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Comment by misja111 | Hacker News Reader

2) is about operating or exposing a game with marked cards. So it forbids the house to use those cards, I don't read it as a criminal act for the player to play against a house which uses such cards.

Also I think b. is about the house: it is about owning or using such cards. The cards where not Iphy's, the casino was the owner and the one that was using them.

But apart from that, just imagine what the implications are if this verdict is correct. Imagine that you walk into a casino and play a card game, and you see that the dealer is consequently making a mistake so that the result of the game is not random anymore. The verdict is saying that you are still allowed to play, but only if you choose a losing strategy. If you would choose to turn this knowledge of the dealer's mistake in your advantage, you would commit a crime .. ?

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>The verdict is saying that you are still allowed to play, but only if you choose a losing strategy.

This is not my reading of the decision. Rather, my reading of the opinion is that, regardless of if you take advantage of it or not, the game is no longer authorized under the Casino Control Act, and therefore is void.

Note, it is not clear to be that any "crime" was commited in this case. Rather, the ruling was that the game was invalid and therefore the appropriate solution was to return the parties to the state where they were in prior to playing the game. The precise wording (quoted from Golden Nugget) is:

"“Since the rescission of a contract essentially voids the contract, it follows that the remedy used in situations of rescission should be used in situations of voidance. Thus, since the contracts entered into here are void, returning the parties to their position prior to the formation of the contracts is the appropriate remedy.”"

Interestingly, in the Golden Nugget case, it was clearly the casino who made a mistake (failing to use a shuffled deck).

"The CCA isn't fault based, according to the judge, who explained that it's irrelevant whether the casino or the players are to blame for the mishap. It only matters whether the mini-baccarat game was authorized under the CCA, which it wasn't, the judge said." [0]

[0] http://www.law360.com/articles/621651/casino-doesn-t-owe-1-5...

> my reading of the opinion is that, regardless of if you take advantage of it or not, the game is no longer authorized under the Casino Control Act, and therefore is void.

If this is true, it means that any game ever played with those 'marked' cards is void. Since Baccarat is a winning game for the casino, it would mean that this verdict could cost the casino many times more than what it has won against Phil Ivy.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't believe that anyone who will now start a court case to claim his money back from a game with these cards has even the slightest chance to win. Surely the judge will find a way to interpret the law text in another way so that it again favors the casino.

The "marking" in this case is not inherent in the cards; but is rather a combination of an assymetry in the cards, and the dealer rotating a non-random subset of the cards (thereby turning the assymetry into a "marking").

Further, in order for a marking to count, it has to "tends to deceive the public or tends to alter the normal random selection of characteristics or the normal chance of the game which could determine or alter the result of the game." If the only mistake that the dealer makes is some form of an information leak, and no one modifies their behavior based on the information being leaked, then this condition would not be met.

If, instead, the dealers mistake changed the odds of the game regardless of if the player acted on it, the this clause would be invoked. Indeed, this is likely the intended case of this clause, as the alternative is that the house can cheat.

Do you really think that a losing gambler would be able to bring a suit against a casino because a dealer placed cards in a slightly uneven way that seemed suggestive to the gambler and caused him to make sub-optimal bets? Even if it could be shown that the dealer had studied the psychology of cards for that very purpose?

The problem is that the jugde is trying to read the case two ways at the same time. Golden Nuggets argument was that a non shuffled deck removes the chance element, therefore the game wasn't governed by CCA at all. If you're pointing at a section of CCA and telling somebody they breached it, then by definition you're saying the game falls under the conditions of that act, and the remedy must therefore also be the one defined in that act (CCA 5:12-115(c) specifies for a $50,000 fine for an individual).

There was no criminal ruling in this case. The ruling is that the implicit contract of the game was voided, according to the Casino Control Act. Returning the funds is just unwinding the executed contract.

You'll note that there are not even any punitive penalties being applied. Only the money earned during the game is to be returned.

Does that also mean that lost money would need to be returned? Would the casino be obligated to notify past players of this and return their losses?

Sure. After they show that the casino knowingly used marked cards to gain advantage against them, as the casino did vs Ivey. Which I'm not even sure is possible in Baccarat, since my understanding is that it's a purely mechanical game from the house perspective, like Blackjack. As in, any choices made by the house are dependent only on information that is witnessed by all players.

> Only the money earned during the game is to be returned.

Part of the ruling was that Phil Ivy had to pay back $500,000 which he won in a craps game as well.

If I steal $100,000 dollars from you, then use some of that money to buy your car, would you expect to have your car returned to you?

> Only the money earned during the game is to be returned.

And proceeds that were gained using the winnings.

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