I would like to know what is morally wrong in defeating a system designed to beat you. Designed to (almost) always win. The Casino is the one that cheats because the odds are not completely random, as they should.
I get what you mean, but what you said means something different, in a way that leads to an interesting question.
The odds are not supposed to be completely random. The odds are supposed to fixed in most (all?) casino games (and in most non-casino games). It is the outcome that is supposed to be completely random in casino games, distributed according to the fixed odds.
That raises a question. What would a game look like where the odds were random? The odds are determined by the rules, so would the game have to have rules that are changing at random?
But if you are given the distribution of the random numbers that determine the rule changes, you could still work out the players odds for the overall game. So do we have to have the distribution that the random rule changes use be completely random, too? But the distribution used to generate the random number used to pick the distribution for picking random numbers to drive the rule changes...do we need to pick that at random....is it going to be random distributions all the way down? My head is starting to hurt...
Fun fact: by being able to access the payout statistics menu and knowing the machine's installation date it was easy to know which machines would be "hot". I have witnessed machines that paid out poorly for a couple years (+ a few million USD) but would hit regular jackpots near the end of their expected lifecycle.
edit: gambling is a scam, please don't participate
In this sense wouldn't card games be a wiser bet than slot machines?
For instance, playing black jack by the basic strategy is (from wizardofodds.com):
> the probability of an overall win in blackjack is 42.22%, a tie is 8.48%, and a loss is 49.10%. I'm going to assume you wish to ignore ties for purposes of the streak. In that case, the probability of a win, given a resolved bet, is 46.36%.
So yes, your best bet in the casino is probably blackjack, but it is still a losing proposition without counting cards. Face cards tend to favor the players (table), not the dealer. This is because a dealer hitting with a face card more frequently causes a bust than a player hitting a face card (because players don't have to hit when they might bust, dealers do). So a deck that is heavy with face cards is better for players.
Poker, by contrast, the house has no real interest in whether people win or lose - they just get a % cut of each hand played so they win a little every hand.
If you can count cards, and they don't use a continuous shuffler you can get this to as good as 0.1% in your favour.
Baccarat is always a high stakes game not because it's "fancy" or "exotic", but because it is nearly the closest a casino will let you get to betting on a coin flip, for every player in the game.
Technically, additional decks reduce the expected edge of a card-counter who has only seen some number of cards. Which functions the same way...
I disagree. To some extent slot machines are more scam-like than the other games, but I think the table games (roulette, black jack, craps) all have well known odds and are generally honest games.
They are not "fair" in the sense that the odds are stacked against you, but I don't believe that that's a reason to completely boycott them.
Gambling is fun. As long as you know going into it that the odds are stacked against you (and how badly they're stacked against you) and you don't go into a game without being prepared to lose your entire stake, there's nothing wrong with gambling.
Don't bet the farm, but go into it knowing you could lose everything, and enjoy a few hours of gambling and "free" drinks. Every once in a while you'll beat the house, and _that_ is quite enjoyable.
A casino tells you the exact odds, and everyone is freely able to decide if they want to play given those odds. Yes, they are in the house's favor, but that is what a player trades in return for the whole setup (the casino, the workers, the free drinks, the entertainment, etc)
You can still argue casinos are immoral, but they are clearly not a scam. That would be like saying cigarettes are a scam, just because they are bad for you.
The house can claim malfunction on anything and refuse to pay you. You have little to no recourse. I've witnessed people having their jackpots declared invalid for ridiculous reasons such as a faulty door sensor on the machine (having nothing to do with the game itself.)
You're essentially gambling that you can win the game and the house won't deny your win.
If you see a casino cheating, you should report it.
If a casino catches or even suspects you're card counting, they are well within their rights to refuse to let you play that game anymore.
If, on the other hand, you and the casino are playing different games, e.g. the dealer is playing black jack, but the player is playing I-know-what-the-dealer's-down-card-is-because-of-manufacturing-imperfections-in-the-card, then is it really that unreasonable for the casino to have a case that they don't owe you the money that you won, especially if they can demonstrate intent? (I'd argue that they should give you a bug bounty, but that's a different story)
To address your poker example - say I'm your guest in your hypothetical and, were we playing fair poker, your 1 in 100 odds were correct. Let's also say that I have undetectable X-ray vision contact lenses, thus changing the odds such that I will always win - would you really consider it unreasonable to use the government to get your money back in that situation? The agreement was to play poker, a game which necessarily presumes hidden information from all players. If one player has all the information, the game isn't poker anymore, it's robbery/con.
I agree that the computerized games are a different story, though I believe that consumers have some protection in the form of the various gaming commissions. If you win a jackpot and are denied the payout, contact the gaming commission! The laws are very strict on the points of fairness of those machines, forged in the fires of decades of mafia controlled casinos (at least in Vegas/Atlantic City).
Gambling is a drug. It has all the health benefits of a recreational drug, but at least in (most of) the US, it's not a scam.
https://knpr.org/knpr/2015-01/legal-or-not-card-counting-not...
Yes, sometimes casinos will use their political strength to not payout a jackpot (malfunction voids all play), but a player does, in fact, have some recourse if the casino is full of shit.
Regardless, if you're going to a casino intending to win a jackpot, you're doing it wrong (because math). If you take a measured approach and enjoy it for what it is (entertainment, not a way to make money), you'll have a much healthier relationship with a casino.
As an aside, there's another industry that uses it's massive political clout and every trick in the book to refuse to pay in situations where one would intuitively believe one should be payed: insurance.
I'm dubious that there is a per-machine fixed sum over a fixed time like this. Apart from the "progressive" machines that have a jackpot shared across a network of machines, I'm pretty sure that the payout percentage is just a statistical prediction, and that by law each result has to be independent of all previous payouts. Do you have a reference that you could point to that would confirm your understanding? The sources I've found say that each play is random: http://www.vegasslotsonline.com/faq/#random. You might be right, but I wouldn't want you or someone else to rely on this information if it's a myth.
Other interesting observations: the machines based on Windows XP Embedded crashed all the time, the Linux ones were fine.
The Linux ones from several mfrs used APNG for the slot machine graphics. This was my first exposure to animated PNGs in the wild. (~2007)
The Linux machines loaded a kernel module at boot that was supposed to prevent/detect tampering with memory. Some also loaded their own audio driver stack which surprised me: wasn't ALSA or OSS. Very odd, specialized little machines. (Many were Pentium 3 with totally custom motherboards due to strange peripherals)
Progressives cannot legally be removed from operation until someone hits the jackpot. (at least in my state)
I disagree that the "system is designed to beat you" or that the casino "cheats". The casino is there for entertainment. If you don't use it in moderation it can ruin your life just like any other vice: alcohol, drugs, sex, etc.
If you have $1000-$5000 (or more), you can fly out to Vegas for the weekend, have a really good time (gaming is only part of that), fly home, and you've got a significant chance that you'll either win or break even. You might also lose, and that's the excitement cycle that is gambling. But even if you lose you can also have a good time at a show/nightclub/concert, every kind of themed bar, meet women, etc, so if you discard "winning money" as the primary objective, gambling isn't designed to beat you.
If you go to the casino every day after work, don't be surprised that you will not win anything, or that it might escalate just like any other drug (spending more, not happy when you win, etc).
What shocks me is that these guys have the technical prowess to reverse engineer the game/PRNG, but they didn't have the sense to slow down their pace, or reverse engineer the casino management system to avoid detection (or they didn't think to hide their iphone from the start, they said the first guy was holding it right up to the screen, when $100 spent on a clothing alteration would have allowed him to hide it). If you're going to fly internationally to commit a crime, you should know who you're up against and use adequate countermeasures.
I don't see any fraud though. Sure, they found a system to beat the slot machines, but I'm not sure how that's fraud. What if some guys think they're really good at playing poker and they take a trip to a casino to play?
At what point does playing smart become fraud? or cheating? When does counting cards in blackjack become cheating? When you get too good at it? This whole area seems rather strange.
when you use an active device that essentially guarantees you will win. Elsewhere in the thread someone quoted the Nevada regulations that explicitly state this. I'm sure each state has them now. Had they arrested these guys and didn't find an iPhone with custom software, or a confession that they were remitting their winnings back to Russia, they probably wouldn't be able to charge them with anything (but they could still kick them out of all casinos).
Counting cards is a much better example of "playing smart", and it is not actually illegal - although casinos will ban any player they suspect to be counting they will likely not be charged with a crime. But once you bring a personal implement in to the situation, it very much becomes a prosecutable crime.
I understand that they may kick you out for being too good (he must be "cheating"). And the argument about using a device to aid you might be a more concise definition of cheating of some sort. But I've never noticed any posted rules that one would reasonably be expected to know about. And the use of the term "fraud" is important because then it becomes a legal issue with big consequences beyond getting kicked out or banned from a particular casino. OTOH a casino doesn't need to post the law for people to read. Does the law defer to the casino rules? That wouldn't be appropriate IMHO.
There are "house rules" and there are laws. I'm kind of wondering where those lines are and what specifically these guys did that constitutes a felony. What specific aspect of their scam was illegal. I'm not disputing that it was dishonest and in effect a scam of sorts.
[1]http://www.pandullolaw.com/Criminal-Defense/Trespassing.aspx
Depends on what they're doing to be "good". Things like card counting can and will get you banned from casinos (though that's more applicable to blackjack).
Advantage play is usually frowned upon but not outright illegal. I reckon exploiting bugs in a slot machine's PRNG really ought to be closer to that than "fraud". Hence, I'm surprised these Russians were charged with anything at all rather than just banned from various casinos as is more conventional for this sort of thing.
I guess the difference between "advantage play" and "fraud" in this case would be whether or not the culprits are breaking the rules of the game. It doesn't sound like they are, seeing as how they're not tampering with the machines.
Are you saying these people are innocent, and by some strange stroke of chance and luck, they all boarded a plane, flew across the world, and randomly won thousands of dollars ?
> would you want to take a chance with a jury or bench trial in a hostile (to you) jurisdiction?
hell yes I would. People love to rally behind the underdog and see the casinos lose. Look how much publicity the cases get when a machine malfunctions and displays $1,526,838,003.35 on the win meter, and like clockwork, they file a lawsuit to try to claim a billion-dollar payout.( they dont win, but still, people love to rally behind the plaintiff in those cases).
I'd say for the most part, the criminal courts are hostile to all defendants, not just by definition but by the "plea deal" schemes that prosecutors use and by the puritanical tendencies our society shows in their harsh punishments against "offenders" (viz. the drug war, sex offenses, gun charges, etc)
I think he's saying that they are not necessarily guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime of fraud ("deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain"). Given the facts presented in the article, I don't think there's much debate to be had about whether they used devices to win at the slots. The question is whether the particular way they did it is (or ought to be) illegal in the jurisdictions they were in.
Based on the article, it sounds like these guys were more like mules, than they were the masterminds. 90% of the money was sent back... And they rely on this remote system to figure out the next state. This software possibly could be run directly on the phone, but instead they want to keep a tether on the mules.
FYI Vegas is built on rubes like you.
There is a larger chance you will lose money than break even or win money.
If there was not, Vegas would not exist and its business model would have failed a long time ago.
Their business model works because the House wins.
For the House to win and be profitable, the average person has to lose on average.
If you're going to have fun, that's a great experience, but if you think there's a "significant chance" you're going to not lose, you're exactly why Vegas does as well as it does.
vegas can afford to turn their hold percentage much lower because millions of people go there every year and there's competition. Versus a lone indian casino in california's central valley.
It would be interesting to see what the likelihood of being up after an hour of regular play is by different common games.
In addition, games like poker aren't even played against the house; you're playing against the other players (and the house just takes a cut as a sort of "table fee"). If you're a skilled poker player, you can reduce the effects of luck (what cards you get vs. the cards others at your table get) and come out ahead more often than not.
And I'd agree that even a 30-40% chance of coming out ahead would be "significant"... people in the startup world still start new companies despite the conventional wisdom of a 10% success rate.
Having said that, sure, casino games are pure entertainment. Sure, you can win a little money, but you should never expect to, and you shouldn't play unless you're comfortable losing every cent you put into it.
The last time my wife and I were in Las Vegas, the only game we made money on was sports betting.
A slot machine with an expected per iteration loss of .1% and a modest 100 iterations/hour, would, over that same hour lose you (just) go over 9%.
The more independent small bets you make, the lower the chance that you will come out ahead.
and if people always lost, vegas would collapse because people would stop going.
You could make the argument that any other expensive hobby is also throwing away money:
* boating: buy a brand new boat for $65k, sell it 8 years later for $35k, plus $5k in total operating costs/insurance. You just "lost" 35k (not counting interest)
* rock climbing: buy $3k of gear and travel, $2k on lessons. Fall and break your arm for $6k, $11k "lost" for a couple years of entertainment.
* "travel", spend $6-10k on hotel, airfare, meals, in 2 weeks, all we have left to show for it is "memories". Great "investment".
(disclaimer: I'm not actually against the things I just mentioned. Only pointing out that they are "throwing away money" just like a weekend in vegas). Unless you're some hyper-disciplined monk who only uses money for humble necessities, you, too are throwing away money just like people do in a casino.
These people are mostly wrong (save for the games of skill, e.g. poker, that are only played in casinos for traditional reasons.)
The games are setup to take a percentage. It varies with the game. Slots are some of the worst, IIRC the house take is 10%. Pai Gow poker (depending on house commission and exact rules) is 1%-3%.
If you make bets commiserate with the size of your gambling budget then your expected loss over the long term for slots is 10%. Your expected loss for Pai Gow is 1%-3%.
If you make larger bets than you should given your bankroll or play bad strategies you can lose a lot more. If you get lucky and quit immediately after a big win you can come out ahead.
The house doesn't give a fig if the average person loses or wins; they just need people to play. They are well aware a significant number of people will walk away winners and that makes them happy: it's great marketing!
[1] (pdf warning) http://gaming.unlv.edu/reports/nv_slot_hold.pdf
Yes pai gow or 21 or (the best odds not including card-counting, IIRC), baccarat have better odds. But, if you go to a premier casino on the strip, you might not find a table you can afford. It's not uncommon for them to have a couple $5 tables and the rest $25 (per bet) and up. Mathematically it's a better choice, but a $25 buy-in costs $500 which you can lose in minutes if you're unlucky. Not a lot of people can stomach that (nor should they, as my original argument was for the entertainment value of gaming).
No one goes in a movie theater and complain that it's "beating" you because you come out with a net negative balance
I never claimed otherwise. Did you read my post?
> Restaurants advertise in such a way that suggests you may have the absolute best night of your life and meet all sorts of new friends, that doesn't mean they are promising it.
I've never seen such an advertisement, nor have I heard of anyone putting up the deed to their house or the title of their car to pay for their restaurant habit.
Yes, I did. You said
>Movie theaters also don't advertise in such a way that suggests will walk out with a lot of money.
in response to someone comparing movie theaters to casinos. Your comment is obviously suggesting that you believe casinos advertise "in such a way that suggests will walk out with a lot of money".
>I've never seen such an advertisement
Check out any chain restaurant advertisement. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CbVVq4GStc
>nor have I heard of anyone putting up the deed to their house or the title of their car to pay for their restaurant habit.
So you're changing the point from "they advertise in a misleading way" to "people can become addicted to it"? That is a different argument so I want to be clear if we're moving on from the original point.
> ... advertise in such a way that suggests will walk out with a lot of money
What you said:
> ... advertise that you will walk out with a lot of money either. Only that you might.
No one said casinos advertise that you will for sure walk out with a lot of money; my point was that they imply that you will walk out with a lot of money. The distinction seems obvious to me.
> So you're changing the point from "they advertise in a misleading way" to "people can become addicted to it"? That is a different argument so I want to be clear if we're moving on from the original point.
The point was never that casino advertisements are misleading, but other advertisements are honest; the point was that casino advertisements are misleading in ways that are ultimately life-ruining. For similar reasons, we hold cigarette and alcohol companies accountable for the content of their advertisements.
I don't see the difference between what I said you said and what you said. You were obviously saying they implied that someone will definitely walk out with money. That's what I said you said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loFmADztvak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzVr8-gHUN4
The tobacco industry got banned from using this sort of psychological advertising years ago, I don't see why casinos should be treated any different.
You're proving my point exactly. I never said there wasn't an insinuation that if you play you could win, just that there is no guarantee given. See my other reply for examples of non-casino businesses doing the exact same thing.
Sure, it would be better if it were truly a game of chance, I guess that's too difficult to deliver (and verify) at this point. Or, perhaps, the casinos prefer it this way of course. :)
- There is a state sanctioned minimum payout rate. This differs by state, but its between 80-90%. This means that on average you lose 80-90% of the $$$ you put in. - Slot machines cannot use conditional probability, in other words spins are independent. This means that the machine has no "memory" each spin is like rolling a dice. You dont have higher chance of payout just because you didnt won anything during the last hour.
I've worked for a big slots company and we analyzed our customers a LOT. The big players (AKA whales) who drop thousands per month are not bored rich people in 99% of the cases, they are average people like you and me with a bad gambling addiction. And the state or the casino companies are doing nothing to help these people (why would casino companies care? This is where they are most of their revenue from). This is totally different from other fields - imagine if cigarettes would be advertised as something that makes you healthy and the state would be OK with it.
Ohh but there were free drinks and the lighting was just so and it made me feel so good -- so clearly defrauding the place that made me feel that way, even when I rationally knew that was what was going to happen, is perfectly OK.
Are you also OK with stealing popcorn at the cinema because they manipulate you into feeling scared/happy/sad/whatever?
This is why we can't have nice things.
The theater house rule is that no outside food or drink is allowed, but clearly the only purpose of this rule is to support the brazen markup of food and drink at the theater's own concession stand.
I find it difficult to find any harm to the theater in eating smuggled popcorn rather than popcorn purchased on the premises, even when playing Devil's advocate as hard as I possibly can. My worst attempts even end up replacing 90% of the theater employees with a row of vending machines and a subway-style turnstile.
I have a friend who used to be a supervisor at movie theater, and he told me that ~80% of the theater's ticket proceeds went directly to the movie distributor. This is apparently normal in the movie industry.
If concessions went away, theaters would probably need to raise their ticket prices a lot. Even if you drastically cut the employees, there's still rent/taxes/insurance/cleaning. The last two could also conceivably go up in price if it became normal to bring in your own food.
economics of movie theatres: https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/01/5905-2/
Yes. Yes it is. That's why they say gambling is a tax on those who can't do math.
The machines are programmed to give out less than they take in. In the middle to long run, you are basically guaranteed to lose money.
For example the article states that the house keeps $0.07129 for every dollar spent, or put another way, for every $100 coming in, the machines need to pay out ~$93.
Therefore, you can expect to lose on average $7 for every $100 you spend on slots.
No - this could be done fairly simply using components that are already available on the consumer market - all you'd need is a simple geiger counter and a radiation source (Americium, like in a smoke detector). Heck, you could go simpler with a transistor - google "transistor random noise source" - plenty of examples out there.
> Or, perhaps, the casinos prefer it this way of course.
This is probably the key. With a real random noise source, you probably couldn't easily figure odds and such (then again, how do they do this with regular games?)...
But it's LEGALLY wrong. That is what will get you into trouble.
In certain countries, it's not morally wrong to criticize The Dear Leader. But it is legally wrong and could get you beat to a bloody pulp and thrown in prison. Other countries have not yet implemented such policies.
Moral and Legal are different things.
Casinos are in the business of providing entertainment through games that sometimes allow you to win money.
If you put money into a PacMan machine, you don't get your money back either. You get entertained by playing the game.
If you go to a movie, you pay money that you don't expect to have returned. You pay for entertainment.
When casinos host Texas Hold'em, they simply collect a vigorish from the pot. The casino is not otherwise involved in the poker hands.
Why should they be? It's a form of entertainment not a way to generate income successfully through skill. If the odds weren't stacked against you I think it would get boring quite quickly as the wins wouldn't be as satisfying.
You don't get upset when you go to a whale show and get wet do you? You don't get upset when you go watch rally racing and get some mud on you?
Conspiring with others to break terms of service is of course a crime, and doing so across state lines, is its own sort of nastyness. But you can see from the prison terms (2 years) it wasn't exactly a big threat to these guys.
however defeating a legal system should still hold a penalty unless said defeat exposes an illegal setup
You know it is designed to beat you, you accept the terms and conditions by entering a casino. Which makes you, if you think it is OK to cheat then, a criminal by law and unethical by any standards.