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Yup. Sounds about right. Read about Phil Ivey, who used a similar "hack" to advantage play in Baccarat. Casinos really can't have it both ways. If they want t
by bmmayer1 12y ago
Yup. Sounds about right.
Read about Phil Ivey, who used a similar "hack" to advantage play in Baccarat.
Casinos really can't have it both ways. If they want to make money from people gambling money, they need to assume the risk of losing the gamble through their own incompetence.
If they released a table game with a negative house edge (due to some mathematical miscalculation) and most of the people who played it won money, they would figure out their mistake, pull the game and everyone would keep their winnings. How is this any different?
- joezydeco 12y agoIt's different because normally a casino game is the end result of a number of checks and double-checks to make sure the game is square, the math is correct, and no possible cheats exist that the player can exploit. A game that had a negative house EV would never make it past development. A slot that had a bug that paid incorrectly would (theoretically) never make it past the gaming lab. A deck of cards would be inspected for manufacturing defects before it got into Phil Ivey's hands. Naturally problems do happen, and things do slip through once in a great while. This is why every slot in every casino has a small sign that reads MALFUNCTION VOIDS ALL PAYS ..it's written into the gaming laws, and that's the end of the story.
- bmmayer1 12y agoDo you think advantage players are cheaters?
- toki5 12y agoThere's a fairly large difference between advantage players and what these guys did. You have to keep in mind the spirit of the machines. Video poker machines are meant to play poker. If you can somehow find an edge in poker itself that gives you an advantageous position, I'd be for it. Exploiting the software that runs the game, however, isn't fair. The punishment was blown monstrously out of proportion, but yes, I still think what they did was wrong (and certainly against the law!).
- danielweber 12y agoHe was changing the bet amounts after the victory. Imagine playing for pesos, and then upon victory tricking the software into playing for Euros. If he had outsmarted or even figured out a way to control the random number generator through button presses, I'd be all for him. But this is more like finding an ATM that has a bug to not record withdrawals of exactly $420 and then emptying the machine. It's shouldn't be lost that the casinos love to let players think they have an advantage, even they don't. The old joke is that casinos have a word for people who have a system to beat the house: "Welcome!"
- mikeash 12y agoThis stuff is really interesting. Imagine if you're playing, say, blackjack with a human dealer. After you win a hand but before you collect your winnings, you ask the dealer, "Say, would you mind if I retroactively increase my bet and collect the winnings on that?" The dealer replies, "Sure thing," and pays you accordingly. I imagine we'd all agree that there's no harm in asking, and that the dealer's compliance is his own problem and a problem for his employer but not your problem. Why does this suddenly change when you're talking to a computer instead of a human? I'm not saying it doesn't change, but I can't entirely figure out why we approach these two scenarios so differently. For your ATM comparison, it's not uncommon for excessively-clever bank customers to jokingly ask the teller for a million bucks, often in response to a question like, "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" Suppose you found a particularly dim teller who decided to actually hand over a million bucks when you asked. We'd blame the teller and the bank for agreeing to such a thing, not the person who asked, right? Yet when it's an ATM instead of a teller, we blame the person asking.
- joezydeco 12y agoThe gaming laws do not give the dealer the right to change the rules of the game once they have been set by the house and registered with the gaming control board. If the dealer decides to deviate from the rules, the dealer has committed a crime. The player could also be an accomplice if he was in cohorts with the dealer. Now in the case of the buggy slot machine, the software has been checked to NOT perform this action. If it does, it's obviously deviating from the rules as well and needs to be shut down. To avoid making the player an accomplice, the "malfunction voids all pays" rule comes into play. If the player knowingly made the slot deviate from the rules, then that falls under the definition of cheating.
- joezydeco 12y agoDepends. Do you think edge sorting is cheating? Because that's what Ivey has been accused of by the Borgata.
- 6thSigma 12y agoFor those that don't know about the Phil Ivey "hack," here's basically what he is accused of: A certain card manufacturer had a defect in which there were tiny deviations in the designs on the backs of their cards. What they would do was the dealer would show all cards face down and Ivey and his accomplice would have the dealer rotate the cards so that the designs were all the same way. Then as they would play, they would have the dealer rotate the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 (which are the good cards in Baccarat). This way they could spot all of the good cards face down based on the designs on the back. Ivey made sure to request a card deck shuffler to ensure the cards weren't rotated during shuffles. Ivey won tens of millions of dollars doing this and is now being sued by several casinos even though he never touched the cards, didn't have any kind of cheating device, and had the casino agree to every move he did.
- joezydeco 12y agoIvey made sure to request a card deck shuffler to ensure the cards weren't rotated during shuffles. He also requested a dealer that spoke Mandarin (under the story of being superstituous) so he could ask the dealer to perform certain card-turning actions and, most likely, do it under the radar of pit bosses that might have been listening in.
- swang 12y agoYou seem to have gotten the story a bit confused. They didn't ask for a dealer that spoke Mandarin for superstitious reasons, they asked because the person actually doing the edge-sorting was Phil Ivey's partner in this, Cheng Yin Sun. Their request to turn cards was under the guise of being superstitious, not their request for a Mandarin speaking dealer.
- joezydeco 12y agoYes, I was a bit mixed up on the story. Sorry.
- thret 12y agoThe sad thing is he played over two days. They just watched for two days. I suppose because they had no rules against his strategy.
- mattzito 12y ago> Read about Phil Ivey, who used a similar "hack" to advantage play in Baccarat. So - the slight difference there, and I'm curious whether people see this as a difference without a distinction, but Phil Ivey requested the casino to set up a scenario that would allow him to "hack" and then lied about the reasoning for doing so. He claimed that he was "superstitious" and that's why he wanted the exact cards and shuffling machine that would allow him to win. It's not as though he happened on this by accident and simply allowed the casino to continue making a mistake, he arranged the scenario and misrepresented his intentions in doing so. Personally, I think if you have to lie in order to take advantage of a vendor error, your moral highground starts to crumble beneath your feet.
- lrm242 12y agoThere is no moral high ground in gambling. The house has the edge, and has designed it to be so. Phil Ivey is a smart gambler and knew how to shift the odds into his favor without cheating. He requested specific things, such as a specific flavor of deck that came from the casino itself and a mandarin speaking dealer. The casino agreed to these requests because it wanted Phil to play. They could have said no. Phil Ivey's edge sorting hack is phenomenal. That the casino thinks they should be insulated from smart players is unfortunate but it is their prerogative to refuse play. However, it absolutely should NOT be possible to claw back winnings from players who were NOT cheating, only playing smartly.
- mattzito 12y ago...but he lied. If they had said, "Hey, why do you want this?" and he said, "I think I've got a system for beating baccarat", and they went ahead anyway, they're idiots. But they asked and he said that he was just superstitious, it was for luck. At that point he was being disingenuous. Was it legal? Probably, I'm not a lawyer. Was it ethical? I'm leaning towards no.
- CDRdude 12y agoIn a great many circumstances (i.e. not testifying in court), lying is not illegal. If you're lying to a casino, I don't think it's even immoral.
- ojbyrne 12y agoThere are actually video poker machines in Nevada with a negative house edge. I'm not entirely sure why - except that your upside is limited, you have to play perfectly, and it gets you in the casino.
- KMag 12y agoPoker is not a solved game, in the game theory sense. So, what does it mean to "play perfectly"? Do you mean blackjack instead of poker?
- Domenic_S 12y agoVideo Poker is basically solved, i.e. for this type of video poker game, use this strategy for a return of 100.76%. http://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/ http://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/
- laxatives 12y agoDo casinos still use machines that play this variation? Are the machines fair (eg do you have an advantage using this strategy)?
- adamio 12y agoSome smaller casinos in Nevada offer one or two +ev VP machines on the floor
- ojbyrne 12y agoI saw several at the Atlantis in Reno less than a year ago. You do have an advantage, and most of the places they exist they're prominently marked. There are generally only a few, and they're often not played much - perhaps because they also don't pay out rewards points.
- cncool 12y agoVideo poker has been solved.
- specialp 12y agoCasinos make money by providing games with various house edges to gamblers. Gamblers and casinos know this, and if it is unfair you have the choice to not gamble. Suppose there were a glitch with the machine that caused it NOT to pay out as it should... The casino would be liable to pay back that money to gamblers under numerous gaming laws. Would you then say that they should not have to pay it back as gamblers should assume risk when they gamble? Also, if it were found that the casino knowingly had a glitchy machine out there that did not pay out there would be people going to jail for that. If there were a vending machine that gave me all of the money it had in it as change after hitting a combination of buttons, and I travelled to every machine in town and did this, I would be stealing. This is no different. If they calculated the house edge wrong and launched the game to players that would be a different story as the players played in good faith and it is the casino's fault that they did it wrong.
- joelberman 12y agoIt is highly likely that software-driven games could have a bug. Therefore the casino could have decided that electronic machines are too risky. Or they could have paid for some kind of insurance. I think the casino, just like many banks and retail stores, are using technology that they do not understand and are unwilling to pay or learn. They want more profit. Let the seller beware.
- specialp 12y agoRisk assessment != allowing someone to steal from you. Surely the casino knows that any game can be fallible and they could take a loss from it. I guess banks know that their computer systems could have problems and they can lose money from it. But what if I noticed if I exchanged a certain amount of money between my checking and savings account a few times, it doubled my balance? And then I repeated this many times knowing that there was an error in their system? Now the bank if I had gotten away with it and could not be detected would then chalk it up as a loss and part of the calculated risk of having computerized banking. However if they knew I did this on purpose and took their money should they chalk that up as a loss and allow me to get away with it? No they would want that money back from me and possibly have me arrested for fraud.
- downandout 12y ago>How is this any different? It's not, and casinos are starting to see courts routinely deny them the least bit of sympathy when people beat them at their own games. The Borgata in Atlantic City was recently trounced in court while attempting to recoup more than $1 million in winnings from a group of Baccarat players that happened to notice that the pre-shuffled cards they were supposed to be using weren't shuffled at all. Casinos make more than 90% of their revenue from less than 10% of players. When the exploitation of addiction is both your sole reason for existing and your primary source of income, you will find most people unsympathetic to your complaints.
- jbigelow76 12y ago> Casinos make more than 90% of their revenue from less than 10% of players. Do you have a source for that?
- downandout 12y agoHere's one article on it: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626104579123383535635644 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230462610... And some hard data and analysis: http://www.thetransparencyproject.org/Availabledataset.htm http://www.thetransparencyproject.org/Availabledataset.htm In their study specifically of Bwin (an online casino) they found that "of the 4,222 casino customers, just 2.8% — or 119 big losers—provided half of the casino's take, and 10.7% provided 80% of the take". However, online casinos don't attract the kinds of customers or the level of action that many physical casinos do. Many older players - who provide the vast majority of slot machine revenues - won't go near online casinos. Further down in this article they quote a marketing consultant for dozens of physical casinos saying "Bwin results are in line with his own estimates, based on confidential casino data, that many U.S. casinos get about 90% of their revenue from 10% of customers." I have read a few academic papers on the subject, that also indicate numbers from 80% up to 92% being provided by roughly 10% of players. The fact that in the Bwin study, 2.8% provided 50% of the take, is breathtaking as well.
- RockyMcNuts 12y agoSome discussion of Ivey hack ... http://linemakers.sportingnews.com/sport/2014-05-13/phil-ivey-borgata-lawsuit-baccarat-controversy-edge-sorting-norman-chad http://linemakers.sportingnews.com/sport/2014-05-13/phil-ive... It's kind of a gray area. True, as a professional gambler, he wants to find every legitimate edge. But if you go to them repeatedly with a sophisticated attack and take them for $22m, you have to know they're going to sue you. That's part of what they consider their legitimate edge. If I was at a poker table and there was someone who could read the backs of the cards I would probably think they were cheating me.
- thret 12y agoIf it is your poker table, in your home, with your cards, then it is your responsibility to ensure that they are fair. There is a rule in poker: "it is the player's responsibility to protect his hand".
- RockyMcNuts 12y agoSuppose I'm taking steps to hide my cards, but you take overt acts to see them, like a mirror or something? At some point a sequence of actions to defeat the protections becomes an act of fraud. Just because a lock on my door is not unpickable doesn't give everyone a license to steal everything I own. It's a gray area...once you're asking a specifically chosen dealer to do things and conceal them from the pit boss...come back and repeat it for $20m...at some point it crosses the line from taking advantage of a mistake to orchestrating a scheme to deceive and defraud. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-08/judge-says-poker-champ-robbed-the-casino http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-08/judge-says-...