked out the sequence), they prosecuted him for a felony.

I believe that it was specifically stated that Troi couldn’t read Riker, specifically, well enough to gain an advantage, since she was so closely emotionally connected to him anyway that there would be a wash of other emotions overwhelming any relating to his current hand or bet. And LaForge said that it wasn’t his fault that the other players chose a brand of playing cards which was transparent in the infrared (implying that there are some cards he can’t see through). Data, meanwhile, is the proverbial wild card here: On the one hand, he can perfecly calculate the probabilities given all available information, and he has a perfect poker face. On the other hand, he has no ability at all to penetrate others’ poker faces, or to generate “false tells” that might throw others off. One on one, he’d probably have a considerable advantage, but in a sufficiently large group, an experienced human poker player like Riker would probably do better than him.

Back to the OP, it’s my understanding that cheating using any sort of “device” is illegal (with the precise meaning of “device” being debateable), so someone using a cell-phone computer or the like could be legally prosecuted. There’s some speculation, though, that a human might conceivably be able to train to do approximately the same thing as such computers, to a great enough extent to be able to overcome the house edge. This wouldn’t be a paranormal ability, but it would seem to occupy the same legal ground, and from what I understand, use of such an ability would be perfectly legal (though it would still, of course, get you banned from every casino very quickly).

At first I laughed at this question, but further reflection got me to thinking about some interesting philosophical angles to the OP’s query. Let me start by saying this may verge on GD territory, and if my post inspires further responses my own ESP tells me the mods to be moving this thread shortly.

Initially, one might thinK “Is cheating in Vegas using ESP illegal?” is an update to Dingle’s famous question “Whast color eggs would an elephat lay, if an elephant laid eggs?” Since elephants don’t lay eggs–and ESP does not exist–the question is moot. But what if I asked “Is stealing from a bank using a teleportation device illegal?” At first blush, I think most folks would answer this “yes” and ignore any caveat that teleportation (1) does not exist today, or even (2) violates the laws of physics. It seems in this case the method is immaterial: Theft is theft, regardless of how effective the method might be (it explains why “attempted” larceny is still considered a crime, as is “possession” of stolen property regardless of whether the person in possession committed the theft).

So is “cheating in a casino” = “theft”? IANAL, but I’m betting the act of placing a bet is made under the usual rules of a contract: agreement/offer/acceptance, mutuality and consideration, competent and consentual parties, and a legal objective. One might wonder about the conpetence of a person attempting to cheat via ESP, but laying that question aside, it is clear that some forms of “cheating” are tolerated by the house (because they believe them to be futile), while others are not. The same can’t be said of a bank, where presumably someone even talking about pilfering the vault–let alone camped outside with a gigantic non-functioning teleporter, laughing like a maniacal supervillain–would draw the quick attention of the authorities and could conceivably be charged with a crime.

On the contrary, if the telepath simply disclosed to casino officials beforehand “Hello, I 'm just letting you know that I’m using my ESP tonight, so be prepared to pony up the dough,” my guess is most houses would beg him to play, and even if he did strike it rich, they’d grudgingly pay up. But if he did not disclose his ESP ability and started winning consistently, he would no doubt be barred just because he’s a winner–like any other consistent winner the casino may choose to bar. If, however, he was later outed as a telepath, could the casino sue for lost winnings on the basis that he did not fulfil the “mutuality” portion of the betting contract (i.e. he knew ESP was real, they did not, information which would have drastically altered the casino’s gambling offer).

To summarize, I now thing it would not be cheating–at least until ESP was generally recognized as a true ability. I just thought I’d go thru my thinking because that’s definitely not where I started, and i thought the train of thought was interesting. You may disagree, but there it is.

Do people who win too much still get “escorted” out an alley door by four bouncers who “suggest” that they not come back?