The Unwritten Rules Casinos Apply When Players Win Too Much

Author: R. Paul Wilson

Anyone who gambles online or in land-based casinos will eventually feel the sting of the odds stacked against them. Many of us dream – at least I do – of stumbling into a scenario where those odds can be flipped, giving savvy players a chance to turn the tables in their favour. This was once much easier when card counting was a rare strategy employed by only a few professional gamblers. However, as gaming evolves, the dangers of advantage play have become apparent to casinos. Have they stacked the deck too heavily against players to compensate, and does that affect anyone who happens to win big?

Early in my career, I attended a conference in London where I met several table game creators and casino managers who were exploring new products and procedures for their companies. The affair was relatively dull, but I managed to make some contacts and sit in on a few discussions that opened my eyes to the dysfunctional nature of the casino business.

Until that weekend, I had naively hoped that my interest in crooked gaming methods might spark new relationships with casinos eager to protect their games. However, I soon learned that the industry has little interest in being educated by outsiders. Historically, security ‘experts’ tend to rise from within the industry, where genuine operational experience is valued more than practical knowledge of the threats posed by motivated players or cheaters.

How Casinos Handle Advantage Players

During that conference, I was having drinks with a couple of casino managers when the subject turned to card counters. In that exchange, I learned two important lessons: at that time, UK casino employees seemed, mostly, with notable exceptions, blissfully ignorant about the methods employed by advantage players; and, as a result, many casinos were unreasonable in how they dealt with them.

The story told – and echoed by other managers at the table – was about spotting a known card counter who had been playing for several hours and, due to typical mathematical fluctuations, was deep in the hole for tens of thousands of pounds. In fact, he might have gone unrecognised had an experienced manager not noticed how casually the player had bought back in without breaking a sweat. That tiny break in his façade – his failure to act like a typical player on a losing streak – was enough of a tell for the casino to take a second look at him, leading to his downfall.

So far, so typical: the casino spots a card counter and is within its rights to back that player away and ask him not to play. The problem was that they waited and watched as the player calmly continued to lose, confident that the edge he had on the game would eventually turn the tide. Just as his fortunes reversed and before he could win back any of the money he had lost, security ejected him from the property.

In other words, they knew he was counting cards; they knew he would eventually start winning, but they waited until he lost even more before kicking him out. In my opinion, then and now, this is theft because the casino deliberately allowed him to lose money, knowing they would cut him off as soon as he began to win it back; the very definition of an unfair game.

When Winning Becomes a Problem

Yet casino culture still believes it’s legitimate to welch on bets or operate one-way games (where they only play when the player has the worst odds) against advantage players who invest enormous practice, research, effort, and money into finding legal ways to beat those games.

I have no problem if the casino cuts a player off for being “too good”, but that’s not what we’re facing as more properties overstep the line between game protection and unfair – sometimes illegal – practices. The perception that counting cards, tracking aces, or using unnoticed flaws in a game is cheating is a useful misconception that excuses treating advantage players as less than legitimate gamblers.

Any attempt to correct this is easily dismissed because casino employees simply don’t like being outwitted. It’s easier to dismiss a successful strategy by implying it’s against the rules – or, in the example of one blundering British judge, “not in the spirit of the game”. The result is an industry that regularly denies fair and hard-earned winnings to players who (literally) exploit their systems.

And it’s not just card counters.

While researching sports betting, I stumbled upon several stories where successful bettors spread wagers between multiple properties, sometimes using disguises to avoid being recognised while covering multiple outcomes. Each bet was entirely fair and valid, yet collectively, these multiple bets seized upon an opportunity to win more than was being risked across the majority of outcomes.

In other words, he found a way to achieve a positive expectation, and it paid off. Except the casinos did NOT pay out.

Instead, they claimed he had made the bets in contravention of their rules and voided them all, denying the player an $800,000 payday. The strategy – arbitrage betting – requires no cheating, no post-result wagers, and no rule-breaking. It was simply a matter of understanding the system better than the operators did.

Casino employees and a handful of players might quickly jump to defend the house, but that argument does not withstand scrutiny. Multiple bets were accepted, and had he lost those bets, he would not have been reimbursed. Therefore, unless he placed bets after the results were known (which WOULD be cheating), that player deserves his winnings and – most likely – a trespass notice to bar him from playing there (and beating them) again!

The Legal and Cultural Imbalance

Equally, we constantly return to situations where casinos abuse their powers of enforcement to detain advantage players, deny them their winnings, and even refuse them the right to cash their chips – chips traded for that player’s own money at the start of play! Even worse, the law continues to side with large-corporation properties that employ off-duty police officers and build relationships with local officials that afford them too much leeway when confronting players who find a legal edge against them.

Part of the problem is this perception that gambling itself is some illicit activity that deserves fewer protections and less sympathy when things turn sour with a gaming establishment. The result is an unfair landscape where the law – and non-gambling society – can often rule against perfectly honest but successful gamblers.

There are countless examples of card counters being illegally back-roomed, their money withheld, and their identities revealed with the help of police officers who have less understanding of local laws than I do. An important factor in many of these cases is that advantage players often studied the law as a wise precaution, yet being right legally offered no protection in the heat of confrontation with management, security, or their law enforcement buddies.

Why Players Must Protect Themselves

This is a topic for much wider discussion, but for now, I think it’s important for all players – whether attempting to secure an advantage or just playing their luck – to keep a careful record of their playing history, especially against new or unfamiliar establishments, both online and land-based casinos. You need to be able to defend your play in the event of scoring a windfall or having a long-term strategy pay off, and to fight for a fair and equitable outcome should any gaming establishment attempt to void a win or accuse you of breaking rules or cheating.

Gambling is fraught with these issues, but they are not universal.

Smart casinos will still bar advantage players who beat them too often, but they also pay them properly while taking steps to detect other advantage players in the future. I’ve spoken with those casinos and have been greatly impressed by how they manage this type of situation, but they are a rarity in a business that fears being seen to lose to outsiders.

Make no mistake – no matter how much time you spend on the player’s side of the table or study the millions of ways games can be beaten, you’re firmly outside of a casino culture, rightly afraid we might spot a legitimate weakness in their armour.