Quote:
Originally Posted by fatNsweaty
Just as the player to your right should be protecting his hole cards, the casino should of protected themselves by following protocol and changing decks.
The thing is, the issue of what constitutes prudent casino management and whether Ivey is owed this money are two very separate questions.
You should lock your front door and not drop your car keys next to your car. And failing to do so would definitely make you partially morally culpable if a thief took advantage of it.
But that doesn't mean that you have actually legally consented to a thief stealing your car or entering your home.
The thing people have to understand about this is that there are a set of legal rules, hopefully written down but perhaps unwritten, that deal with these sorts of situations. I think we would all agree that in the looking at the hole cards situation, if the casino discovered you did it and had an explicit rule that said "if management determines that a player has won a substantial pot by virtue of observing another player's hole cards without immediately announcing to the table that they were exposed, the management has the discretion to order that the player forfeits the pot", the casino could make you forfeit the pot. The use of information in games of chance is subject to whatever the rules are. That might be a very bad rule for a cardroom to have, but if they had that rule, your choices would be to live with it or play somewhere else.
And rules may be unwritten too. There may not be something specific that says that some particularly wild angleshoot in a poker game is impermissible. But if it happens, and management determines that it was unfair conduct, they have some discretion, like it or not.... (
The classic non-poker example of this was Tommy Lewis coming off the bench and tackling Dickie Maegle in the 1954 Cotton Bowl when he was en route to a touchdown. Maegle's team, Rice, was awarded the touchdown instead of a normal 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Nowadays, this is covered by a written rule ("palpably unfair act", but at the time, it was just a discretionary officials' ruling.)
The thing is, I think there's a tendency of people to think that anything the players can think up to beat the game has to be permitted. But that's not how it really works. Punto Banco is supposed to be a -EV game. The casino offers it as one, and doesn't promise anyone they will be able to beat it. If someone figures out a way to beat it anyway, well, there's going to be a question as to whether it is cheating. And that's going to require interpretation of the rules, including the unwritten ones.
And one more thing I will say, back on the moral issue. Again, it is true the casino left the front door unlocked here. But it's also true that Ivey took a risk. He had to understand that there was a possibility that the casino could refuse to pay him. He's a very smart man. If we are going to talk about people assuming the risks of their conduct, that door swings both ways.