
Non shuffled card deck results in 1.5 million casino loss - larrys
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/20120904_A_C__s_Golden_Nugget_in_legal_war_with__1_5_million_winners.html
======
mherdeg
When the AP ran this story a couple of weeks ago
([http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Unshuffled-cards-a-
cos...](http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Unshuffled-cards-a-costly-
headache-for-NJ-casinos-3801123.php)), I thought it was hilarious because
casinos do extra work at the baccarat and mini-baccarat tables to encourage
exactly this kind superstitious magical betting. And then they have the gall
to act all surprised when it works!

In Vegas, they'll often distribute little pads of paper and pencils you can
use to take notes on past hands, and mini-baccarat tables often have
electronic signs showing the player/banker/tie outcome of several past hands.

(This is funny because the game is memory-less.)

The folks who manage the games must have discovered that when they encouraged
players to bet superstitiously, players stayed for longer and bet more.

How deliciously ironic for a casino to encourage people to try to find
patterns and bet on them, and then lose and sue after they finding a pattern
that worked!

~~~
danielweber
There is a joke that casinos have a saying for people who come up with systems
to beat the house: "Welcome."

------
dsr_
Let's look at it from a business perspective:

When a casino has an unexpectedly large payout, and they can't prove that it
was the result of cheating by the customer or an employee, there is only one
reasonable thing to do: pay up, and advertise the win loudly and widely.

If you're in the business of suing your customers, there are several results:
1\. You stop having so many customers. 2\. Even if successful in court, you
don't make back anywhere near what you lost. (Customers don't have much money,
in general. You already know the ones who do -- you call them whales.) 3\. The
regulatory commission looks at you more carefully.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Heh, having spent much of my youth in Las Vegas I can tell you that if a
casino has an unexpectedly large payout then someone is going to have a really
really bad day. And that someone will do anything they can to deflect the
repercussions. See the comment about the same issue at the Taj casino, 9
people got fired.

The only way to avoid getting fired is to both prove that the people who won
cheated and that their cheat was something you could not have protected
against.

------
pkulak
The Casino made a mistake and wants its money back. Seems totally reasonable
to me. I'm sure if a gambler makes a mistake playing a game, they get any of
their losses back from the Casino. Such a gentlemanly society we live in!

~~~
sukuriant
</sarcasm>

I never really did mean to bet my car, can I have it back, please!

"Why sure, of course you can. Our mistake :D!"

------
stephengillie
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?

~~~
wpietri
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.

~~~
malandrew
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.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
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.

------
incision
I'm reminded of those stories that seem to come up every so often about the
casinos denying slots players jackpots [1][2][3].

On a semi-related note...

I've been wondering with more and more Casino games going digital, is there
anything requiring the systems to use realistic odds?

The last time I was in a Casino I had great success (15x return in 90 minutes)
essentially betting against the field of players on a large video roulette
machine. I was curious and simply bet opposite whenever the board became
particularly "unbalanced". The idea being that the machine had some kind of of
average return to maintain and that it would avoid big bets (relative to what
it was earning) in light of that.

1: [http://gizmodo.com/5867314/57-million-winner-loses-prize-
aft...](http://gizmodo.com/5867314/57-million-winner-loses-prize-after-casino-
argues-slot-machine-software-glitch)

2: <http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14795166>

3:
[http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3772215&page=1#.UE...](http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3772215&page=1#.UEYofYrnClg)

~~~
joezydeco
Yes, there is a very formal and rigid system for validating the odds on all
gaming machines.

In almost every regulated gaming jurisdiction (let's leave US Indian Casinos
out of this for the time being), a third-party lab is hired to evaluate the
code, look for backdoors, and verify the odds that are specified with the PAR
(Probability and Accounting Report) of the machine being tested.

In the case of your roulette machine, that code was verified to make sure the
random number generator created a valid distribution of numbers. If you had
won a large enough jackpot (as those players did in your links), the gaming
board technician would have been called in to verify the game's program code
against a known verified version of the system as signed off by the third-
party lab. When the checksums don't match...no jackpot. That's why every slot
says MALFUNCTION VOIDS ALL PAYS.

That being said, there can still be bugs in the program code. When a machine
is listed as paying a max of $2500 and a player wins $1,597,244.10, there's
definitely a bug. Casinos, since they own the place, will err on _their_ side
and send you home without the jackpot. That's just the way it is. The
manufacturer will get an earful and probably lose their positions on the
casino floor until the bug is fixed.

Oh and look at your second link. The jackpot was "42 million". Wanna bet it
was $42,949,672.95? (Hint: What is 4294967295 in hexadecimal?)

~~~
incision
Thanks.

One thing I'm still not clear on. In the case of a machine that suggests it is
simulating something physical, are the machines required to implement
realistic odds or just accurate to what's official stated?

Do virtual card games have to maintain a proper virtual deck? Do virtual slots
that suggest 20x20x20 reels have to implement 8000:1 odds?

~~~
joezydeco
In general, yes. When you're simulating a traditional physical gaming device
(a pair of dice, deck of cards, roulette wheel, lotto balls, coin flip), it
must match the real device.

From what I recall, card games are a very special animal in the eyes of the
gaming board. When you simulate dealing from a deck, there _must_ be a deck of
52 cards in memory. You cannot just pick random numbers from 1 to 52. I
believe every hand must have a freshly shuffled "deck" as well.

The way video poker machines manipulate their odds is through the payout.
Watch veteran players when they approach a machine. They'll note that some
machines offer slightly different payouts for lower wins, and that's where the
odds grind out. You can't change the probability of a full house, but you can
change how much is paid back.

Slot reels are a loophole. Because you can't see the entire reel, how do you
_know_ it only has 20 stops? What if it has 20,000? This concept (known as the
_Telnaes_ patent, US #4448419) enabled virtual reels and much much larger
payouts than the 8000:1 jackpots before this invention.

Later on, the invention of bonus games and etc kind of ripped up the virtual
reel idea. But the math operates on this principle as far as the PAR sheets
are concerned (i.e a certain set of stops on the reels starts a bonus game
with another known set of odds).

------
lambada
The most serious claim in this article, that hasn't been mentioned in the
comments so far is that although a Judge ordered the Casino to cash the
remaining chips, and the Casino has claimed it won't appeal, they will only
cash the chips if the gamblers drop ALL other charges. Is that even legal? To
impose a condition on an order from a judge? This seems to me far more dodgy
than the allegations of avoiding betting limits.

~~~
YokoZar
I've heard from a Vegas lawyer that basically all of the serious law firms
there do some amount of business with each of the casino chains. This is
intentional on the casinos part, and gives the law firms a very simple
conflict of interest claim when someone wants to sue a casino.

Combine this with the fact that Nevada doesn't allow out of state lawyers (and
passing the Nevada Bar requires a considerable investment in time), and as a
consequence the only counsel you can get to sue a casino amounts to the sort
of low-budget lawyer you might see advertising on a billboard.

If I had enough money and brass, I'd hire a bunch of promising attorneys from
out of state, relocate them to vegas, get them certified in Nevada, and then
create a firm specializing in suing casinos. I'm sure there's a fortune to be
made (if you don't get bought/killed by organized crime)

------
iskander
>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

I don't understand why a casino feels like it's legally entitled to a profit
even when it fails to perform the simplest possible action to maintain an
edge: shuffle the cards!

~~~
DanielStraight
A comparable situation might be a misprinted price tag at a car dealership,
which they are not required to honor as long as it's corrected when
discovered.

~~~
JackC
The problem is that the car dealership would indeed be required to honor the
misprinted price tag if it was discovered _after they completed the sale._
This situation is like, a car dealership misprints the price tags; the
salespeople spend hours selling cars; and then the dealership turns around and
sues the people who bought cars and drove away. It's not going to be a winner.

(N.B., no analogy is really going to help us too much here, because the
outcome will depend on the specifics of state law regarding malfunctioning
gambling machines and any agreements made by those particular gamblers to get
into that particular casino. So anyone who tells you they have any idea what
will happen is either a gambling law expert or making it up. I just thought
the car dealership thing was an interesting example.)

~~~
DanielStraight
I agree the analogy breaks down.

My point was mostly that mistakes are often forgiven in business.

Whichever way the legal ruling goes, once the gamblers discovered the mistake,
they were, in my mind, cheating by exploiting it.

Imagine the opposite scenario. By my understanding, a deck full of face cards
benefits the gambler in blackjack. If a dealer notices that his cards are
missing say, the jack of diamonds, it would be wrong of him to keep dealing
knowing that the house had a better advantage that intended. Surely players
losing money in such a situation would want their money back.

Again, the analogy isn't perfect, but I can see the casino's point of view...
even if the decision to sue customers is short-sighted.

~~~
tolmasky
The analogy is beyond not perfect -- it is completely broken. The "opposite"
scenario you bring up requires actually breaking the game. The deck was not
broken at all in this case, it was just in an unfavorable ordering to the
house: an ordering that is still perfectly possible. Regardless of being very
unlikely to happen, having the ordering these players dealt with over and
over, it is still _possible_. Realize that if even one of the decks had been
shuffled, then the players' strategy would have failed and they would have
probably lost it all again. The players did not _know_ all the decks would be
unshuffled, they saw a pattern and took their chances. That is in fact the
whole reason you play a luck based game -- for the off chance that luck falls
in your favor.

It is enlightening that you cannot come up with the "opposite" scenario
without actually breaking the game. Here allow me to come up with the opposite
scenario for you: an ordering that does not favor the player, which by the
way, happens basically EVERY HAND. That's why the house basically always wins,
because these games are designed to have the odds against the player. By
shuffling the cards the house is actually ensuring a higher likelihood of
unfavorable outcomes.

That is what is so upsetting about these cases to me: the fundamental
reasoning this all comes down to is that people are "not supposed" to win
these games, thus winning must be cheating. If you design a game with the odds
against the player, then spend tons of money outsourcing the randomization of
cards to guarantee no card counting etc, and then encourage superstitious
playing to keep people hooked and losing more money -- then on top of all this
the player still wins, sue them?

Please.

~~~
DanielStraight
I think we are at an impasse, because I feel the game _was_ broken when the
decks were not shuffled. A fair game requires a random (in the sense of
unpredictable) deck. No, it wasn't guaranteed, but it was certain enough for
me to call it broken.

~~~
tolmasky
I hope you can at least understand how it would be more broken by actually
having different cards, because again, even after shuffling the events that
took place here are still possible. No amount of shuffling or not shuffling
can change how many face cards in a deck.

With regard to it being "certain enough", consider whether you would have done
the same thing as these people. I can tell you that had I sat at that table, I
would have _not_ continued betting higher and higher with the possibility that
the next deck is not in my favor and thus possibly losing everything. It of
course looks certain in retrospect knowing the whole story of how they were
actually unshuffled -- but when you are actually at the table, without this
knowledge -- it is again just a chance. You have no idea how many decks come
from what company or anything thats going on to result in this. For all you
know it might have just been two decks that had the same order due to some
weird malfunction. I am sure in the history of gambling lots of people have
thought they've seen a pattern recur, bet a lot on it, and LOST -- again, to
the favor of the casino.

In other words, consider it from a game theory perspective -- the casino's
"long term" winnings _absolutely rely_ on this kind of behavior from patrons.
If patrons were to think to themselves "uh oh, something is fishy and this
might be unfair, better stop betting" every time they thought they had spotted
a pattern or had a system, then the casino would lose tons of money, since
they are 99.99% of the time wrong. Casino's winnings fundamentally rely on
greediness. That's the basic point I'm trying to make: you can't have it both
ways, you can either have greedy patrons who almost always lose everything
because of it, or weird bizarro-world patrons that are looking out for the
casino.

~~~
DanielStraight
I think you are right about the retrospect aspect. No one who thought they had
detected a pattern (which wasn't later confirmed in the news) would then offer
to return the money because they cheated. So I suppose my comment that the
gamblers were cheating once they detected the pattern is only really valid in
retrospect.

That said, I still don't think I could keep the winnings knowing, in
retrospect, that I had won them unfairly, but I think you are right about the
casinos needing to sometimes suck it up and take a loss if that's the game
they're going to play.

------
ColinWright
I don't understand:

    
    
        Since the cards were never shuffled at the plant - the
        casino doesn't shuffle them again - the same patterns
        kept repeating in game 802
    

The casino doesn't shuffle the cards? That doesn't sound right. I've indulged
in a little card counting and shuffle tracking, and I've never been at a table
where the cards don't get shuffled.

Can someone explain?

~~~
lrm242
Each game likely used a fresh, unopened deck of cards. If each deck is non-
shuffled then each time a fresh deck is opened you will see the same cards in
the same order. Assuming the casino arranged for their vendor to pre-shuffle
the decks it seems reasonable, if not a bit lazy, to not do a shuffle at the
table. If I were the casino I'd be suing the vendor, not the gamblers.

~~~
RandallBrown
They're suing both the card manufacturer and the gamblers.

------
sageikosa
The gamblers took advantage of the information they had available to them.

And this reminds me of someone else who figured out a pattern and cashed in:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Larson>

~~~
chimeracoder
That's quite the story - too bad it ends on such a downer...!

------
guard-of-terra
I don't see how abducting people the next day isn't a criminal offence. But I
also don't see anyone caring. Weird.

~~~
YokoZar
If not a crime the DA will pursue it could very well be at least a tort, which
is why the casino was offering them their money in exchange for dropping
further claims (such as kidnapping).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Aren't the players entitle to the money and to restitution for their kidnap?

------
larrys
Summary if tl;dr

"Someone in Kansas City allegedly had forgotten to turn on the automatic
shuffler before the cards got shipped out. Since the cards were never shuffled
at the plant - the casino doesn't shuffle them again - the same patterns kept
repeating in game 802. The players noticed, kept on betting and upped their
wagers."

------
d0de
I think the real question here is: if the non-shuffled deck had somehow worked
in the Casino's favor and caused an otherwise-virtually-impossible losing
streak for the customers, would the casino now be scurrying to reimburse them
all for their losses?

------
jeffem
The most surprising thing to me is that the casino let the betting go on for
over 2.5 hours.

------
sequoia

        "They saw a pattern and didn't know how long it would last," said Feldman, whose clients are Asian and speak little or no English.
    

Ha- they must speak "Asian" :p

------
drcube
I've never bought a deck of cards that was pre-shuffled. I thought casinos had
machines that did that for them.

~~~
TylerE
Baccarat is a special case. The cards are only used once, and then disposed
of. They don't use shuffle machines because cards never go back into the shoe.

------
stevewillows
Is there a reason why casinos are not shuffling decks in-house before sending
them to the tables?

