Were these video poker players cheaters and/or unethical?

[beagledave]

Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich—Then Vegas Made Them Pay

Long story short. Two guys figured out button combinations on a particular model of video poker machines that led to significant payouts that the game creator/casinos did not intend. They discovered a “bug” in the software of the machines and exploited it. They did not in any way physically “tamper” with the machine.

They were arrested…eventually charged with federal crimes.

*The Las Vegas prosecutors charged Nestor and Kane with conspiracy and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Passed in 1986, the CFAA was enacted to punish hackers who remotely crack computers related to national defense or banking. But in the Internet age the government had been steadily testing the limits of the law in cases that didn’t involve computer intrusion in the usual sense. Kane and Nestor, the government argued, exceeded their otherwise lawful access to the Game King when they knowingly exploited a bug. *

The defense argument was…as you might imagine, thus:

The defense attorneys pushed for dismissal of the computer hacking charge, on the grounds that anything the Game King allowed players to do through its interface was “authorized access” by definition: The whole point of playing slots is to beat the machine, and it’s up to the computer to set and enforce limits. “All these guys did is simply push a sequence of buttons that they were legally entitled to push,” says Leavitt, Kane’s attorney.

The feds ended up eventually dropping all charges. The author of this piece was interviewed on ESPN. The hosts asked him if they thought that these two “cheated”, and/or acted immorally. The author said that they cheated, but was reluctant to “pass judgement”…or at least without also looking at the context of considering if the makers of the machines also act immorally by the very design of the machine which is designed to foster addictive play and loss of money.

If we stipulate that they did not break any existing law…

1. Were these two guys “cheating” or acting immorally?

2. Is this significantly different than if these two guys found a button sequence to press on vending machines and ended up with dispensing more candy/soda than the machine intended? (And is THAT cheating or acting immorally?)

[OneCentStamp]

1. No. Taking any advantage you can get through the user interface provided by the designers is kosher.

2. I think this creeps more into “cheating or immoral” territory (and I personally would not do it, while I would cheerfully game a video poker machine any way I could). The object of putting a buck into the vending machine and pressing D5 is to get a bag of chips and a quarter in change, not to engage the machine in a game of skill and chance for zero bags of chips, or else ten. There is no implied adversarial relationship, there’s no expectation that the goal in interacting with the snack machine is to “beat” it. There is a clear deal being offered.

[Ravenman]

Of course it is cheating. If the shoe was on the other foot (like if the game company designed the machine so pressing some innocuous button, like “Play Max Credits”, would nearly certainly cause the player to lose the next hand) we would all know that someone was being cheated.

It might not be illegal, but it is the definition of cheating.

[OneCentStamp]

@Ravenman

Of course it is cheating. If the shoe was on the other foot (like if the game company designed the machine so pressing some innocuous button, like “Play Max Credits”, would nearly certainly cause the player to lose the next hand) we would all know that someone was being cheated.

It might not be illegal, but it is the definition of cheating.

I disagree, because I think there is no possible “shoe on the other foot” here. This isn’t two equal competitors; this is one competitor (the player) playing against another competitor (the designer), who has set the rules of engagement.

If the game company, through a deliberate desire to reduce payout %age (and thus raise their own profits), incorporated a design feature like the one you postulated, I’m not even sure I would consider it cheating. There’s no sign anywhere on the machine (or anywhere in the casino), saying “EVERYTHING IS FAIR HERE.” It would however lead, sooner or later, to that model of machine becoming very unpopular. (There is a very active blog community sharing both anecdotal and hard data on these things, and a stingy machine, or even whole casino, quickly becomes known as such).

If the game company, through its own oversight, includes a loophole by which players can overcome the normally unfavorable odds and clean house, more power to them until the company figures it out.

[Grumman]

@Ravenman

If the shoe was on the other foot (like if the game company designed the machine so pressing some innocuous button, like “Play Max Credits”, would nearly certainly cause the player to lose the next hand) we would all know that someone was being cheated.

Isn’t that a fair description of how these machines work?

Granting a casino the power to have someone arrested and accused of 700 felonies for not losing is insane. If they don’t want to be in the business of random chance, they should fuck off and get a real job.

[Hari_Seldon]

Of course it isn’t cheating. It’s not like moving to Ireland to avoid corporate taxes. Apple, that’s you I am looking at.

[friedo]

Sounds like legit advantage play to me.

[Ravenman]

I’m not sure in what world one can walk into a casino and believe it is not cheating to have “complete control” over your winnings (quoted from one of the, uh, “lucky winners”).

The fact that the software allowed itself to be manipulated does not make it not cheating - unless we are living in a crappy Disney movie where the football referee decides that horses can be running backs because there’s no rule against using a horse in a high school game! Implicit in football is that it is played by people, and implicit in gambling is the assumption of risk. By using a machine in a surreptitious manner in order to provide as many jackpots as one can get away with without drawing too much attention, why, that is just simply cheating.

[kayaker]

A pinball machine that doesn’t TILT, no matter how you wack it is a poorly designed machine.

[mhendo]

Not cheating, clearly.

All the machine owners needed to do to avoid this scenario was use a machine that did not allow users to gain an extra advantage by pushing that combination of buttons.

If you provide the equipment and set the very conditions under which play is even possible, you can’t whine when the people who play the game beat you by playing your game using the very mechanisms that you provide them with.

The most egregious aspect of this whole story, IMO, is that the authorities were so willing to take the side of the incompetent slot machine manufacturer and casinos. This pretty much sums up the situation:

As the agents walked him to their car, Nestor stopped in front of a television camera and let loose. “I’m being arrested federally now—for winning at a slot machine!” he shouted in disbelief. “This is what they do to people! They put a machine on the floor, and if it has programming that doesn’t take your money and you win on their machine, they will throw you in jail!”

[mhendo]

@Ravenman

The fact that the software allowed itself to be manipulated does not make it not cheating - unless we are living in a crappy Disney movie where the football referee decides that horses can be running backs because there’s no rule against using a horse in a high school game!

This is a really asinine analogy, and you should feel bad for making it.

@Ravenman

Implicit in football is that it is played by people, and implicit in gambling is the assumption of risk.

And that risk should apply to the casino too. They have an opportunity to put a properly-functioning machine on the floor, and the risk they take by not doing that is that they will lose money.

@Ravenman

By using a machine in a surreptitious manner in order to provide as many jackpots as one can get away with without drawing too much attention, why, that is just simply cheating.

What was surreptitious about it? They sat there, pushing buttons openly and using no tools or intrusion methods, in full view of everyone in the casino and of the security cameras.

Under normal circumstances, slot machines are programmed to pay out a certain percentage over a certain period of time. If they don’t have glitches like the machines in the article, a slot machine will NEVER, over the long run, pay out more than 100%. That is, under normal circumstances, the machines are programmed in such a way that the casinos cannot lose on the slot machines. Do you consider that cheating also?

[Ravenman]

@mhendo

This is a really asinine analogy, and you should feel bad for making it.

No, I’m proud of it, because the alternative proposed – that unless someone stops you from doing something questionable then it is their fault that they didn’t stop you from doing what you damn well know was on shaky ground – is an immature life lesson typically learned by toddlers and teenagers who try to parse the rules so specifically to shift blame for their own actions to someone else.

They have an opportunity to put a properly-functioning machine on the floor, and the risk they take by not doing that is that they will lose money.

This isn’t actually a response to the issue I raised. It’s simply an equivocation on the concept of risk.

The risk I spoke of was in the lines of the odds of winning and losing, and how the manipulation of the game made it so that the game could pay out pretty much continuously at the maximum jackpot. That quite simply isn’t gambling, it is taking candy from a baby.

It’s reasonable for casinos to assume the risk that they will simply not have the odds in their favor on every day, and there will be losses because they, too, are gambling. if both the house and the customer assume the risk of gambling and one walks away the winner, that’s fair.

But where one party no longer carries any risk because they are no longer gambling, then they simply aren’t playing the same game anymore. That isn’t fair, whether it is a casino running rigged games or if a player literally no longer plays the game and just cashes out again and again.

What was surreptitious about it? They sat there, pushing buttons openly and using no tools or intrusion methods, in full view of everyone in the casino and of the security cameras.

Read the article. It is stated how they tried to avoid raising suspicions of the casinos. That was their moral mens rea, so to speak.

That is, under normal circumstances, the machines are programmed in such a way that the casinos cannot lose on the slot machines. Do you consider that cheating also?

You are comparing two different things: whether the house will win over time, which is a guarantee and very often advertised to the player ("Our slots have 97% payout!!!). That is compared with the player who is trying to overcome the odds to score a win over the short term.

There’s a huge difference between the casino making $50,000 a day on games where they have a 5% advantage over the many hundreds of players who chose to spend their money that way; as compared to these guys who were making $50,000 a day on three or four machines where they had a 100% advantage on the house. Surely you can see the difference.

[Heracles]

I’m ambivalent.

It’s hard to feel sympathy for the casinos. They’ve been raking in money from people who are bad at maths for decades.

But if exploiting a flaw in the slot machines isn’t cheating, then surely cracking a company’s computer systems through some flaw in their Web site isn’t cheating either. It’s just about sending network packets, after all.

[Muffin]

They played by the rules against a program and won. That’s not cheating.

[Odesio]

@beagledave

If we stipulate that they did not break any existing law…

1. Were these two guys “cheating” or acting immorally?

2. Is this significantly different than if these two guys found a button sequence to press on vending machines and ended up with dispensing more candy/soda than the machine intended? (And is THAT cheating or acting immorally?)

No, they weren’t cheating. People made the same accusation of Michael Larson. Larson gained some notoriety/fame when he appeared on the game show Press Your Luck racking up an impressive $110,000 winning streak over the course of a single day. Larson was so successful because he memorized the patterns of the “random” game board and knew when to press the buttons to land on the spot most advantageous to him. The producers considered him to be a cheater but there was no rule against memorizing the pattern of the game board so they paid up.

1. No, those two guys weren’t cheating because they weren’t interfacing with the poker machine in an unauthorized manner.

2. Yeah, it’s different. They were still putting their money at risk.

Sour grapes on the part of the casinos.

[mhendo]

@Ravenman

No, I’m proud of it, because the alternative proposed – that unless someone stops you from doing something questionable then it is their fault that they didn’t stop you from doing what you damn well know was on shaky ground – is an immature life lesson typically learned by toddlers and teenagers who try to parse the rules so specifically to shift blame for their own actions to someone else.

Shift blame? Who’s trying to do that?

Were i in the shoes on these men, i would be happy to take responsibility for what i had done. The only “blame shifting” would be along lines i’ve already stated: the casino should have made sure its machines didn’t allow this sort of thing before they put them out. But i’d be happy to admit to exploiting the error, and would make clear that i’d do it again, precisely because it’s not my responsibility, as a gambler, to look out for the casino’s bottom line.

@Ravenman

This isn’t actually a response to the issue I raised. It’s simply an equivocation on the concept of risk.

The risk I spoke of was in the lines of the odds of winning and losing, and how the manipulation of the game made it so that the game could pay out pretty much continuously at the maximum jackpot. That quite simply isn’t gambling, it is taking candy from a baby.

Yeah, those poor, helpless casinos. There’s no way they could have avoided this problem, is there? They should consider this a (relatively cheap) lesson in quality control. Either that, or they should sue the people who provide their machines.

@Ravenman

It’s reasonable for casinos to assume the risk that they will simply not have the odds in their favor on every day, and there will be losses because they, too, are gambling. if both the house and the customer assume the risk of gambling and one walks away the winner, that’s fair.

Ha! Speaking of equivocation!

The casinos are not “gambling” in any sense of the word, at least not as far as the machines go, because if the machines are properly configured, it is literally impossible for them to lose money over the long run. To argue that they occasionally lose in the short run, and so are “gambling” in a fair contest with their patrons, is sophistry at best.

@Ravenman

Read the article. It is stated how they tried to avoid raising suspicions of the casinos. That was their moral mens rea, so to speak.

I’ve read the article. The fact that they made efforts not to alert the casino to the fact that the casino had fucked up is irrelevant. They were under no obligation to the casino here, except to play the machines in the manner allowed by the input devices on the machines themselves. They did that, out in the open and under the scrutiny of cameras and a highly professional security staff.

@Ravenman

You are comparing two different things: whether the house will win over time, which is a guarantee and very often advertised to the player ("Our slots have 97% payout!!!). That is compared with the player who is trying to overcome the odds to score a win over the short term.

There’s a huge difference between the casino making $50,000 a day on games where they have a 5% advantage over the many hundreds of players who chose to spend their money that way; as compared to these guys who were making $50,000 a day on three or four machines where they had a 100% advantage on the house. Surely you can see the difference.

The difference is merely one of magnitude, not one of basic principle or morality. The players enter a gambling arrangement with the casino and, using the very equipment provided by the casino, they find a way to beat the casino by pressing the exact buttons that they’re supposed to be pressing in order to play the game. Move along, nothing to see here.

I understand that i’m probably not going to change your mind on this, and that’s completely fine. You probably also think card-counting is cheating.

[Boogly]

No cheating here.

The casinos probably inspected everything about the machines before they were put out and chose to use them.

[Muffin]

I guess the humans who beat out the computer chess programs each year from 1989 through 1995 in the The Harvard Cup were all cheaters.

Well, maybe not.

[brickbacon]

I think the situation is borderline unethical, but not cheating. What is surpassing to me is how the casino handled this. The stakes here were pretty small, and they could have probably been much more diplomatic about the whole thing while attracting other idiots to their casino trying to replicate the trick. It’s also in pretty stark contrast to the way casinos handle high profile clients who win big with questionable methods. When Phil Ivey was accused of edge sorting, they didn’t arest him and charge him with felonies.

That said, if you found out some flaw in Diebold ATM machines that allowed you to withdraw money without it subtracting it from your account balance, I would think you’d be arrested. I am not sure changing the machine makes a huge difference.

[mhendo]

@brickbacon

That said, if you found out some flaw in Diebold ATM machines that allowed you to withdraw money without it subtracting it from your account balance, I would think you’d be arrested. I am not sure changing the machine makes a huge difference.

This comparison occurred to me, too, but a key difference is that the fundamental purpose of ATMs is simply to allow you access to money that is already yours. They are neither designed nor advertised as gambling machines, whereby the right combination of button-pressing and luck will deposit more money in your bank account or into your hand. The bank is not, by giving you an ATM card and PIN, offering you a chance to compete in a gambling contest.

By contrast, the fundamental premise of slot machines and video poker machines is that you are depositing money for the chance to compete with the casino, and it is understood from the very beginning that one of the possible outcomes is that you finish with money over and above what you put into the machine. The casino effectively says to its customers: you put up some of your money, and in return we will give you an opportunity to win even more of ours.

Banks do not sell themselves as gambling institutions; casinos do.

By similar logic, if a person leaves a pile of hundred-dollar bills on a restaurant table and then goes off to the bathroom, taking his money is stealing even if he has, through stupidity or carelessness, provided you with a clear opportunity to do so.

But if he places that same pile of money in the center of a card table, on the understanding that he is willing to place the money at risk in a poker contest, it is perfectly reasonable to take that money from him when you figure out his “tell” and call his bluff with your superior cards.