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>The gamblers unlawfully took advantage of the Golden Nugget when they caught on to the pattern and increased their bets from as little as $10 to $5,000 I don'

>The gamblers unlawfully took advantage of the Golden Nugget when they caught on to the pattern and increased their bets from as little as $10 to $5,000 I don't understand why a casino feels like it's legally entitled to a profit even when it fails to perform the simplest possible action to maintain an edge: shuffle the cards!

DanielStraight 14y ago
A comparable situation might be a misprinted price tag at a car dealership, which they are not required to honor as long as it's corrected when discovered.
- larrys 14y ago
  The price tag is not a contract and until a contract is executed nothing legally exists. It takes an offer and acceptance. If the price tag says $15,000 for the car, and you enter into a contract which the dealer signs then the dealer has to sell you the car. The same as if you make a mistake in your calculations and sign to purchase the car. Now in the case where perhaps a dealer employee had changed the price and it could be proven that you knew that there would be some legal concept that allows the dealership to get out of the contract.
- iskander 14y ago
  1) I'm sad to find your totally reasonable comment downvoted. Decline in HN standards, etc... 2) An alternative scenario: what if a car dealership simply mis-priced a car? They're holding a rare race car but the owner asked his know-nothing nephew to appraise it, who was busy texting his girlfriend and absent-mindedly wrote down $500. If you buy this car and the owner realizes his mistake the next day, can he ask for the car back?
  - DanielStraight 14y ago
    1. I'm just confused, but that's OK. 2. As far as I know, the situation does not apply for mis-pricing. Some information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistake_%28contract_law%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistake_%28contract_law%29 It seems the situation is basically if a mistake is made that still seems reasonable (pricing a car for $19000 instead of $20000), it must be honored. If the mistake is completely unreasonable (pricing a car for $20 instead of $20000) it does not have to be honored. But a mistake in business knowledge (pricing a $20000 car for $2000 because you think that's all it's worth) still has to be honored.
- danielweber 14y ago
  The casino was not required to keep the table running. It's not illegal to count cards but the casino can tell you to leave, and it you don't you are then trespassing.
  - d3c0d3dab0d3 14y ago
    In New Jersey the casino is not allowed to ask you to leave for counting cards. They can only force you to bet the same amount and/or shuffle every hand.
- JackC 14y ago
  The problem is that the car dealership would indeed be required to honor the misprinted price tag if it was discovered after they completed the sale. This situation is like, a car dealership misprints the price tags; the salespeople spend hours selling cars; and then the dealership turns around and sues the people who bought cars and drove away. It's not going to be a winner. (N.B., no analogy is really going to help us too much here, because the outcome will depend on the specifics of state law regarding malfunctioning gambling machines and any agreements made by those particular gamblers to get into that particular casino. So anyone who tells you they have any idea what will happen is either a gambling law expert or making it up. I just thought the car dealership thing was an interesting example.)
  - DanielStraight 14y ago
    I agree the analogy breaks down. My point was mostly that mistakes are often forgiven in business. Whichever way the legal ruling goes, once the gamblers discovered the mistake, they were, in my mind, cheating by exploiting it. Imagine the opposite scenario. By my understanding, a deck full of face cards benefits the gambler in blackjack. If a dealer notices that his cards are missing say, the jack of diamonds, it would be wrong of him to keep dealing knowing that the house had a better advantage that intended. Surely players losing money in such a situation would want their money back. Again, the analogy isn't perfect, but I can see the casino's point of view... even if the decision to sue customers is short-sighted.
    - tolmasky 14y ago
      The analogy is beyond not perfect -- it is completely broken. The "opposite" scenario you bring up requires actually breaking the game. The deck was not broken at all in this case, it was just in an unfavorable ordering to the house: an ordering that is still perfectly possible. Regardless of being very unlikely to happen, having the ordering these players dealt with over and over, it is still possible. Realize that if even one of the decks had been shuffled, then the players' strategy would have failed and they would have probably lost it all again. The players did not know all the decks would be unshuffled, they saw a pattern and took their chances. That is in fact the whole reason you play a luck based game -- for the off chance that luck falls in your favor. It is enlightening that you cannot come up with the "opposite" scenario without actually breaking the game. Here allow me to come up with the opposite scenario for you: an ordering that does not favor the player, which by the way, happens basically EVERY HAND. That's why the house basically always wins, because these games are designed to have the odds against the player. By shuffling the cards the house is actually ensuring a higher likelihood of unfavorable outcomes. That is what is so upsetting about these cases to me: the fundamental reasoning this all comes down to is that people are "not supposed" to win these games, thus winning must be cheating. If you design a game with the odds against the player, then spend tons of money outsourcing the randomization of cards to guarantee no card counting etc, and then encourage superstitious playing to keep people hooked and losing more money -- then on top of all this the player still wins, sue them? Please.
- Retric 14y ago
  It's fairly common for people to buy high value antiques for a tiny fraction of their actual value at flee-markets etc. However, the seller does not get to say, 'my bad sale is void'. EX: Value ~6,000$ sale price 14$. http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2012/03/31/man-finds-picasso-original-in-thrift-store/ http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2012/03/31/man-finds-picasso-o...
joezydeco 14y ago
Read the entire quote: "The gamblers unlawfully took advantage of the Golden Nugget when they caught on to the pattern and increased their bets from as little as $10 to $5,000 and by passing money to fellow gamblers in order to place bets in excess of posted betting limits" Where was the pit boss to shut those players down when the bets were coming in that large? Or did the casino believe these players would eventually lose most of it back and relax the table limits while this much money was in play?
- weaksauce 14y ago
  Cards were not shuffled. They didn't enforce their own rules regarding betting. I honestly don't see how they can come at them. I am not a lawyer so I wonder what legal stance they have in this to sue the gamblers?
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    Totally agree that the casino has almost no footing here. The fact that the cards were not shuffled isn't really a factor here. That is the casino's responsibility. It's also the casino's responsibility to monitor and shut down games that are out of control, and that doesn't seem to have happened here. Casinos are allowed to break their own rules regarding betting limits. Unless the state/jurisdiction has a limit, it's up to the house to decide when/if a bet is over the max. If a large enough player shows up at a $5K table and wants to bet $10K, you can be sure that he'll be allowed to play.
fusiongyro 14y ago
Somewhere or other I read an example of protocol design: handling the lint trap in your dryer. One way to do it is empty the trap at the end when the clothes are dry. Another way is at the beginning, right after loading the wet clothes. In a mathematical sense they're equivalent, because in both cases the lint gets removed once per load. But in practice, emptying first is better because the protocol will "work" even if someone fails to empty the trap. Same situation here. Blaming the card company and the customers and doing all this suing is a lot of work compared to shuffling the damn cards. It's a bad protocol. If they always shuffled, this kind of thing couldn't happen.
- KevinEldon 14y ago
  Yes, you guarantee the cards are shuffled, but you also add a question as to whether you've shuffled the deck in your favor. A competitor might make the point that they play unopened decks while you manipulate the decks before the game.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    That competitor is free to try and capitalize on the expected value of the three gamblers that switch because of it while managing the liability induced by the expected value of the black swan event. In practice, I don't know why a gambler would trust unshuffled decks over shuffled ones. In the end, anybody gambling is a sucker anyway.

DanielStraight 14y ago

A comparable situation might be a misprinted price tag at a car dealership, which they are not required to honor as long as it's corrected when discovered.

larrys 14y ago
The price tag is not a contract and until a contract is executed nothing legally exists. It takes an offer and acceptance. If the price tag says $15,000 for the car, and you enter into a contract which the dealer signs then the dealer has to sell you the car. The same as if you make a mistake in your calculations and sign to purchase the car. Now in the case where perhaps a dealer employee had changed the price and it could be proven that you knew that there would be some legal concept that allows the dealership to get out of the contract.
iskander 14y ago
1) I'm sad to find your totally reasonable comment downvoted. Decline in HN standards, etc... 2) An alternative scenario: what if a car dealership simply mis-priced a car? They're holding a rare race car but the owner asked his know-nothing nephew to appraise it, who was busy texting his girlfriend and absent-mindedly wrote down $500. If you buy this car and the owner realizes his mistake the next day, can he ask for the car back?
- DanielStraight 14y ago
  1. I'm just confused, but that's OK. 2. As far as I know, the situation does not apply for mis-pricing. Some information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistake_%28contract_law%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistake_%28contract_law%29 It seems the situation is basically if a mistake is made that still seems reasonable (pricing a car for $19000 instead of $20000), it must be honored. If the mistake is completely unreasonable (pricing a car for $20 instead of $20000) it does not have to be honored. But a mistake in business knowledge (pricing a $20000 car for $2000 because you think that's all it's worth) still has to be honored.
danielweber 14y ago
The casino was not required to keep the table running. It's not illegal to count cards but the casino can tell you to leave, and it you don't you are then trespassing.
- d3c0d3dab0d3 14y ago
  In New Jersey the casino is not allowed to ask you to leave for counting cards. They can only force you to bet the same amount and/or shuffle every hand.
JackC 14y ago
The problem is that the car dealership would indeed be required to honor the misprinted price tag if it was discovered after they completed the sale. This situation is like, a car dealership misprints the price tags; the salespeople spend hours selling cars; and then the dealership turns around and sues the people who bought cars and drove away. It's not going to be a winner. (N.B., no analogy is really going to help us too much here, because the outcome will depend on the specifics of state law regarding malfunctioning gambling machines and any agreements made by those particular gamblers to get into that particular casino. So anyone who tells you they have any idea what will happen is either a gambling law expert or making it up. I just thought the car dealership thing was an interesting example.)
- DanielStraight 14y ago
  I agree the analogy breaks down. My point was mostly that mistakes are often forgiven in business. Whichever way the legal ruling goes, once the gamblers discovered the mistake, they were, in my mind, cheating by exploiting it. Imagine the opposite scenario. By my understanding, a deck full of face cards benefits the gambler in blackjack. If a dealer notices that his cards are missing say, the jack of diamonds, it would be wrong of him to keep dealing knowing that the house had a better advantage that intended. Surely players losing money in such a situation would want their money back. Again, the analogy isn't perfect, but I can see the casino's point of view... even if the decision to sue customers is short-sighted.
  - tolmasky 14y ago
    The analogy is beyond not perfect -- it is completely broken. The "opposite" scenario you bring up requires actually breaking the game. The deck was not broken at all in this case, it was just in an unfavorable ordering to the house: an ordering that is still perfectly possible. Regardless of being very unlikely to happen, having the ordering these players dealt with over and over, it is still possible. Realize that if even one of the decks had been shuffled, then the players' strategy would have failed and they would have probably lost it all again. The players did not know all the decks would be unshuffled, they saw a pattern and took their chances. That is in fact the whole reason you play a luck based game -- for the off chance that luck falls in your favor. It is enlightening that you cannot come up with the "opposite" scenario without actually breaking the game. Here allow me to come up with the opposite scenario for you: an ordering that does not favor the player, which by the way, happens basically EVERY HAND. That's why the house basically always wins, because these games are designed to have the odds against the player. By shuffling the cards the house is actually ensuring a higher likelihood of unfavorable outcomes. That is what is so upsetting about these cases to me: the fundamental reasoning this all comes down to is that people are "not supposed" to win these games, thus winning must be cheating. If you design a game with the odds against the player, then spend tons of money outsourcing the randomization of cards to guarantee no card counting etc, and then encourage superstitious playing to keep people hooked and losing more money -- then on top of all this the player still wins, sue them? Please.
Retric 14y ago
It's fairly common for people to buy high value antiques for a tiny fraction of their actual value at flee-markets etc. However, the seller does not get to say, 'my bad sale is void'. EX: Value ~6,000$ sale price 14$. http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2012/03/31/man-finds-picasso-original-in-thrift-store/ http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2012/03/31/man-finds-picasso-o...

joezydeco 14y ago

Read the entire quote: "The gamblers unlawfully took advantage of the Golden Nugget when they caught on to the pattern and increased their bets from as little as $10 to $5,000 and by passing money to fellow gamblers in order to place bets in excess of posted betting limits" Where was the pit boss to shut those players down when the bets were coming in that large? Or did the casino believe these players would eventually lose most of it back and relax the table limits while this much money was in play?

weaksauce 14y ago
Cards were not shuffled. They didn't enforce their own rules regarding betting. I honestly don't see how they can come at them. I am not a lawyer so I wonder what legal stance they have in this to sue the gamblers?
- joezydeco 14y ago
  Totally agree that the casino has almost no footing here. The fact that the cards were not shuffled isn't really a factor here. That is the casino's responsibility. It's also the casino's responsibility to monitor and shut down games that are out of control, and that doesn't seem to have happened here. Casinos are allowed to break their own rules regarding betting limits. Unless the state/jurisdiction has a limit, it's up to the house to decide when/if a bet is over the max. If a large enough player shows up at a $5K table and wants to bet $10K, you can be sure that he'll be allowed to play.

fusiongyro 14y ago

Somewhere or other I read an example of protocol design: handling the lint trap in your dryer. One way to do it is empty the trap at the end when the clothes are dry. Another way is at the beginning, right after loading the wet clothes. In a mathematical sense they're equivalent, because in both cases the lint gets removed once per load. But in practice, emptying first is better because the protocol will "work" even if someone fails to empty the trap. Same situation here. Blaming the card company and the customers and doing all this suing is a lot of work compared to shuffling the damn cards. It's a bad protocol. If they always shuffled, this kind of thing couldn't happen.

KevinEldon 14y ago
Yes, you guarantee the cards are shuffled, but you also add a question as to whether you've shuffled the deck in your favor. A competitor might make the point that they play unopened decks while you manipulate the decks before the game.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  That competitor is free to try and capitalize on the expected value of the three gamblers that switch because of it while managing the liability induced by the expected value of the black swan event. In practice, I don't know why a gambler would trust unshuffled decks over shuffled ones. In the end, anybody gambling is a sucker anyway.