Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
On the merits of the Ivey story, in my mind he cheated. I don't think it's 100 percent, and I certainly don't know the New Jersey and English gaming laws that may apply to it, but it's certainly cheating from a conceptual point of view.
But he cheated in a sense that gets back to something a local promoter of sports events once told me. He said that at the arenas he leased, there was often an issue with people sneaking in. If you are the Lakers, of course, you have all sorts of security (although Paul Pierce swears he snuck into games at the Forum as a kid), but if you are just some person putting on a charity tennis match who rents out an arena, you can't afford the same level of security. Which means people inevitably sneak in.
And what he said was that if you sneak in and you don't get caught, you won. You get to see the event for free. His business model assumed that some people would sneak in because hiring more security wasn't cost effective.
But if you get caught-- you're in trouble.
Similarly, United Airlines mistakenly sold thousands of international long-haul first class tickets worth $20,000 each for less than $1000 a few years ago, when purchasers figured out how to game the United website to misconvert the currency. When the error was discovered, they canceled the tickets. The purchasers went to the federal government asking for an order that United honor the tickets, armed with all sorts of arguments about how there was technically an offer and an acceptance and how they could have not realized they were paying an unrealistically low price and everything else. The purchasers lost. You were trying to get one over on United, the government said.
Ivey got caught. Once you get caught, you don't sue and try and claim the winnings. Not knowing anything about the applicable gaming laws, I could have predicted that he wasn't likely to win these court cases. Because he was sneaking in and got caught. Courts have a real problem seeing the inequity in disallowing a guy who figured out a way to game the system to keep his money.
The arguments Ivey made were technicalities. And technicalities rarely win when they are placed up against fundamental fairness. Yes, technically, the casino chose to use decks that could be edge sorted. And the casino was lax in agreeing to rules that allowed that to be exploited. And there's nothing in the casino's rules that prohibited what Ivey did. All true. But that's the trees. The forest was that Ivey had figured out a way to game the system.
The article plays it as "are we condemned to a world where the house always wins". And like it or not, the answer to that question is actually yes. The house has to win house banked games. A casino that allows players to win significant sums will be put out of business relatively quickly. There aren't three options-- house banked games where the house wins, house banked games where the players can win long term, and no games. There are two-- either house banked games are long-term profitable for the house, or they aren't offered. That's why casinos bar card counters, and that's why they refused to pay Ivey.
If you favor legal gambling at all, the house has to win when it banks the game, which means casinos will take action against people who succeed in flipping this. Ivey should have understood this and stuck to poker, or at least given up when his scheme was found out.
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IMO...the casino acted more "dishonestly" than Ivey did. The way the scenario played out, it looks as if the casino chose to "take a shot" at Ivey...by placing him in the classic, no-win situation. When you and I make particular requests about the way we want the cards to be shuffled and dealt-out in a casino, then the decision of either allowing or rejecting our request might be made by some unsuspecting pit-boss whom we might be able to fool. But Ivey has the reputation -- and the bankroll -- that demands the attention of the casino elite...and those guys aren't so easy to fool.
My money says the casino knew that Ivey was attempting to "cheat"...but figured that he could lose anyway. After all, Ivey's casino-pit losses are legendary..."advantage play, or no "advantage play". They figured that they would take his money if he lost...and sue and win their case in court, if Ivey won "unfairly". And that's a more "unethical" plan than the one that Ivey carried out.
The casino has its "unfair" tricks when it comes to separating the customers from their money...and some customers have a trick or two of their own. Turnabout is fair play. The "real players" don't cry when they get stuck...and neither should the casino.
