Hacker News Reader

Comment by smoyer | Hacker News Reader

The whole reason casinos stay in business is because the house "skims" money from the players ... or in games where the player plays against the house, the house has more favorable odds.

The head-line says "steals", but the reality is that he was simply cheating. One is a crime but I'm not sure about the other. If I'm accomplished at counting cards, I can still beat the house because I've changed the odds. The casino may ban me (and I might forfeit the earnings for the day) but they can't charge me with a crime.

View on HN

Not only that, in Ocean's Eleven they don't just place bets, they break into a vault, so the only similarity with the film seems to be that a camera feed was involved.

One aspect of the ilegality, if you will, of card counting I don't yet understand is the fundamental idea behind it: using your brain to make intellectually sound batting choices is not legal.

I know the casinos would rather have people turn their brains down to "idiot mode" when they play. However, I can't understand why the law supports the idea that I am not allowed to use my brain, memory and deductive reasoning skills when playing.

Weird,

I don't get it.

In the US, and likely most countries, card counting is not illegal. However, casinos can refuse to do business with anybody they want, so they can ban you for it. The exception is Atlantic City where you can't be banned for card counting, but if you are suspected of it, they will use other tactics to negate any advantage you may have (e.g. shuffling after every hand)

Ah, OK, I thought it was illegal.

There's nothing illegal about counting cards. The law simply allows casinos to choose whom they allow to play, or to visit their premesis, and they choose to exercise this right when someone is playing several standard deviations better than math would predict.

It's really no different from your choosing to walk away from a table after losing a lot of money.

Casinos have of course been known to use "interesting" methods to ensure you don't come back.

This wasn't about card counting (which is an integral part of blackjack strategy and certainly should be legal in any jurisdiction that allows casinos to operate). Counting takes place in your mind. Breaking into the casino's surveillance feed to learn extra information is outright cheating (and therefore, theft). I'm curious to know what information the player obtained. I can't imagine there are cameras low enough to glimpse the dealer's hole card before it is set down. Perhaps multiple accomplices each watched a table, keeping count and waiting for the count to be high (meaning the chance of drawing a ten-value card or an ace was very high), and then told the player to move to that table?

The article doesn't even say what game he was playing. It wasn't necessarily blackjack, which as you observe doesn't confer a big advantage by knowing the enemy cards since your bet is already set and your strategy mostly is. Poker permits the most leverage for knowing hidden information, but in poker you scam the other players, not the casino (casinos very rarely offer poker games played against the house.)

Maybe it was Pai Gow Poker, which does have strategy that can be exploited by knowing the dealer hand you need to beat, and is often played for high stakes in VIP rooms.

The argument Casinos use is that they are in the business of "games of chance" and card counting is more like a "game of skill".

I still think they are full of manure with this, but that explains a little bit of their angle.

If by "crime" you mean "against the law", then yes, cheating is a crime, but it depends on the jurisdiction. Depending on how silly and/or archaic the laws in the jurisdiction are, just intercepting the surveillance signal might be a crime.

>The casino may ban me (and I might forfeit the earnings for the day) but they can't charge me with a crime

Counting cards has apparently been explicitly ruled not to be cheating in Canada, and while casinos generally call it that, it is not actually illegal. Other forms of cheating are, however. For example, in Nevada, cheating is a felony.

Cheating probably isn't a crime, but I would imagine unauthorized access to someone else's network probably is. (I am not a lawyer, no less an Australian lawyer)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com