Yeah, it’s cheating, for the reasons noted. Retroactively changing your bet is a cheat, whether the machine permits it or a crappy dealer does.
I think what clouds this is how unsympathetic the cheated party is. Frankly, it’s hard to envision a corporate defendant who would elicit less sympathy. Maybe if it was Hitler’s casino. It’s really, really, REALLY hard to shed any tears for casinos, who would gladly squeeze your last drop of blood from you if the gaming laws permitted it. If I discovered my next-door neighbor was doing this, I don’t believe I’d turn him in, so I guess that makes me a (lesser) bad guy as well.
But this was still cheating. They knew it, too. The one guy, after one of the casinos shut him down, left without his winnings after a token protest, then sprinted to his car and got the hell out of there. The first guy arrested might have gotten away with it if he hadn’t gotten stupidly greedy–if I understood the article properly, he would use the SAME EXACT PAYOUT multiple times, after waiting a few minutes, rather than playing till he hit a new one. The casino director had him detained after he noticed that not only had the series of huge payouts continued, two in a row were for four deuces and the four of clubs. I have calculated the odds of that occurring to be one chance in a thousand million bazillion.
But I guess he would have been pinched sooner or later if not then. “You got to know when to hold 'em…know when to fold 'em!”
I think you’re really stretching the concept of gambling here. There was no risk:
Running through a series of $1 bets (when they even bothered to do it) until they could game the payout to give them several grand is, well, not a risk in any meaningful sense.
Yeah, I was responding to Iggy who said that the amount of risk taken by the alleged cheaters affected the ethics of the situation. It’s not so important to me.
Okay. But I read Iggy’s point to mean that so long as the appropriate amount was put at risk in advance, however that occurred, it wouldn’t be cheating. So, if I find your $20 on the floor and gamble it to win a jackpot, it’s not a cheat even though I’m not risking anything I came in the door with (same as if I found someone’s slot machine where he hadn’t cashed out and walked away). As far as the casino is concerned, they didn’t get cheated. Anyway, that’s how I read it.
The casinos should not call that cheating. Just like Phil Ivy wasn’t cheating when he noticed flaws in the design on the back of cards. What they are doing is exploiting a flaw.
It’s not the players’ responsibility to notify the casino of problems. The casino should monitor their equipment and fix these faults.
If the shoe was on the other foot, would the casino return money to the player? What if the machine was broken the other way where the payouts were too low. Or what if a game like the roulette table was out of balance? I doubt a casino would take the initiative to notify the players and refund their money. The casinos have probably made billions from errors and they’re not giving any of that money back.
Definitely cheating. If it’s not illegal it should be.
Many people posting here are clearly unaware of how video poker works; it’s not a normal slot, it does follow clear and transparent rules that you could easily replicate yourself with a shuffled pack of cards. If they’d managed to beat the paytables and earn more than the percentage they were supposed to that would be fine, if they’d discovered they get more high cards by tapping certain sequences, and so got more money that way that would also be part of the risk casinos should take on. But playing at $50 after already winning, when you only payed $1 for the game is beyond the pale and clear fraud (wheteer or not it is legistatatively defined as such. If it isn’t the low should be widened to incoporate it.)
Now I have a friend who once said that he once was on a video poker machine and discovered a sequence that was continually paying off. He kept doing that as long as he could, all the while casino employees were eyeing him. Eventually he had to get up to use the restroom and the moment he did, they flung a tarp over the machine and moved it off the floor.
So frankly its the casinos loss.
But isnt that partly why they give big winners free drinks. So they get either drunk or need to use the restroom?
“Hitler’s Casino” is an amazing band name. But I suspect the name ( If it were real ) would start a billion post thread over whether or not it’s offensive.
