[aklein]

It wasn’t that they won; the article explains that plenty of people walk out with designer bags full of money. It’s that these folks won in a statistically hugely unlikely way, and that alone is pretty damning evidence that something is off. It’s usually just a matter of finding the smoking gun. Although it’s unpleasant that the casino and police assumed it was cheating and not a defect in the game itself (in what turns out to be a naive and self-delusional assumption), is that really that surprising or ridiculous a position to take? The catch 22 is the accused cannot defend themselves without divulging their secrets.

[jacquesm]

> It wasn’t that they won;

Of course it was! If they had lost using the same method there would have been no issue.

> It’s that these folks won in a statistically hugely unlikely way, and that alone is pretty damning evidence that something is off.

That's the casino's problem though, not law enforcement. Statistically unlikely equates 'we haven't seen this before' and that should not be enough reason to arrest people. The police should not be in the business of protecting the revenue streams of gambling installation operators. There should be some symmetry here, if the casino is a-ok with making money on gamblers then they should take their lumps when the situation is - temporarily - reversed. LE has no business here, tough luck they should have run a business where the flow is one way by design instead of one with a pretend two way flow.

> The catch 22 is the accused cannot defend themselves without divulging their secrets.

Which is precisely why the police has no business doing this. The burden of proof with respect to cheating is on the casino, and until they have something solid nobody should be arrested. That's the police acting unilaterally on behalf of one party. A more balanced response would have been to help the players cash their checks, after all the casino did not object to the reverse when the funds were deposited. It's fraud by the casino until proven otherwise.

[Nevermark]

This isn’t subjective.

If I gamble once, and only once, with a lot of money at very high odds, I might get very lucky and win a fortune.

But despite small odds of a massive pay out, the odds would have been very low, but not infinitesimal.

Whereas, if I consistently win much more than I lose over many bets, across seversl visits, and a group of people can do this, the odds of that happening rapidly become virtually zero.

Or in mathematical or scientific terms, confidence that pure chance is being broken far, far, far exceeds a 6-sigma threshold. It’s proven.

But legal proofs, for making judicial decisions of guilt or culpability, usually require an explanation of how it was done.

[sunshinesnacks]

If a gambler consistently loses much more than they win, in a way that the odds of it happening are almost zero, will police show up and arrest someone from the casino?

There may be an investigation, but I'd be surprised if anyone is arrested before hard evidence of rigging a game is found.

[majormajor]

Six standard deviations is 1 in 2 billion per Wikipedia here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rul....

Ok that's pretty crazy, let's lower it a notch, throw out the sigmas, just talk about 1-in-hundreds-of-millions odds.

The article doesn't actually list the odds of their winning streak, but I'd wager a casino is gonna be suspicious well before the "one in a hundred million" level of streak.

Powerball can get there, e.g. 1-in-292M per here https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/08/powerball-dr...

So how many bets across how many visits does it actually take for it to be "proven"? Like, people can win powerball, someone may have had that 1-in-300-million casino run too. If they're independent events, you expect it to happen randomly eventually! Some poor lucky bastard will probably face a lot of questions one day.

I dunno, I guess if you want to win a fortune gambling, do it all in one bet, since getting lucky all at once vs getting less-lucky-but-for-a-longer-time is gonna attract a lot of scrutiny. ;)

(I kinda suspect, though, that a lot of people who were down the path of that 1-in-300M luck playing roulette would stop while they're ahead at some point. If you hit on 00 in roulette three times in a row do you go for a fourth?)

[Nevermark]

If it’s coin flipping, then winning 10 coin flips is 1 out of 1000.

20 flips, 1 out of 1 million.

30 flips, 1 out of a billion.

40 flips, 1 out of a trillion.

With roulette, and overall gain (not a perfect score), say a ratio of 2 wins out of 3 bets, it takes more bets.

But in this case we are talking about many roulette games, with a recognized group of people, often playing in tandem. at multiple casinos.

The odds of their record of successes, as documented by the casinos, could be 1 out of billions or trillions easily. Maybe even more.

[majormajor]

There was a lot suggestive about this group, but that includes a lot of subjective factors.

It's the pure math side I think is fun, because I find examples of people getting tricked by confidence intervals into developing blindspots to the randomness, and substituting "proof" for "very unlikely" fascinating. Comes from working in a lot of companies with ... sloppy ... methodology for their AB tests.

If you go to a casino and win 20 straight coin flips [or the equivalent in roulette or craps] don't you think they'd be pretty damn sure you cheated somehow?

[lancesells]

> The police should not be in the business of protecting the revenue streams of gambling installation operators.

What about in something like betting on a boxing match and having the fighter throw the fight? Is that the casino's problem too?

If you're ok with someone cheating then it all makes complete sense what you're saying. If you're not then someone has to investigate. Do you really want the casino being law enforcement for anyone they find suspicious? I'm not on the casino's side at all but there's a big grey area here.

[jacquesm]

It's the casino here that's cheating, and the casino that doesn't know its own business well enough to spot the flaws that are exposed. Winners have no obligation to explain how they won just as the casino isn't going to tell the losers to stop losing.

[listenallyall]

And in this case, without proof, the winners did get paid. The police and internal investigation did not result in any definitive proof, thus the seizure of funds was unjustified and soon released.

As far as protecting casino revenue, casinos have a complicated arrangement with governments but in most jurisdictions the reason they are legal is to pay hefty taxes on gaming revenue (also normal income tax, separately). Thus the police are, when investigating similar claims, protecting government revenue. The casino is just the conduit to generating that revenue.

[compiler-guy]

> That's the casino's problem though, not law enforcement.

In most jurisdictions where gambling is legal, it is carefully regulated and those regulations include not cheating.

Which does make it a law enforcement issue.

In places where cheating is not a law enforcement issue, it is a mafia-enforcement issue, which is even worse.