if the players lost money in the unshuffled game the casino doesnt reimburse the players and the players arent allowed to sue the casino. so why can the casino even try to sue the players?
The ones that should be able to sue are the players. they are told the deck is shuffled and it wasnt shuffled so they are being lied to when they sit at the table

Cool post. Thanks for typing it out.

I think it is possible that the casino did not realize this for a little more than half a shoe (the 41 hands mentioned in the article).

And it is also believable that some of the players realized after a few hands, and jumped on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by betting the table max.

Casinos are counting their profits IN ADVANCE. Think about all the bs they gave BJ-counters for years (as a group, they reduced--but did not eliminate--the House vig). Casinos tend to go on tilt-a-rama and bully it up when they don't get their way. This could work as a good PR move for the casino if more people showed up trying to game the House. Instead, it's cover-your-own-ass time, no one wants to take the fall for a big OOPS moment. If gamblers didn't cheat (clearly the case here) they should get paid. If casinos and gov't. don't pay, more people go underground.

Can’t find this on Google… I read a story that back in the 80s, there was a high roller who hired a team of scouts to monitor (over a course of days) the spin results of roulette wheels at a particular (I believe AC) casino. They found one particular wheel that had a certain few numbers coming up much more than normal, that was statistically significant.

The high roller then approached senior management and got them to agree to let him play there one weekend under the terms that he could choose any roulette table he wanted (and have it exclusively), not have the table shut down, with raised stakes. The house was expecting a huge windfall. Of course the player chose said marked table (the wheel was later discovered to be physically flawed) and played his "special" numbers. He won something around $1-$2M before quitting. And the casino had to let him keep the money.

This would give precedence to the idea that a customer is entitled to winnings obtained when, in the absence of cheating, manually-handled gaming equipment is not functioning according to house expectations (as opposed to slots, which have a disclaimer that payouts may be void upon management discretion).

There was an episode of Breaking Vegas with similar roulette teams.

No need for mandatory joinder of the gamblers for a lawsuit against the manufacturer for breach of contract. Mandatory joinder is covered by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19(a)(1):

The contract between the casino and the manufacturer will either give the casino a warranty claim or other claim against the manufacturer or it won't - you don't need the gamblers part of the lawsuit to decide that. New Jersey's rule on joinder may have slight variations, but from the federal rule, but it won't differ much.

The only reason to sue the gamblers is if it turns out that there was collusion between the gamblers and someone at the manufacturer. Nothing in the news reports suggests that the casino is alleging this in its lawsuit. So suing the gamblers is just moronic - especially considering that if the casino wins its case against the manufacturer, it will have no damages to recover from its customers (the manufacturer would be subrogated to the casino's claim, if there were any valid claim, but why do any dirty work for the manufacturer?).

idk how lawsuits work, but there is a theoretical chance that the decks were in fact shuffled, just happened that the cards order in every deck was identical, so this can't be proven wrong.

I could testify in this trial. The Golden Nugget does not have such a virtuous past history. The ONLY time I ever cheated in my life it was at the direction of my employer, the Golden Nugget of Las Vegas. In 1960, I went to Las Vegas. Curly Cavitt was a great friend of Benny Binion and he sent me to see Benny. I wanted to be a dealer. Benny sent me across the street to see Bill Boyd who put me to work in the poker room playing poker with house money. A shill. We shills cheated by signaling in five-card stud. If we had a pair, we put our hole cards at a 45 degree angle to signal the other shills. There might be four in a game. The pot cut was so massive that cheating costs them money by winning the players money really fast. Boyd liked me and let me play the six-dollar limit Razz which had only a 25 cent rake. I beat it but didn't get any of the money. Boyd, in the Hall of Fame, would go up to anyone who stopped to watch the poker with a five-dollar bill in his hand asking them to take a seat with house money, a free first buy-in. They'd blow it and go for their own dough. I'd never played much poker with women, but lots of bridge tournies. One beautiful woman in a cocktail dress played 24 hours and lost hundreds, if not thousands. I felt so sorry for her, a first for me.

Good post by moonship, the reporting is much too vague.....If the cards came out a23456789, the dealer must of been blind.
Now if the sequence was Bank bank bank b b b 41 times is a lot the most I have ever dealt back in the day was 29x bank run, you could not see the felt there was so much following the bank. The report about the punters playing their bets up is not unusual after a ten break the bets start to hit the max and then its fill time.
If it ran B.P.B.P. then you have to think bent
The procedure back then ran dealer spreads the cards ..all correct turn them over. wash well all 6 decks together shuffle together from 2 piles offer the postillion to player to cut the cards not too near front or back with the cue card count 6 in from back place the decks in the shoe which you would know was your shoe as you have made a mark on it much like the box men do with the dice.
Not foolproof I know the weak link is the dealer, but nothings perfect oh and the cards came from sealed packets
Over the years there have been loads. of baccarat , punto banco.,chemi de Fer whatever you want to call it set ups... dealers false shuffling, mini cameras, marked cards.
The list is almost endless,I would of loved to have been there and seen it, sadly I missed Biloxi as well now that does show how dumb some of the suits really are.
Anybody know where I can get the T shirt I missed Biloxi....

I have a feeling many/most of the players didn't realize what was going on either. There was maybe one guy at the table that recognized the pattern and after the others saw him winning every hand started betting whatever he bet.

Except for one old curmudgeon that figured he can't be right all the time and always bet the opposite.

Could the players sue Golden Nugget AC for not providing them fair odds because of their neglegence?

I remember reading about that years ago in the Blackjack forum magazine or it may have been a old 2+2 book. When I was kid a had a retro computer called a Dragon 32 at the time spectrum computers where around. I sometimes programmed it. If I just write a program to make a random number it will start of with the same random number every time. I could get round this buy making it run though a loop, then It would not start off with the same number every time.

The Keno number generator this company had could be bought with an add on which basically made it go though a loop like I could program on my Dragon 32 so it would not start out with the same random number every time. But this was an extra which did not ship buy default. Some Las Vegas casinos had this device without the add on, but never turned it off so they got away with it. But the Canadian casino turned it off every day so had a problem.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/golde...01987366528167

https://www.facebook.com/notes/golde...50993837991770

Apparently Golden Nugget's Facebook pages are taking a serious beating from angry people saying that they will never set foot in Golden Nugget again. Instead of trying to have some dialogue with those users it seems that they are deleting posts and banning people. They also added 20 T&Cs for their Facebook page including:

If I were social media manager for them I would walk out the door before posting that and deleting customer complaints.

Spot on Mr. Mod Man.

I cannot see how the players are liable, the card manufacturer could be liable for some part of it, though they can easily argue that it should have been stopped sooner.

This is pretty much how I see it. As said before, not a lawyer. But the casino is just as responsible to make sure the game is fair as they are to make certain there is no cheating. But blaming someone else for your own mistake is kind of messed up. And then roughing up some guy who noticed the trend and took advantage of it. I would imagine unless the players knew beforehand that the cards were not shuffled then it's not really their fault for noticing the trend and taking advantage of it. It's the casinos responsibility to make certain that their games of chance are random. Now they are putting it on the players when they did nothing to willfully perpetuate any dishonest or premeditated fixing of the cards. Advantage players I say. But one thing about big companies and coporations...they never really ever loose, especially in court.

All the floormen and security surrounding the table, they think they're getting cheated and no one looks up at the electronic board to see the pattern of P,B,P,B,P,B,P,B,P,B,P,B,P,B,P,B,P,B,P?

Screw the Golden Nugget, i think the term "a fool and his money are soon parted" comes in to play here.

I was talking to someone at work tonight about this, and they said their burn procedure may have been different.

That would change everything obviously.

But yeah screw them. There's no case imo.

billy+walters+roulette+atlantic+city+1986

This is the point for me. The only reason there were not "fair odds" in this game is purely through the Nugget's own negligence. Every proceedure in a casino is double and triple-checked to ensure there is no margin for error and to ensure proper checks and balances are in place.

It's laughable that a major casino would simply take cards out of a sealed package and drop them into a shoe without spreading the cards on the table, visually conforming randomness, doing a wash, and a quick shuffle. (Spreading the cards in plain sight also protects the players from a shady casino loading cold decks into the shoe... I'm surprised pre-shuffled decks are even legal.)

The Nugget's failure to offer a "fair game" is strictly due to their own negligence, both in not checking the decks, and in their failure to stop the game sooner. A run that starts with table minimums and then runs into 6 or 7digits rightly should grab the attention of every member of the security team... and the very first thing that should be investigated is the fairness of the deck.

All these players did was show up to play a game according to the casino rules. They won. And it's strictly the Nugget's fault that they won. Nugget, have a shred of dignity, pay the players their money, and perform a thorough review of your security proceedures!

And finally yes, the details are sparse concerning the detainment of the player, but there seems to possibly be a case for false imprisonment and/or search without probable cause.

From the article the cards were being dealt in exact sequence unshuffled. Amazing that could go on for so many hands

I dont think so. Who is to determine fair odds? Also, there is a chance it was all a coinsidence B) (although it wasnt. most likely)

And if we used this logic I can sue casino for not giving me "fair odds" in roulette. I dont think 97% is fair. If they win because of this some smartass just could sue them for, and I would imagine jury could even favor the customer.

can anyone here estimate the number of decks in play, each day, week, month and year, vs how many tables, over, say 30 years(or however long the casino has been operating), vs how many different orders the cards can be shuffled and work out a probability that the deck was indeed shuffled but fell that way by chance?

just for interest's sake. ( i know there are some math g33ks who love that kinda challenge)

Actually the sequence is PPBPB (starting with an 8 as next card), which is not as easy to spot:
PPBPBPPBPBPPBPBPPBPBPPBPBPPBPBPPBPBPPBPBPPBPBPPBPB


The funny thing is it does not really change that much. The same pattern of PPBPB will start after a few hands and it doesn't matter how they burn at the beginning of the shoe. Even cutting the shoe does not help them.

If they burn between hands or during hands the sequence might be different. But its length will always be 13 or less.

80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975 ,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 different shuffles.