Group accused in $225K 'dice sliding' cheating scheme at Las Vegas casino | Hacker News Reader

Group accused in $225K 'dice sliding' cheating scheme at Las Vegas casino

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120 pointsJerry2257 comments

I'm curious what kind of law might prohibit this. I'm not doubting that such a law might exist in a state like Nevada, just not sure how it might be written.

On the casino side I can imagine a a slot machine might be required to have some kind of certified RNG and some requirement of statistical behavior, or that a roulette wheel must have some certification of symmetry etc.

On the player side I can imagine ordinary false currency laws to prohibit putting slugs in slot machines etc, or marking or switching out cards, using fake chips etc.

But in a game with an affordance that permits moving the dice in this way, how would you write such a law? In a craps table the dice must travel far from the hand and must bounce off the back end so the technique in the article is mechanically impossible. I'd think that this is the casino's mistake, not the players', but apparently some law says otherwise.

Real craps tables also have a wire down the middle to prevent sliding. Before the wire was in place, the trick some cheaters would do is to spin the dice and slide them down the table, so they look like they're rolling.

This was a digital craps table that somehow allowed the players to get away with sliding. So who knows what the actual technique was.

I have never seen a wire on any table, ever.

Me neither, and I’ve played Craps in many cities in several countries. I can’t find any google results for [craps table wire] either.

They're definitely on every Atlantic city and las Vegas table I've ever seen. But they blend in and are very subtle. It's just enough to make the dice tumble if they're being slid instead of rolled. Most people never even think of it because the stickman should be telling you to throw the dice to the back wall anyway. Next time you're at a table look in the middle right in front of the boxman.

Here’s a photo of Las Vegas table. Could you mark it up to show where the wire is supposed to be?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/las-vegas-coronavirus-...

That's behind a paywall. In any case the photo needs to be very, very close to see it.

Look closely at this photo at full resolution: https://images.freeimages.com/images/large-previews/2cb/crap...

There is a very subtle North-South bump under the felt, directly in the center, under the words "CRAPS" and "DEALER and PLAYERS" and "Seven". It might be easiest to see at the lowest horizontal line, below the words "Any Craps."

Here's another hi-res photo, you need to already know it's there, but you can just barely make it out if you look very closely right down the center, under the felt: https://i0.wp.com/agrlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DSC01...

Andy800 did a better job replying, but I drew where the wire is on the photo you sent.

https://imgur.com/a/nvRbLsA

In andy800's example you can see it under the felt but I think I have seen them over the felt as well, but either wat it is very subtle and you won't notice it if you're not looking for it. I had played craps for over a decade before I read a book that mentioned it, and since then I have noticed it every time.

The only law you need is the rules of a game and a "theft by fraud" statute, which already exist everywhere. The rules of craps generally require that the dice tumble some number of times and bounce off a wall to ensure randomness, and I would be certain that the general rules of craps apply to this game as well. Dice sliding is against the rules already. This isn't a "legal loophole" sort of situation, it's cheating, and thus theft by fraud.

Note that card counting is a "loophole" to this idea, since nothing about the rules of blackjack prevents you from memorizing cards, and thus it is not against the rules of the game.

On the casino side, by the way, this means some very stringent RNG requirements in slot machines and electronic gaming machines (often requiring specialized TRNG devices), as well as testing gaming devices, from the most complex slot machines to the dice, very stringently.

> Note that card counting is a "loophole" to this idea, since nothing about the rules of blackjack prevents you from memorizing cards, and thus it is not against the rules of the game.

Typically in these cases the house is limited to either ejecting someone they decide is a 'counter' after they win the hand, or applying countermeasures such as having two decks and shuffling one while the other is in play for a hand (and then using the shuffled one for the next hand.)

I can't remember the last time I saw a single-deck game being dealt. Lowest I've seen (and not recently) is double-deck, dealing about half the cards before shuffling. More common are six or eight deck shoes, dealing anywhere from half to three-quarters of the cards before shuffling. (Most egregious are the continuous-shuffle machines where cards are fed in after every hand.)

They have single deck in Vegas but mess with blackjack odds to keep their advantage.

*payout I mean.

An eight deck shoe being dealt to 3/4 empty would give an advantage to teams signaling over a 2 deck shoe being dealt to 1/2 empty, because it allows for more total hands before being shuffled.

You get ejected for card-counting, and arrested for cheating. Pretty simple.

Do you have any citations for someone being arrested purely for counting cards? In the U.S.?

First Google hit: https://www.dlgteam.com/blog/nevada-law/counting-cards-can-l...

Edit: Never mind.

They didn’t say you got arrested for counting cards.

Oops. You're right. Thanks.

It's not cheating, so you won't get arrested for it. If you add an ace to the shoe when the dealer isn't looking (and make off with enough money for them to involve the police), off to jail with you.

> Dice sliding is against the rules already. This isn't a "legal loophole" sort of situation, it's cheating, and thus theft by fraud.

This is the part I don't get. The game apparently mechanically allows that, so how is it cheating, any more than, say, allowing a soccer defender to kick a goal? Seems to me like a loophole like card counting in blackjack.

Is placing a bet after the roulette wheel has begun to spin a crime or merely a violation of the rules (which could get you ejected)?

Intent matters here, and accidents don't usually even get you ejected from a casino at all. Intentional cheating like that will get you arrested. The rules of the game are often controlled by a gaming commission or legislation that set the rules. Soccer doesn't have the same sort of thing.

Very much so, if you're playing blackjack and you accidentally touch cards or chips or something inadvertent, you'll just get told "Hey, you cannot do that", in varying degrees of firmness.

Ah, so if I run a casino and come up with some new kind of game I can’t just offer it? Rather I have to get approval and perhaps some regulation is formulated just for that game?

That would certainly answer my root question.

Sorry if this is naïve — I don’t really know how gambling laws work at all.

Games are very heavily regulated. You have to get approval, and there is a process for submitting the rules for a new game and getting it approved. Often it's the game makers who do this (and they sell the tables to the casinos for a license fee). It's easiest when it's a game that's very similar to an existing one.

Every casino jurisdiction is different, (and in the US, many native American casinos are regulated by a gaming authority that is part of the same tribal nation, so it is a bit circular) but almost all require a thorough review of any new game's rules and equipment, and usually also require third-party certification of the game's theoretical odds.

I think your main point is fine but your anti analogy is flawed.

FIFA and organisations like UEFA etc very much set out rules of the game. This is a lot like legislation: teams will be fined if they or the fans break the rules.

That is a good point, but also, those fines are civil, not criminal. Gambling is like the FIFA situation except the government controls the rules, making the penalties criminal.

Ironically, FIFA has famously been involved with criminal activity.

I'm not understanding how it works with electronic craps. But normally if the dice don't bounce off the back wall you have to rethrow. So sliding the dice requires a distraction to make sure the stickmam doesn't notice.

It's just an electronic table; the dice are real. The goal is to reduce the crew working the table from 4 down to 1. Presumably much easier to get away with shenanigans with six fewer eyes on the action, which, I assume, is why they targeted this game.

It seems the degree of criminality, if any, would hinge on the precise specifications regarding the rules of the electronic craps game and how they are communicated to the players. Your point is valid, a big incentive for the casino is the labor reduction. But this doesn't relieve the casino of the responsibility to properly run and protect the game. Someone needs to observe the dice rolls and ensure they are valid, if the players are repeatedly making improper throws but nobody warns them or voids them, it's hard to claim the players were knowingly cheating. I have to imagine the game itself has some protection built-in -- what prevents players from replacing the dice with ones they brought themselves -- and therefore if the game, and its human operators, didn't object to what the players were doing (which they were doing in public, in view of surveillance cameras and other players), the burden of proving "cheating" is difficult. Perhaps the casino will fall back on "rules," which then raises the questions were those rules, for this specific model of electronic craps (and not just a normal live craps game) posted in a conspicuous location, is the definition of a legal dice roll clear and precise, etc.

I really don’t understand this line of thinking. Plenty of things are mechanically possible but illegal. It’s mechanically possible to use sleight-of-hand to change your cards in a blackjack game, too. “Violating the rules” in a gambling game with the intent to make money is cheating which is a crime.

> Is placing a bet after the roulette wheel has begun to spin a crime or merely a violation of the rules

It’s neither, of course. But let’s assume you meant “after the croupier has signaled no more bets”. If you do it accidentally, that’s fine. If you do it surreptitiously with the intent to cheat, yes, that’s a crime and in fact one of the most classic/famous traditional ways of casino cheating.

If theft by fraud is illegal, then why are there Casinos still operating?

Casinos and gambling establishments are generally very straightforward and upfront (as required by law) about how the odds are against you. People don't care - they find it fun.

Also, you can be completely honest about the odds, but most people are bad at math and a significant number believe they will win through supernatural means anyways.

Now that I have done some work with gambling companies, I'm actually pretty sure most people actually don't have delusions about their winning chances, but they just want to "try their luck" so to speak.

There are also the people who get delusions about this sort of thing and can become very problematic for casino staff because they annoy other patrons (eg hogging specific machines or harassing them out of table seats).

Because gambling and lotteries are pretty clear on the odds? I mean the government runs lotteries, are they committing fraud?

Wouldn't the responsibility on the casino in this case? Am I going to be arrested if I fail to bounce dices X times when I throw them?

Asking because not that I don't believe people cheat this way, but it must be hard to prove that someone cheats or just not good at throwing dice

Your instincts are correct. No, at a normal craps game you won't be arrested for failing to throw the dice properly, however, if the casino repeatedly voids your throws they will likely ask you to leave, especially if you're a healthy person who could easily make proper throws but are strangely setting the dice and sliding or dribbling them.

The current case seems to be much less clear-cut, however. Normally, a craps game would be watched by a pit crew (and surveillance to an extent) and bad rolls would be immediately recognized and voided. It is unclear whether anybody was monitoring the rolls at the electronic table, and whether there is any specific direction that states the dice must be rolled a certain way. Your question about the casino's responsibility seems highly relevant -- responsible for monitoring the rolls, for observing any possible player collusion, and for clearly stating what an acceptable dice roll consists of. If they failed at any of those, it would be hard to claim that whatever the players were doing, right out in the open, was illegal.

This case has parallels to Phil Ivey's ordeal with Borgata and Crockford's casinos. He and an associate won $20 million using a technique known as "edge sorting," which essentially is recognizing extremely small imperfections on the backs of the cards, to know the value of the next cards to be dealt. Whether or not this was actually cheating -- nobody touched the cards or manipulated the cards in any way -- was decided by the courts, but various US and UK courts had differing opinions so that decisions were often flipped on appeal. In this case, the casinos can claim "cheating," but if the players "rolled" the dice and the electronic table accepted those rolls as valid and no casino personnel objected and no written rules were broken, I'd say the players have a good case. Unfortunately we'll likely never know, $225,000 is a lot less than $20 million and I would expect if the casino legal teams realize they are in the wrong, they will simply offer the players $50, maybe $100,000 scot-free to keep their mouths shut and never visit again, and given the cost of legal fees and the possibility they could lose (or be charged criminally), I can't imagine the players not taking that deal.

More info on Phil Ivey: https://www.uspoker.com/phil-ivey-lawsuit-borgata-guide/

I couldn't find a law articulating this in Nevada, though I did find one in Indiana. The important part seems to be:

    (c) The stickperson may declare the following rolls invalid:
    ...
    (8) If the shooter slides the dice across the table so that one (1) or both of the dice do not roll or tumble.

Though if the stickperson doesn't spot the roll as invalid and lets it be played not sure if any law is being broken. (There might be another provision addressing the situation where invalid rolls are done intentionally and repeatedly with the intent to deceive)

Found it here: https://casetext.com/regulation/indiana-administrative-code/...

That only says the house has permission to invalidate the roll, not that the player is committing a crime (as would be the case if they were, say, using a device to cheat).

A good defense attorney might be able to find them an out here. The game in question is an electronic version of craps where there is only one employee monitoring it, and that individual may not legally be the stickperson.

If this was a good article it would tell us the specific charges. All it says is

> All four face several cheating-related charges and are connected to one criminal case, records showed

> On the casino side I can imagine a a slot machine might be required to have some kind of certified RNG and some requirement of statistical behavior, or that a roulette wheel must have some certification of symmetry etc.

A colleague of mine from college works for the gaming commission in our state (not NV.) had a 'catch-up' dinner a little over a decade ago. She intimated that one of her duties was to take the ROMs from slot machines and run them through a device that calculated the hash [0], to make sure that the code matched an 'approved' code base.

[0] - I can't recall whether it was MD5 or SHA-1, but definitely one of the two. Hopefully that's changed by now!

Here in Japan, all Pachinko game machines (technically not a gambling in law, but actually) have Z80 installed for lottery logic written in asm, even if the machine equips Intel Core and GeForce. So audit authority can check the logic.

I have tangentially tried to do some business with the other side of this, as a maker of TRNGs. The audit requirements were impressive, although most machines now are quite a bit more advanced (at least outside of Nevada), and basically run a gaming computer with a hardware root of trust and an RNG dongle.

I heard in a documentary that one guy who cheated slots was actually the guy inspecting the ROMs

Interesting.

Is there a written law or user agreement stating per game:

1. Each die must cross certain boundaries?

2. A player's body cannot get within X units of distance from the play area?

3. What's preventing a player from dropping dice straight down?

4. Can the dealer refuse a roll as invalid and require a reroll?

I've played craps in las vegas, at a minimum:

1. you're required to throw the dice all the way to the end of the table so that they bounce back before coming to a stop ( this is to prevent sliding ) -- the ends of the table have what's called a "randomizer" to bounce the dice in a random way ( see: https://depositphotos.com/74686689/stock-photo-pair-of-dice-... )

2. the stickman or table boss can and will invalidate a throw if you don't do the above ( although in practice, I've only ever been "warned" to do it as above when my throw didn't quite make it all the way to the end of the table )

The law that states that the game is only fair as long as the house wins

"This content is not available in your country/region."

This should be removed from HN: the content is not on the Internet.

https://archive.is/Sjzdz

I see some folks in this thread underestimating casinos and exactly how far the odds are tilted against the players.

I grew up in Vegas and have a lot of family and friends who work in the casino industry. A particular family member is an executive at one of them and told me that he has control over the odds on machines (within the legal limit) down to a particular machine being used by somebody. Apparently this means if they need a particular high roller to stick around for awhile and spend some money they can go ahead and grease the odds on the machine they’re using to give them some winnings to spend. Then they can just make it back the next day or whatever by cranking it back and making the odds worse. Honestly at first I thought he might be exaggerating but some time later I had a friend who worked corporate finance at one of the big casinos independently tell me the exact some thing.

These casinos though are really no joke. It’s one thing to skew the odds, and most people understand that, but being able to skew them in real time feels a lot more rigged. I assume some machines don’t operate this way because for many years the smaller casinos had machines that you could break even or win a bit consistently in poker, and some casinos even advertise odds. Still though its pretty shocking if my understanding is correct.

I wonder if it's even worse.. by law they are required to have a certain statistical payout right?

What if the casino can enable "win mode" for their favorite customers staying in high priced rooms, and then turn it to basically zero for foot traffic. At the end of the month the machine paid out the correct ratio... Except you as a general player had zero chance to win because it paid out to their loyal customer earlier in the day.

Don't think its worth the risk. You'd lower the average percentage player payout from like 98% (might be defaulted lower in Vegas, not sure) to low 90s and bump a few to over 100? it doesn't sound worth the risks. regular high rollers will still go there and still be profitable with regular slot odds.

Casinos cannot alter odds on any machine (or rather they could, but it would be highly illegal) and have absolutely no reason to. Variance does that job for them quite fine.

I mean, the software and RNGs are audited. The legal odds have to be true in any given spin. If your suggestion it is only in monthly aggregate was true, they wouldn't waste it on favorite customers. They would accept a bid of millions of dollars to accept free slot machines from a vendor, have their customers lose money all month and then have a vendor rep come in once a month to win a suspiciously large payout that made the math work out. (Or some other third party, since I assume a casino employee could not win on their own machine)

I call bullshit. There’s no way an industry as highly regulated as gambling which is effectively a license to print money, would be manipulating the odds on machines that are individually registered with the state gaming commission. The risk to the business for being completely shut down outweighs any weekend profit for getting a whale to stick around.

It probably depends how the regulations are written. Can the odds be _better_ than advertised without the casino getting in trouble? Then they'd quite plausibly have a range they could play with.

As far as I know, they have to be exactly equal to the advertised payouts. This prevents stupid shit like making one of your slot machines "hot" as an advertising trick.

Game odds are very rarely advertised. Sometimes it is trivial to calculate or simulate the game (blackjack, roulette, craps, video poker) because all of the game parameters are known (i.e. 52-card deck, 38 slots on an American roulette wheel, two 6-sided dice) as are all the payouts.

Slot machines, however, are opaque because the probability of hitting any specific combination is unknown to the public. The machine can promise that a 7-7-7 result will pay $5000 but you have no idea how often a 7-7-7 is supposed to hit.

Sometimes a casino will take some less popular machines and configure them with an extremely low payout percentage (3% for example) and because the players would not otherwise know this, the casino will put a sign up "97% payout!" to try to attract some value-oriented players, just like a retail store takes old merchandise and puts it in a bargain bin at 50% off.

What rule is that against? I don’t necessarily doubt you I just dont have any intuition about this. Because it seems like its already completely legal to play unfair games.

There is no need to tweak the odds. Every machine is scheduled exactly to give a certain amount back while raking a profit. They're not there for you to profit, at least in the long term.

An example of this is the simple claw machines. One was full of teddy bears and I knew the operator. He told me point blank the machine will drop 16/17 times, "someone's got to pay for the teddies, and he ain't me!"

In many cases the stuffed animals at carnival games cost less than the $1 it costs to play the game—you could win every play and they’d still make money off you.

Yes, but remember that an operator has further costs.

First, he has to pay the machine that wasn't cheap to buy outright.

Second, he has to share revenues with the venue hosting the machine. That goes between 20-60% AFAIK.

Then there is the maintenance cost, time spent lubing and adjusting, and restocking + travel time.

So yes, overall, the operator better make sure you don't just pay for the teddies!

It's highly-regulated in favor of the house. These gambling concerns are criminal-adjacent corporations with political connections and weak campaign finance laws.

To call them "criminal-adjacent" seems like a conservative western tradition. I'm not a casino apologist, but it's not like they have some hidden agenda. It's gambling. Did you misunderstand that? It's a game of odds and the house controls the odds. Did you misunderstand that?

Edit: Clearly you don't misunderstand that, so what's the complaint?

Gambling has a very strange effect on the human psyche. I never hear anybody come back from Disney World bragging about how much they won. But I've met tons of people who "always win in Vegas". I know a few people who seem addicted to Disneyland. I never understood it. Season passes every year. Maybe one visit a month. Even when they don't have children. It seems weird to me. But the effects of gambling on people's brains is even more weird.

It is only criminally-adjacent in places that perceive a giant risk to people and so have made it illegal. Otherwise, it is as criminally-adjacent as any source of wealth or power that has an incentive to build barriers to entry and to stifle competition.

Yes, people might have biases. In this case though, Vegas really was developed by the mafia.

This is an interesting question. I don't think the first casino in Vegas was established by the mafia. The mafia's involvement later on is well documented. The mafia's current involvement is not so well documented. If you believe that the mafia was eventually exercised from Las Vegas and look at the development before and after that point... We could have a reasonable discussion about whether the development post-mafia dwarfs the development under the mafia and whether the development under the mafia dwarfs the development pre-mafia.

But the claim seemed to me to be about the present day. Today, I think the industry falls about the same place as big-oil or big-pharma or big-auto or big-politics. That is, plenty of people would call them all criminal-adjacent. But it still makes me wince a little. I'm sympathetic to them all being heckled, though.

Gambling existed before the mafia. The mafia isn't that involved with Las Vegas any more.

Casinos have been the way for the mafia to operate legally.

What interest would a criminal organization have in a high cash revenue business?

Could it be a way to launder money? Jimmy "No Nose" comes in with $40k cash every weekend and loses it gambling, and "nobody knows" where a guy like Jimmy gets that cash so regularly.

Gambling has been well-known for some time as a way to launder money. For example see this[1] official government report in the UK or this[2] which is US-specific but much less detailed.

[1] https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/print/The-money-launde...

[2] https://moneysmartathlete.com/betting-industry/money-launder...

The old skim was even better than that. Make $500k, report $300k and send $200k cash back to Chicago.

Casinos are spiritually in the same place as drug dealers and pimps. Profiting off weakness and vice.

If you like spending all your dime on drugs, dice and so forth then fine, but let's not pretend the guys selling it are fine upstanding businessmen.

This is not the right analogy.

'Criminally adjacent' means literally, adjacent to organised crime.

This is not the same thing as 'above bar businesses are 'adjacent' to anything that is not' , or 'aggressive competitive measures'.

You are wrong. And it is arguably worse than that.

I'm a little skeptical about "high rollers" playing on any machine at all, but the machines are, in fact highly regulated and highly controlled. I'm always amused to see ads about the "loosest slots in town." It's not really false advertising, because the slots are regulated and everybody sets them at exactly the legal limit.

But then there is what is allowed to happen when you don't win. If the machine has already calculated that you will not win on a particular "pull" it can manipulate the loss in advantage ways. For instance, it can land on 7-7-spinning..., spinning, one cherry away from 7. You just missed by 1! So close!

The world thinks they have uncovered a big new secret when they realize that social media sites study human physiology to optimize dopamine release in their victims^H^H subscribers^H^H account holders. Casinos have been at it for lifetimes.

I don't know why you would think there is a risk to the business if a casino lets a guest win an extra game or two.

Not every machine is at the legal limit. Just like not every black jack table is at the best odds for casinos.

> the slots are regulated and everybody sets them at exactly the legal limit.

It's unlikely there is any slot machine in Nevada "at the legal limit." Every gaming device must be set to theoretically pay out a minimum of 75% of wagers -- i.e. the maximum it may keep (or "hold") is 25%. This is, of course, a theoretical number, on any given day a particular machine may hold more, or it may have negative hold -- just like if you flipped a coin enough times, occasionally you'd get long streaks of heads or of tails, even though theoretically it should be 50/50.

In reality slot machines are typically configured to hold between 6 and 15%. A slot machine holding 25% would be an awful experience and simply not get repeat play. Slot manufacturers prepare each game with a range of options that the casino can choose from, but none of them would deliberately ruin their own game by offering a 25% hold option on a slot machine.

Nevada Gaming Control Act Regulation 14: 14.040 Minimum standards for gaming devices. 1. All gaming devices must: (a) Theoretically pay out a mathematically demonstrable percentage of all amounts wagered, which must not be less than 75 percent for each wager available for play on the device.

https://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=1...

> If the machine has already calculated that you will not win on a particular "pull" it can manipulate the loss in advantage ways. For instance, it can land on 7-7-spinning..., spinning, one cherry away from 7. You just missed by 1! So close!

Showing a “near win” for a loss is completely different than manipulating the odds in real time in response to the current user.

The displayed result is a loss and what matters is the chance of winning or losing must match the registered odds for the machine as an independent event.

> I don't know why you would think there is a risk to the business if a casino lets a guest win an extra game or two.

Because if they knowingly manipulate the odds of a game they’d be in violation of their gambling license and be shut down by the State.

It's entirely true, modern slot machines get a ticket from a central server detailing the results it will show.

They do analytics on all of this using Splunk btw (they can actually afford it, lol), there are some really cool talks out there if you look around.

This usually depends on the jurisdiction. Class III machines are independent and each one contains its own RNG. Class II obtain their randomness from a central server, and are usually configured to actually be a bingo machine or some other pooled wagering mechanism, and the "slot machine" that you see is a mask for the pre-determined outcome.

In the US, almost all commercial casinos (Nevada, New Jersey, Mississippi, etc) use Class III games while native American casinos use a mix of Class III and Class II. Typically, Class III are preferred by casinos and by gamblers.

Here's another source: https://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/state_news/casino-1...

The actual regs matter. For example it is well known that with penny slots, the house takes a larger cut than larger denomination lots. Significantly, something like 9% vs. 5%.

Then supposedly Casinos put higher payout slots in high visibility areas such as the edge of a high traffic walkthrough, or with good sight lines. This would make a lot of sense from a marketing POV, make the winners more visible.

I imagine this works out because by assuming a temporary “odds” debt that is repaid over the next day or so by other customers.

You're assuming regulations == good.

In Vegas, slot machines for example have a legally mandated payout rate. This means it is illegal for them to be random and therefore fair. They are required by law to be rigged.

A process with a particular expected value can still be random.

I think in this case it's not a legally mandated expected value, but a legally mandated payout rate. As in, it actually must pay out a percentage of what's taken in, over a certain time period. I don't think a fully random process can guarantee that.

Of course it can. Unless you start playing word games to manipulate what “fully random” means.

You can set the odds of a fully random process, just take an rng returning a uniform distribution between 1 and 100 and set the bar at whichever threshold you want, or do the same with dice, the odds of any given face is 1/faces, so get however many faced dice you need then set the faces (or a threshold again for numbered faces) e.g. on a 20-faced dice you set the threshold at 3+ and you’ve got a 90% payout rate.

This is obviously incorrect: Let’s say they have to pay on each 500-play window, on true random, operator can end up with all 500 plays as non-paying and break the law.

This is why they are programmed to increase payout odds if there was no payout for long time, and this is why some players wait for such machines. (In modern casinos machines are pooled, so it’s actually more complicated)

An operator ending up with all 500 plays as non paying is not breaking the law, they are just incredibly unlucky. The spins are independent, and no amount of waiting for a machine to be "due" is going to do anything.

That's not how randomness works.

In your example, there is no guarantee that 90% of rolls will be a 3 or above. Statistically, over the long term, that will be the case, but I wouldn't expect the payout laws to be written in such a way that "eventually" you'll "probabilistically" hit your payout targets.

More likely it's something like "you must pay out X over time period Y". You can't 100% guarantee that with a random process. It's possible (and not even all that unlikely) that, over the span of a day (week, month, whatever), you'd end up with only 89.9% of rolls being a 3 or above, and that would violate the payout laws.

I think there's a few missing pieces of information (in this discussion, probably could be looked up by some intrepid soul)

Firstly what is the payout rate against, I could imagine it being:

- Plays - Time - Stake

Secondly, how is compliance defined:

- Convergence in expected value - Degree of breach of threshold

On the second one, it's kind of interesting if the degree of breach is 'never breach threshold', because when a machine is 'first turned on' the first play must always be a win (crudely speaking), if the second play has a sufficiently large stake (such that a loss would break the payout rate threshold) then that probably has to be a win too, etc until people can't keep exponentially raising the stages... This is a boot-strapping problem really but still.

If compliance is in expected value then I think any of the rates can be made to work

For a rate in terms of plays or stake then you can just have a binomial variable with some probability. In this case each player/play would be exposed to the same probability; each play would be independent.

For a rate in terms of time the plays would not be independent because the duration of previous plays and payout would affect what payout with subsequent plays would be, so you would need a dynamic adjustment of odds over the time domain, but this can still converge.

For a threshold like you describe then at such a point you would breach the threshold you may need to payout in a situation where you would have not paid out when converging in expectation.

I think what you are saying is that this shunting of probabilities would make the process not random.

However, I think the probability that a 'shunt' occurs could itself be modelled as a random variable dependent on the play history. Assuming some random properties to the sequence of plays (which is a reasonable modelling assumption), this would still be random.

It wouldn't be 'fair' in the sense of giving each player the same probabilities or for plays to be independent, but it would still be random just a distribution weirder than a bernoulli one.

Also FWIW:

> I wouldn't expect the payout laws to be written in such a way that "eventually"

That is exactly how I'd expect them to be written, seems the most natural way to do things, with the same ultimate benefit.

> payout laws to be written in such a way that "eventually" you'll "probabilistically" hit your payout targets.

This is exactly how they are written. Except, there is no specific payout target (this game must payout 92% of wagers), there is a mandated minimum, any game which exceeds the minimum is lawful. Note the word "theoretical" in each of these:

New Jersey Admin Code 13:69E-1.28A: (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, each slot machine game which requires a wager shall have a theoretical return to player (RTP) equal to or greater than 83 percent.

Mississippi Title 13, Chapter 12, Rule 12.5: Rule 12.5 Minimum Standards For Gaming Devices. All gaming devices submitted for approval:v(a) Must be electronic in design and operation and must be controlled by a microprocessor or the equivalent. Microcontrollers are allowed.v(b) Must theoretically pay out a mathematically demonstrable percentage of all amounts wagered, which must not be less than eighty percent (80%) or greater than one hundred percentv(100%) for each wager available for play on the device

Pennsylvania 58 Pa. Code § 461a.7: (a) A slot machine may not be set to pay out less than the theoretical payout percentage, which may not be less than 85%, calculated using the lowest possible wager that could be played for any single play, or equal or exceed 100%, calculated using the highest eligible wager available.

They do not have a legally mandated rate, they have a legally mandated expected value and there are strong statistical tests done of the RNGs.

Source: have worked with a situation which required me analyzing the process of getting betting software through regulatory approval.

Edit to add: Here's the relevant regulations in Nevada. https://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=4...

The thing to search for in the regulations is the "Theoretical hold percentage", which is the expectation for the house expressed as a percent. The fact that they call it "theoretical" is probably enough to demonstrate that it isn't a mandated rate, but the theoretical average rate.

I don't think you understand what a legally mandated payout rate means. You can have a slot machine that is completely random, yet gives a consistent payout over a large amount of trials. Every spin is independent.

Fixed game odds vs payout odds can be done and be truly random (still not fair, but truly random). The problem with slot machines is they have to pay out a percentage of gross revenue. This means the game has to track how much money has been put into it and adjust the game odds to compensate, not simply count the number of rolls in the game. This cannot be truly random.

Slot machines do not have to pay out a specific percentage of gross revenue, and odds are not adjusted. The result of any individual outcome is random. Slot machines are programmed to theoretically pay out a certain percentage -- but in reality, some pay out a little more or a little less, just like the quarter in your pocket might land on heads 52 times out of 100 flips, or maybe 47.

You are positing a situation like, hey, that dealer just dealt that player two blackjacks in a row. Therefore for the next three hands we're going to take all the aces out of the deck to make sure there isn't another blackjack. Obviously this is not how casinos work, neither is a slot machine adjusting its odds to hit a specific payout target. The blackjack game, and the slot machine, don't have to, over the course of millions of wagers they are mathematically certain to get very close to that theoretical target.

No one manipulates stock offerings either. The SEC is just too good at it's job.

This is a myth, and a quick google search will support that. Wizardofodds mentions it here: https://wizardofodds.com/ask-the-wizard/slots/progressives/

The link you provided states that the technical capability is there, but Nevada has a rule against changing the odds without notifying the player.

> "The conventional gaming device or client station must be in the idle mode with no errors or tilts, no play and no credits on the machine for at least 4 minutes. After this time, the conventional gaming device or client station must be disabled and rendered unplayable for at least 4 minutes. During the time the machine is disabled a message must be displayed on a video screen or other appropriate display device notifying the patron that the game configuration has been changed." — Technical Standards for Gaming Devices and On-line Slot Systems 1.140

https://wizardofodds.com/ask-the-wizard/slots/progressives/

In other states, there may or may not be such a rule.

Why would you quote anybody but Nevada gaming regulations in an appeal to authority on this question?

If you know anything about gambling, you will realise wizardofodds is the authority, and likely more trustworthy than the Nevada gaming regs…

He's the authority.

Wizardofodds mentions a specific methodology, which is not the issue.

Are odds changed after an idle time? They can be, practically. They can be legally, in NV.

https://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=1...

This is not a myth.

I don't believe this.

But it seems it is true.

The catch is the high roller has a favorite machine, so you change the odds before they arrive.

https://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=2...

"Once a game is initiated by a player on a gaming device, the rules of play for that game, including the probability and award of a game outcome, cannot be changed. In the event the game or rules of play for the game, including probability and award of a game outcome, change between games during a gaming session, notice of the change must be prominently displayed to the player."

Other source, not sure where this reg comes from - "Slot machines in Nevada must sit idle for 4 minutes before an adjustment to payback percentage or game rules can be made. When a change is made, the machine must be taken out of play with a message displayed on the screen noting an update is taking place. The machine then must sit idle for an additional 4 minutes after the change before play is allowed."

I was curious so I looked it up. This site seems to have some technical details:

> Some slot machines operate on downloadable software, which comes from a central server. In these cases, the casino doesn’t have to open a game and change a chip.

> Instead, they can simply download the software to alter RTP. But just as with replacing an EPROM chip, casinos need to follow their jurisdiction’s guidelines when changing server-based payout percentages.

From https://www.gamblingsites.net/blog/inside-the-myth-that-casi...

You fell for a very old urban legend. Please google it before spreading "friend who worked corporate finance at one of the big casinos" stories. Your friend was just having fun at your expense, as was the family member.

This is actually true that they can and do adjust the odds on these machines for high rollers and the like. It's all done by computer now, no lever. However, there are strict procedures involved. If there is a player on the machine, you can't change the odds or payouts without first kicking the player off the machine, and you have to make the payouts very clear (usually with a placard on the machine), and you have to change that too.

Looks like there’s actually some truth to it. Wouldn’t be surprised by some exaggeration but please google it before leaving a comment dismissing it.

Truth.

Mistake no. 1 is expecting to beat the house in the long term when the expectation of all of these games, save PvP like poker, is less than zero a priori.

The MIT blackjack team might have found temporary counting and signaling systems to exploit, but the casinos were never going to let any group bleed money from them in the long term.

Every now and then some groups may try, but they're not going to beat a system that doesn't tolerate excessive winnings for long.

If you want to go to Vegas for a vacation and make $100 last with your own system of minimum risk, sure, go for it.

Casinos are required to display the current payout rate on any and all slot machines (EDIT: incorrect, see comment below). The way some machines become profitable is when there's a progressive jackpot that hasn't been hit. Imagine there's a high roller $100 slot machine with a 99% payout. That means each spin you have an expected value of losing $1. Now imagine there's a $100 jackpot that you have a 1% chance of hitting (to keep the math clean). That jackpot is now adding $1 of expected value to each spin, so now your expected value is $-1 + $1 = $0. As jackpots grow, all machines (which offer them) will eventually become +EV, or profitable, to play.

Casinos also regularly offer comps, bonuses, and other non-cash incentives to players who spend a lot of money, so it's pretty easy to end up with a +EV game. It's one of those scenarios where the casino gets to have their cake and eat it too. For instance, the way the jackpot may work is the casino takes $0.2 of each $1 of profit that high roller machine is yielding, and put it towards the jackpot. But when that jackpot gets high enough, the exponentially increased number of spins results in an overall profit gain for the casino, relative to just taking the whole $1 for themselves and having no jackpot.

---

Finally, as a slightly different segment of gaming there are some machines which are "technically" capable of being beaten with skill. For instance many casinos now offer Limit Texas Hold'em poker machines, where you are playing "real" poker against a machine. But limit hold'em is an incredibly technical and complex game which no human is ever going to be able to come out on top of against a strong machine now a days. But it's a lot more fun than playing e.g. chess against a computer because the optimal strategy for heads up limit hold'em makes you look pretty much like a maniac, to somebody who doesn't know much about the game.

> Casinos are required to display the current payout rate on any and all slot machines.

No, they aren’t, at least in Nevada. Some states make the whole casino disclose its average “return to player” metric though.

> Casinos are required to display the current payout rate on any and all slot machines.

This is not accurate in at least Nevada, Michigan, and Maryland. Casinos are required to disclose the overall average, but not the rate of individual slot machines.

Wow, you're absolutely correct. I was indeed referring to Vegas in particular. I suppose I conflated the rules for video poker (where payout tables are and must be listed each machine, which indirectly gives an exact EV measurement with optimal play) with slots. My opinion of slots just dropped lower - something I did not know was possible. That is just so sketchy.

Just to be clear, payout tables absolutely must be listed on slot machines. The _rate_ at which the payout is made is not required to be listed on a given machine.

That is, if you land on three cherries, you should be able to verify you got the right amount of money. But you don't know the percentage chance of landing on three cherries.

Absolutely. The difference I'm referring to is that video poker games must be dealt as if the cards were coming from a fair deck, so the odds of each event happening can be determined relatively easily given a fixed strategy, and consequently so can you exact expected profit/loss per hand, and when a machine can be profitable to play.

That the same is not true in slots is the thing that I missed. That a triple cherry pays 100 to 1 or whatever is meaningless if you have no way of knowing the odds of a triple cherry.

The gaming machines are all networked Windows PCs with payout odds that are controlled by group, which can be defined into sections as small as twelve machines. (The exact number may have changed in the past decade.)

NGCB (Nev. Gaming Control Board) does regular on-site audits of the machines and the central configurations to ensure that they are compliant.

'feels rigged'.

My friend, the entire thing is rigged from top to bottom, from the time you see the ad, until you are back at home.

The only way to win is to accept the grift on those terms.

There's a little bit of truth here, but it's mostly incorrect. Yes casinos set the odds for any individual slot machine. However the game manufacturers prepare the games with about 5 configurations, even the loosest config will still be well into the casinos favor (it's sort of like how Call of Duty has an Easy, Normal, Hard or Legend mode), i.e. the game configs might be to hold 7.3%, 8.6%, 10.1%, 11.5% and 12.7%. Of course the game's theoretical hold is not revealed to players.

The casinos are allowed to update a game configuration while it is on the floor and idle (not while it is being played). I doubt it has been tested but I believe Gaming Control Board would frown on configuration changes being made to accommodate an individual player, but even if a casino did this, they would not be "giving" a player any winnings, they would just be making it so the player was likely to lose at a slower rate, but still be losing, i.e. dropping from the 11.5% config to the "loosest" 7.3%.

This is mostly a moot point anyway, because it is perfectly legal for a casino to offer a player hundreds or thousands of dollars in free slot play (or free bets), that's how they give a specific player "winnings to spend."

Looks like autocorrect got to them:

> the cheating involved multiple suspects and occurred on the Azure Roll to Win Electronic Craps table

It's actually Aruze: https://aruzegaming.com/table-games/roll-to-win-craps/

Wow, they call it a ruse! It's right there in the name!

Non-geoblocked: https://archive.ph/2023.05.26-084312/https://www.8newsnow.co...

If this is just vanilla sliding/fraud (distract the dealer and then slide the dice without any air time), then this is just a normal case of cheating/fraud...

However, this isn't a normal felt craps table, instead of felt it's an electronic screen.* I wonder if the they were able to get the dice to slide after landing due to the physics (coefficient of friction/restitution?) of the screen being very different from felt. If so, this may** be a little more interesting.

*I think the type of table looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w9gZAjwqZs

**I imagine it is still quite a small chance this gets more interesting. But FWIW a possible interesting scenario would be the Nevada Gaming Commission finding that they made a legal throw or something

Generally players like this target specific games for specific reasons, so I agree that there might be something to the table surface that makes it easier to slide dice.

I’m super ambivalent about stories like this. Ignoring what the actual laws are for a moment - this is a game designed by the casinos to their advantage. If a player can figure out a way to get his or her own advantage, more power to them!

I think the casinos can and should of course be allowed to ban people from playing if they don’t want them to play (their house their rules, literally).

But criminal charges? That feels just wrong. Falls in the same bucket as companies who pursue criminal charges against white hat hackers / security researchers.

Not only are the games designed by the casinos to their advantage but if someone actually starts consistently winning, they just get banned and sometimes refused a payout. It's set up to be heads the house wins, tails the customer loses.

I watched a documentary on this the other day, with a guy traveling around the country playing blackjack. Multiple times he had to call the gaming commissioner or the sheriff to get his $40,000 in chips cashed. Even one time when he hadn’t played a single game.

Documentary name?

I’ve also been following Steven Bridges on YouTube and it’s super interesting!

Inside the Edge most likely

Yes, that’s the one. Very eye opening.

Thanks both!

Wait, I don't get the last bit. Did he go to the casino, exchange $40k in cash for chips, not gamble at all with them, and then take the chips to the cashier to get it changed back to cash?

That's... weird? I feel like as a casino it'd not be unreasonable to think something fishy was going on, like the guy was making a (somewhat clumsy?) attempt to launder money.

But overall... yeah. Certainly a casino has the right to refuse service to whomever they want -- such as someone who's counting cards (not that counting works at blackjack these days, since no casino deals out a single full deck at a time anymore) -- but the idea that they don't feel they have to honor whatever payouts owed up to the point of kicking someone out... messed up.

The chips were probably from a previous session.

I suspect if it doesn't work that way, we will start bailing out the casinos that go bankrupt, and subsidizing them, because jobs.

Reno and Stateline are casino company towns. Also, the Native tribe casinos are similar operations but probably don't have the same political clout.

It is not sometimes. They will strait up not pay if fraud is suspected.

Exactly, this is the casinos basically saying "come play, you can win tons of money, as long as you don't actually win!".

I think we would have much more ethical gambling if customers getting an edge wasn’t criminal.

This particular one is about sliding dice - throwing them in a way that they don't tumble.

I'm sure it's understandable that that's outside the acceptable way to play a game - counting cards, for example, is done while respecting the rules of the game.

I kind of see this one as stealing from the casino, rather than players getting an edge.

But I'm cool with casinos getting robbed!

IMO the casino is responsible for enforcing the rules of the game. If the players sliding dice didn't trigger some sort of detection, that doesn't make it a crime to slide the dice.

Exactly, it's up to their dealer or put boss to stop it when it happens, not some kangaroo court criminal charges months after the fact.

Why do you apply this standard to cheating at games and not for example stealing? I find the view ridiculous. "If not a crime if you didn't catch me red handed" kind of ridiculous.

Because stealing is against the rules/laws of the game/society.

The article is scant on details, but it sounds like this happened at an auto table. If the auto table allows dice sliding, and they weren't warned by a dealer that they were not allowed to slide the dice, then they were playing by the rules.

To flip it around, why is the casino allowed to stack the odds in its favor, but not the player? If there's an exploit in the rules that players can use to gain an advantage, then it's on the casino to update its rules

Right: if you go up to a regular "manual" table and try to slide the dice, the dealer/stickperson/boxperson/pit boss will call "no roll", tell you what you did wrong (likely with some level of annoyance in their tone), and have you roll again. (Keep doing it and you might get kicked out, though.) It's up to the casino employees to ensure the rules are followed. (But if they miss something, IMO that's on them.)

And to your point about warnings from dealers, many people walk up to a craps table for the first time not knowing what they're doing, expecting to learn on the go (and most craps dealers are happy to help, if you ask questions nicely and not while they're in the middle of counting payouts). There's no rule that says you can play a casino game only after first memorizing the rule book for that game.

If you go up to an "auto" table, and there's no one supervising it (or, say, just one person who can't possibly watch everything), then the casino is implicitly saying that the software on the table is good enough to help ensure the rules are followed. If it's not, then that's on them.

I do think that card counting and dice sliding aren't quite in the same league, though. Making a rule against card counting seems itself unfair; the game is about probabilities, and card counting is an integral part of determining those probabilities (given a hypothetical naive casino that'd give you single-deck blackjack these days). But a rule for craps that says "you can't roll the dice in a way that lets you determine the outcome before rolling" seems... pretty reasonable to me? The game would be pretty pointless if the shooter could just call out the numbers they want, and that'd be the roll.

Either way, criminal charges for dice sliding is messed up. If the person supervising the auto table (or the auto table itself) didn't enforce the rules properly... welp, maybe the supervisor needs better training, or the table needs better software.

I guess in my mind the argument is that the entire allure of a casino is that there's an illusion of skill to the games.

Nobody wants a pure chance game, and the casinos know this, so they make games that allow for some degree of skill to influence the outcome. The idea here is that if you think you're above average, you can win 55% of the time, and the casino allows that because most people win 40% of the time so they come out positive.

In fact, casinos promote that, and poker and blackjack are great examples where beginners who don't have the skills to beat the odds are more likely to gamble (and lose money) because they think they're better than they actually are.

To me, that's what makes this case and card counting the same thing. The players used their skill to outsmart the casino. The casino can then update their rules to account for that: using multiple decks for blackjack, or adding an obstacle the dice must trip.

What the casino shouldn't be allowed to do, is go cry to the government and throw the players in jail.

That being said, if the players were going against guidance or violating the rules then I agree, that's illegal and they should return the money and be banned from the casino. Still no prison though haha.

It seems to me that this is how any sphere of the entertainment industry works. Now any activity is a marketing-thought-out way to earn money.

It's entertainment and you pay for it in losses. That's the deal you make with the owners of the casino when you enter the game. If you try to profit off it by cheating, you are failing to comply to your part of the deal. You don't have to accept the deal if you don't like it, just don't go there.

If a company doesn't allow you to test their security, just let it go.

Right! But explain to me how what you've described should equal criminal charges?

Not following the games rules to gain a monetary advantage is criminal. If the casinos owner would do the same while dealing cards, you would be saying the same.

Fraud, probably. The rules of the game require the dice to tumble.

There's a simple remedy, though, for people who don't want to follow the rules: ejecting them from the game or the casino. Casinos do that all the time.

And consider the usual case at a normal "manual" craps table: if someone tried to slide the dice, or throw them in a way that wasn't allowed, there are three (and sometimes four) casino employees around the table who will quickly call "no roll" and tell the shooter what they did wrong, and have them go again. If they keep doing it, they'll get kicked out. No need to involve law enforcement here.

But once we talk about an "automatic" craps table -- which exists mainly to cut down on labor costs to the casino -- now they're pissed that they failed to enforce the rules properly, and have -- through their clout and government legal capture -- turned that into criminal charges against the people who slid by.

If you posted this message on the door of a casino, I imagine not many people would go inside. What people think is: "I could be rich and never have to work again."

If you hire a prostitute, they obviously aren't going to emphasise the fact that they wouldn't be there if you hadn't paid them. Part of what you're paying for is the fantasy. And sure, some people will be taken in by it. I've no doubt some people have fallen in love with prostitutes. Is that an indictment of the business model (both of casinos and prostitutes)? I'm not sure, but it does mean I don't find it problematic that casinos don't post their business model on the door. I think that, if the existence of casinos which don't emphasise their business model is problematic, then the stronger argument is the one which holds that it is better to not have casinos at all.

The same argument could be applied to loan sharks, “ if you don’t like it, don’t get the loan” and yet this is illegal because it’s predatory behavior and I agree should be illegal.

No, it would be the same argument as payday loans - the government regulates the terms, and if they aren't to your liking don't get a loan from them

Yeah but we are not discussing if it should be legal to offer gambling games but if casinos deserve protection from people trying to abuse the offered deal.

I think offering gambling games as a business should be illegal but as long as it's legal the casinos deserve the same protection from people trying to abuse contracts as everyone else.

Do you consider card counting cheating? Seeing gambling as paid entertainment is certainly the healthier attitude for the vast majority of people, but at the same time it's not like everyone who is able to make a consistent profit gambling is automatically a cheater. The casino needs to win in aggregate but that doesn't mean every individual is entering some unspoken contract to lose money in expectation (depending on the game anyway). They're agreeing to the rules of the game.

> They're agreeing to the rules of the game.

I know I've been arguing the opposite in other comments, but in this case they apparently didn't actually agree to the rules of the game, and yet they chose to play anyway: the rules do state that sliding isn't allowed, and that the dice have to tumble in a certain way for it to be considered a valid roll.

Regardless, though, I think it's the casino's responsibility to ensure rules like that are followed, and if they fail to do so (due to cost-cutting measures like having software run a craps table), that's on them.

If you don’t get caught you win ;)

> this is a game designed by the casinos to their advantage.

While I more or less agree with everything you said, could there really exist a casino where players have an advantage against the casino? I feel like even a casino that tries to be perfectly fair, and make a profit on other things like food and alcohol, would eventually go belly up because they would logically attract more 'cheaters' than any other casino, even if they did their best to stop them.

At that point, you could just use currency that is worth nothing

The Chuck E. Cheese business plan. Your winnings must be redeeemed in the gift shop at inflated prices.

I'm not sure I could go quite as far as super ambivalent but I can certainly get quite ambivalent about it 8)

The whole point of a casino is for the house to eventually win. That is the nature of a business. However we are also talking about gambling - the taking of odds and rules of the game and paybacks etc.

So someone outflanked the house, via dextrous skill. Now here's where it gets a bit murky: where do we draw the line between fiddling the odds potentially into your favour via skill and otherwise? I think that skidding the dice was always an available option and hence should be accounted for say with a trip obstacle that the dice must cross.

I think that skidding in this case is different than earpieces and card marking and other cheats. I also don't think that counting in Black Jack is wrong - fix the bloody game.

Gambling is often painted by the industry as a game of skill. Please don't penalise skill but do have the good grace to realize when you have lost. Pick yourself up and adjust the rules and crack on. You have destroyed so many lives over the centuries, so why not own it and grow up?

> where do we draw the line

There's actually clear rules about dice handling at carb tables. The dice are expected to hit the far wall, the dice are expected to be tossed, and to not slide. Throws that do not meet standards might be deemed 'no roll'.

And a call of "no roll" in that case is fine. But criminal charges? C'mon.

I don't agree. I think it should be legal (as long as going business offering gambling games is legal which is another thing to consider) to offer a deal: "Let's play a game where you have 0.98$ ROI for every dollar staked. In exchange we offer high variance and thus a chance you win big".

As long as the casino offers a game true to the promise they should have protection against people looking for loopholes the same way there is protection in contract law.

Gambling games are a form of reverse insurance. With insurance you pay to reduce variance/risk. In gambling games you pay to increase it because apparently a lot of people enjoy it.

As long as the deal is "come play this game, we offer negative ROI in exchange for high variance" and not "come at us, try anything to win at the game we have here" the house deserves protection imo.

I've wondered about this asymmetry between company and individual.

Player throws the dice wrong -- crime. Hotel overbooks and doesn't provide what was already paid for -- oops.

Don't scan something at Walmart? Arrest and prosecution. Get double scanned -- who gets arrested? Who will pick up that prosecution?

Glad it’s not just me that this drives insane. And perversely, it’s the ubiquitous essential services in quasi-cartels that are the worst (airlines, telecommunications providers, etc.). Seems like a bunch of hertz executives should be in prison rather over the spate of false arrests of drivers.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/05/business/hertz-lawsuit-settle...

For the scanning issue, the problem is intent. Accidentally not/double scanning is not a crime. Its easy to convince a jury that someone not scanning steak after scanning bananas, potatoes and corn is doing it to steal steak. It's hard to prove that a cashier scanning steak twice to make Walmart more money was doing so intentionally. If it was official Walmart policy to do so, and obviously intentional, I imagine it would be a huge news story and a lot of state AGs as well as class action suits would get involved.

Ehhhhhh, I agree that criminal charges for dice sliding is way unreasonable, but I don't think your examples are quite the same.

"Player throws the dice wrong" is really "player knows that what they're doing is against the rules and gives them a huge edge, but does it anyway".

And "hotel overbooks..." is -- unfortunately -- "hotel overbooks, which they are legally and contractually allowed to do, but will refund your money and at least attempt to find you a room elsewhere". I think it's a shitty practice, and if I ever got "bumped" from a room that way, I'd shitlist that hotel chain. But I don't begrudge them their right to do that.

"Doesn't scan something at Walmart" is more like than not "stealing" than "an accident" (though I do expect that when accidents happen, people still often get railroaded). "Cashier double scanned" is pretty much always an accident; punishing a cashier seems fantastically unfair and predatory.

I was a little disappointed to learn that "dice sliding" is literally just dice sliding. :)

I read this as dice slicing and was disappointed to learn they weren't shaving off bits of one side to gain an advantage.

For anyone else who gets a message about the content not being available in your region, it looks like this is the same story:

https://thehill.com/homenews/4021669-group-accused-in-225k-d...

Here's an explanation of "dice sliding"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1qmoDJIunY

The article is unclear about this but what is the illegal part here?

“The cheating method involved dice sliding and sliding occurs when the shooter slides one or both dice across the table in order to prevent the cubes from rolling,” the documents said. “The dice will be in the same position as they started, allowing the shooter to control the outcome of the game.”

What portion of this is illegal? The casino should be running these games so that this isn’t possible.

I'm pretty sure the official rules of table craps said that the dice have to both tumble at least once and bounce off the wall. If you slide the dice, the tumbling part doesn't happen.

It seems strange that it wasn't noticed? The mentioned game is meant to have fewer dealers operating it, but it says pretty explicitly that it should be supervised and have >=1 dealer.

https://aruzegaming.com/table-games/roll-to-win-craps/

The company says the table can be operated by a single dealer, and many casinos do just that... It's a cost-saving measure that they can get away with because the electronic table doesn't use betting chips; but it also means that there are less eyes to spot the cheaters.

When the betting and cash in/out process is handled entirely digitally... surely the dice roll is about the only thing the dealer is even handling? I just don't understand how they don't notice the lack of them rolling.

Are you trying to argue that it goes from illegal to legal as long as no one is watching?

How did you read that out of his response?

I think he just is asking how the dealer didn't notice the cheating.

I don't see any arguments their making. They simply stated/asked a question, then provided some information and a citation.

I'm baffled at how that is somehow an endorsement of cheating and that its okay to cheat if no one sees them?

I don't think anyone is arguing that it should be considered a valid roll. But being illegal in the criminal sense? No way, that's a bit much.

But that's not illegal

The definition of fraud is deception with the intent of enriching yourself.

How is it deception to slide the dice on a craps table? Someone should be supervising the table to ensure rules are followed. (And certainly there are plenty of people who walk up to a craps table without knowing all the rules in the first place; that's an expected and accepted part of learning the game.) If the casino didn't staff the electronic craps tables properly, and the tables themselves had software unable to detect certain kinds of rolls the casino doesn't like, that should be the casino's problem, not the player's.

Yeah, why are the official rules of table craps part of the US legal code?

If you show up to a casino and don't play by its rules, that's fraud. If you show up to a chess tournament and use an engine to win $1 million, that's fraud, too.

There's an implied contract when you play a game that you are going to play by the rules.

This is why card counting isn't illegal, by the way, because it's within the rules of the game. Same with understanding the imbalances in a roulette wheel. See:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-04-06/how-to...

Although card counting isn't illegal, it's also not tolerated, and if they casino thinks you are doing it you'll be asked to leave, or escorted out.

Right, but casinos hate card counters, and will kick them out if they discover what's going on. So why isn't card counting simply against the rules of the game?

Seems pretty ridiculous for a casino to get to write laws in the first place. But then we have some game rules that, if broken, are arbitrarily promoted to criminal acts, while others will simply get you corrected or booted. Seems pretty messed up.

It is the Nevada legal code, not the US one, and the rules of craps don’t have to be part of it, there just needs to be a law that says if you intentionally violate the rules of a game in order to make it non-random, that’s a crime.

But it wouldn’t be crazy if the rules of games were defined by statute — they are in Pennsylvania, for example (or at least blackjack is).

The Nevada Gaming Commission maintains the rules, but I'm pretty sure they aren't statutes and the NGC can change them without passing a law (and they have done this for slot machine randomness, by the way). In many states without a gaming commission, the rules of gambling games are defined by statute.

I don't think the grandparent is opposed the idea of that case not being considered a valid roll. The issue is that doing so is somehow a criminal act, which is beyond the pale. Laws just simply shouldn't be written for stuff like this. Getting the state to enforce your business model is gross. The fact that we have other examples of this (copyright enforcement comes to mind) doesn't make any of it ok.

Good short video explanation of sliding. Roll one, spin the other on 6. It’s very specific.

https://youtu.be/W2Jz9UenEPg

A 9-5 would pay more if they all pooled their money. Casinos invest considerable $ in fraud detection, and are very close with law enforcement and DAs despite the matter being more civil than criminal. Casinos hate to lose even if it's not that much money. They will review the same tapes hundreds of times to catch even a small cheat.

Not a lot of 9-5 jobs pay $225k for one week with four people working.

Running a casino

Nevada, seriously. This is an 'electronic craps table' where the House controls _literally_ all aspects of the game, and the players are being prosecuted for 'playing wrong.'

It’s partly electronic. Players still throw real dice, there is no computer RNG.

There are still real dice being thrown. Only the betting is handled electronically.

Was there anyone working on behalf of the casino to state that they threw the dice wrong? That's what seems to be missing.

I’m confused, is nobody monitoring the people throwing the dice and noticing that they aren’t rolling at all?

whenever you walk into a casino you are constantly being watched, but the dealer isn't the one who does it

And yet they didn’t seem to notice right away. Dice not rolling seems like you could spot it.

Given that players register with their name and card, checking using random samples, or spot check, is enough to catch cheaters. They probably also have statistical data of the wins and losses.

The dealer isn't the only one who does it. They also watch you. And they are also being watched to make sure they aren't cooperating with you.

If they weren't monitoring, there wouldn't be a lawsuit, so logic says, they were in fact monitoring and noticed it.

Lawsuit says 2021.

I was thinking it would be something you would spot immediately. Simply see the dice not rolling and tell them they had to roll them right then and there.

Everything you do on a casino floor is recorded and monitored. I assume surveillance only got them after the fact because they noticed terrible payouts on that table at that time.

I've never heard of Craps or Electronic Craps so I googled.

The last time I searched for a game that was gambling related, the ads I got for the next 2 months were nearly all gambling ads. It was craaaaazy.

I don't gamble and never have, but the thought crossed my mind that if this happened to someone recovering from a gambling addiction, he wouldn't have had a chance.

Can anyone find what they were actually charged with?

Like others here I don't see was illegal about this. Did they have to circumvent access controls or something? The article did mention it was an electronic craps table. How does that even work? Is there someone running the game? Is it totally self-serve? How exactly were they 'sliding' dice? Is there even any rules that the dice must "roll"? What if you threw the dice and it landed perfectly with no sliding and no rolling, is that still a legal throw or did they just accidently cheat?

Typically you're supposed to throw the dice far enough that they bounce off the back wall. Maybe the electronic table doesn't enforce that?

That's correct, but expert dice manipulators can usually throw a slide so that it hits the corner at almost 45° and not the wall, which gives them a statistical edge.

That still sound like skill than fraud. It's same with software tester trying corner cases - it's software developer fault not taking it into account.

Casino could make some bumps on the table and make table circular to "fix this bug"

Craps is not a game of skill though - it is purely a game of chance.

Craps is technically deterministic and there are tall tales about magicians being able to narrow the odds on a throw by throwing very precisely (a legal throw, not a slide), but I have yet to hear of a confirmed case here.

Roulette and blackjack are just easier games to beat.

I would argue that it is. If the casinos do not want it to be they are free to automated dice throwing. As long as they give option or illusion of there being at least a chance to influence result. To me it looks like it is a skill and they should have monitored how it was played in these parameters.

I am surprised the people running the table didn’t call this out. When I first played craps it was at a busy table in Vegas. I was passed the dice to roll and I didn’t throw them hard enough to hit the back wall. The people running the table said the roll didn’t count and asked that I make sure they bounce off the back wall.

I'm dead: Gaming board investigators identified the suspects through surveillance video and their players’ club cards,* documents said.*

Didn't want to miss out on their bonus points.

If these are partially electronic machines I suspect the cards may be non-optional, with all of a user’s chips tracked on the card.

The players club cards are also part of the upside. Up until recently many of the locals casinos still had the poker games where if you played correctly you could break even or make a little profit. My friends dad supplemented his social security by playing those all day, you don’t make much money but he had so many points he could eat and entertain himself for free basically.

I’m awestruck that anybody would take the time to devise such a scheme and not recognize the insanely high/low:risk/reward for swiping their players cards.

$200k is a lot of money for many (maybe even most?) people.

Oh certainly. But they didn't need to swipe players cards to get the 200k.

How could the incident happened in 2021 be revealed in 2023? Do they retain the videos from the surveillance camera for that long?

So just slide the dice across the table, that’s it? It the tables fault for not preventing that by adding bumps

They forgot the #1 rule: the house always wins, even if they have to take you to the courthouse they own.

If you win consistently in a casino, then you are cheating, and the casino will not pay out.

First claim is self evident to anyone who understands the odds on these games. Second is self evident to anyone who understands the gambling business minimally.

And the casinos get millions in free advertising and people now think there’s a secret way to gain an edge. The house always wins.

Mirror: https://archive.is/Sjzdz

(site is "not available in my region", presumably they're blocking GDPR countries)

I am shocked, I say again, shocked, that it is possible to cheat in casinos.

If I had found a flaw in a game like this I wouldn't assume exploiting it is cheating and definitely wouldn't think it would be illegal. If the game allows something that can happen accidentally (and especially if it is electronic) I would assume it is allowed.

You're playing craps, not playing a new sort of game. If what you do is illegal in craps, it would be illegal here.

I've never played craps. My understanding is the rules are normally enforced by a dealer at the table. Do you know if these electronic tables have the rules that aren't enforced in the game's code displayed on them or something?

You don't magically get to break the rules of soccer just because the ref isn't watching at the time.

The dice are physical and the game is exactly the same as craps, but everything else about the table (ie betting) is electronic. Clearly, the game's code doesn't enforce the rules about dice rolls.

> You don't magically get to break the rules of soccer just because the ref isn't watching at the time.

Well that's actually a great analogy, because you kind of can, can't you? And in professional sports there's tons of money on the line, but if a player does something against the rules and isn't punished for it at the moment they aren't charged with fraud.

Players routinely get fined after the fact by these organizations for rule-breaking during the game, even when it gets past a referee.

Those rules are not legislated, but defined in a civil contract. If they were legislated like the rules of gambling gmes, it would be a crime.

> If they were legislated like the rules of gambling gmes, it would be a crime.

And that's the issue, really: making rule-breaking in gambling a criminal offense is ridiculous.

Outright theft, sure; criminalize that all day long. But if the dealer gives you chips after you do something in-game that breaks the rules, that's on the casino for not training their dealers better. (Or in the case of electronic craps, for not writing their software better.)

> You don't magically get to break the rules of soccer just because the ref isn't watching at the time.

As a former (amateur-league) soccer ref, yes, you absolutely do. I certainly missed a player doing something against the rules from time to time, and yeah, that means they absolutely "got to break the rules".

Yes, nowadays there's video analysis after the fact for pro games, and people do get fined for doing egregious things. But if, say, the ref misses a handball, and there's either no video evidence, or the evidence is inconclusive, then you can totally get away with it.

Meanwhile, a handball won't get you charged with a crime if you're caught after the fact, even if that handball changed the result of the game. That'd be ridiculous.

Isn’t this just being good at the game?

Free my kings

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