[toki5]

There's a fairly large difference between advantage players and what these guys did.

You have to keep in mind the spirit of the machines. Video poker machines are meant to play poker. If you can somehow find an edge in poker itself that gives you an advantageous position, I'd be for it. Exploiting the software that runs the game, however, isn't fair.

The punishment was blown monstrously out of proportion, but yes, I still think what they did was wrong (and certainly against the law!).

[danielweber]

He was changing the bet amounts after the victory. Imagine playing for pesos, and then upon victory tricking the software into playing for Euros.

If he had outsmarted or even figured out a way to control the random number generator through button presses, I'd be all for him. But this is more like finding an ATM that has a bug to not record withdrawals of exactly $420 and then emptying the machine.

It's shouldn't be lost that the casinos love to let players think they have an advantage, even they don't. The old joke is that casinos have a word for people who have a system to beat the house: "Welcome!"

[mikeash]

This stuff is really interesting.

Imagine if you're playing, say, blackjack with a human dealer. After you win a hand but before you collect your winnings, you ask the dealer, "Say, would you mind if I retroactively increase my bet and collect the winnings on that?" The dealer replies, "Sure thing," and pays you accordingly.

I imagine we'd all agree that there's no harm in asking, and that the dealer's compliance is his own problem and a problem for his employer but not your problem. Why does this suddenly change when you're talking to a computer instead of a human? I'm not saying it doesn't change, but I can't entirely figure out why we approach these two scenarios so differently.

For your ATM comparison, it's not uncommon for excessively-clever bank customers to jokingly ask the teller for a million bucks, often in response to a question like, "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" Suppose you found a particularly dim teller who decided to actually hand over a million bucks when you asked. We'd blame the teller and the bank for agreeing to such a thing, not the person who asked, right? Yet when it's an ATM instead of a teller, we blame the person asking.

[rwallace]

Suppose we postulate that exploiting a security flaw is wrong, and money obtained by doing so should be forfeit.

The entire business of casinos is exploiting a security flaw in the human mind. By hypothesis, the casinos' money should be forfeit, so they have no moral grounds for trying to get it back from the people who found a way to take some of it.

Conversely, if we backtrack and cancel our postulate, then there is no basis for a claim against a gambler who exploits the software.

[gaius]

be for it. Exploiting the software that runs the game, however, isn't fair.

That is clearly nonsense tho', and that's easy to prove. If you are playing poker with a person, then that is all about exploiting the flaws in that person, this ones timid, that one's reckless, this one has a facial tic, that one drinks too much and so on.

[derefr]

With poker in particular, I'd call being able to predict the machine's hand due to a bug in the software to be a fair outcome.

After all, reading other people's tells is what makes poker poker. Why is it suddenly a "bug" if a machine has one?

[Buge]

From what I understand, they weren't predicting future hands. They were switching to the main menu and back repeatedly to cash out on the same hand over and over again. They weren't playing the exact same game over and over again, they were cashing out repeatedly from the same win screen.

[theworst]

Poker has very little to do with reading other people's tells. If a player relies on reading another in order to play his game, the first player is probably not going to do too well.

[Dylan16807]

They're not playing poker though. "Double Up" is not a feature of poker. It's a feature of this very specific and state-approved game.