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Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

How is the casino able to sue the gamblers? I would think they would have to sue the card manufacturers for delivering a product that wasn't prepared as agreed, which caused material losses.

Who at the casino thought that suing their customers was a good idea?

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It's important to note that in America, you can sue anybody for pretty much anything. The question of whether you can win is entirely irrelevant if you have the resources necessary to batter your targets into submission.

My first business lawyer gave me that advice early on and it was sobering to think through the implications of that.

This is one of the main reasons I think that all money spent on lawyers should go into an account that both sides get to draw upon equally to pay legal expenses. You simply cannot have a system capable of meting out justice if money can skew "justice" in your favor.

That's an interesting idea. I'll have to think more about what negatives might be involved (simple example: someone badgers you with an expensive to refute claim but uses a cheap lawyer to file the claim, though I guess this is just as possible in the status quo).

The best solution is if free access representation was high quality.

A simple way of doing that might be to give parties the option of their choice of n randomly selected representatives drawn from any practicing lawyer, funded via a fraction of punitive damages redirected to a fund locked to that purpose.

Because they didn't win a game, they took advantage of a rigged deck. Also they're being sued for exceeding the betting limits. "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."

"they took advantage of a rigged deck"

I think that a "rigged deck" assume someone knowingly did something. In this case, from the story, this was an accident and not intentional.

Of course even if the deck was rigged (say someone at the manufacturer turned off the shuffle process) while it would be defacto rigged I'm not sure it would be dejure rigged because there was no connection between the gamblers and the person doing the rigging.

An ordered deck is one arrangement from the set of randomly arranged decks. If the company ensures that decks are not ordered then they're not random. How can it be shown that the deck wasn't shuffled ... indeed if it can then the shuffling is non-random and this appears to amount to some sort of fraud in itself.

Do playing card manufacturers that sell shuffled decks make some sort of call on when a deck is not shuffled "enough". Knowing this information would allow more efficient models to be made for card counters, etc..

How did the table allow the betting limit to be exceeded? Why didn't they stop it right at the time, and only wait until they lost to decide to retroactively enforce their own rules?

Apparently the pit boss knew something was up but didn't stop the game. Which squarely puts the fault in the casino. The casino could easily have closed that table.

> How did the table allow the betting limit to be exceeded?

ahem:

by passing money to fellow gamblers in order to place bets in excess of posted betting limits.

They posted a bet, and also gave some of their money to another player to post another bet, effectively circumventing the betting limits on individual players. That's not necessarily an obvious behavior. And if the casino didn't know the decks were rigged, why would they close the table and risk angering a bunch of high rollers?

Yes, I saw that. The limit generally applies per seat or per bet. A reference that this applies to a physical body of meat would be awesome.

And if the casino didn't know the decks were rigged, why would they close the table and risk angering a bunch of high rollers?

To not have to pay out lots of money if something is wrong. But I guess they could just wait to see if the players don't end up giving it all back in the end.

I imagine they thought for sure the overbets wouldn't pan out, which they would be just fine with.

A casino unfamiliar with the concept of staking someone?

There is also a ridiculous law that you can't use math at blackjack tables.

Its like only stupid people can play blackjack and if you are clever enough to beat it, then you are cheating.

Put simply according to them the game is fair only if you lose and casino wins.

There is also a ridiculous law that you can't use math at blackjack tables.

Not true. There is no law (in the US) forbidding card counting. However casinos will kick you out (or most likely politely ask if you might want to play something else) if they believe you're counting cards effectively (they have no problem with people who count cards badly). But this has no basis in law and isn't an accusation of cheating. It's just the casino exercising their right to remove anybody from the casino floor for any reason they feel like, much like they have the right to remove you from the casino floor if they don't like the way you're dressed for example.

Atlantic City is in New Jersey. Where everyone sues everyone else when they have an issue.

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