The Difference Between Advantage Gambling and Cheating

Advantage gambling is not the same thing as cheating. Everything about advantage gambling is legal.

Cheating is just the opposite; it’s illegal. This post aims to explain which techniques for getting an edge over the casino are advantage gambling techniques as opposed to cheating.

I’m including multiple specific examples so that you can guarantee that your gambling activities are legal while helping you make a profit.

Advantage Gambling Is All About the Math Behind the Games

No one accuses a casino of cheating when THEY take advantage of the math behind the games they offer.

If you’re new to casino gambling, you might be unaware of a concept called “the house edge.” That’s just a fancy term for how the casino makes its money. It’s the difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds.

The most straightforward example to understand for a lot of people is the roulette table.

A roulette wheel has 38 numbers on it, and if you place a bet on each of those 38 numbers, you’d be guaranteed to win, right? But you’d lose money on the deal.

The 35 to 1 payoff would leave you with a net loss of $2. That’s how the casino gets its edge in roulette, and they have a similar mathematical edge on every game they offer.

Advantage players, though, look for loopholes in the games’ rules to find opportunities for the player to get the edge. This is no easy task, and casinos frown on players who try it.

In fact, they’ll often take action to “back off” advantage gamblers.

Casinos Treat Advantage Gamblers Differently From Cheaters

A classic example of an advantage gambler is a card counter. He’s not cheating, he’s just paying attention to the cards that are dealt so he can raise his bet sizes when the deck favors him.

It’s hard to consider this cheating, and it’s certainly not illegal. You’re just focusing intently on what’s going on in the game and tracking data in your head.

No one would accuse a poker player who’s paying close attention of cheating. Casinos don’t make money when they’re losing to card counters, so they’ll watch for card counters. When they catch one, they have multiple approaches to getting rid of his edge.

They might start shuffling the deck after every hand, eliminating any edge he might gain. They might ask him to refrain from playing blackjack. They’ll even tell him he’s welcome to enjoy the casino’s other games.

The worst-case scenario involves getting banned from the casino. A card counter who ignores being banned from a casino risks getting in trouble for trespassing. A cheater, on the other hand, faces legal action.

An example of cheating is past posting. This is when a gambler increases the size of his bet after the outcome has been determined. A roulette player who adds a chip to the top of his bet after the ball has landed is cheating.

Casinos hate advantage players, but they hate cheaters more.

In most jurisdictions that offer legal gambling in casinos, cheating is a crime. You can be arrested, fined, and even sentenced with jail time.

I don’t recommend advantage gambling most of the time. But I would recommend advantage gambling techniques over cheating any day of the week.

How Counting Cards Works

You don’t have to be a genius with photographic memory to count cards. All you need to do is be able to add and subtract 1 from a running tally.

Card counting works because the probability of getting a blackjack changes based on the ratio of high cards to low cards in the deck.

High cards are cards worth 10 and cards worth 11. The 10s and face cards, along with the aces, are high cards. Low cards are likelier to generate a bust for the player. The 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are usually the low cards tracked by card counters.

Every time a 10 or an ace is dealt, it’s removed from the deck, lowering the probability of getting a blackjack. The most basic card counting systems count these cards as -1. Every time a low card is dealt, it’s also removed from the deck, increasing the probability that you’ll get a blackjack. Basic card counting systems count these cards as +1.

Card counters bet more when the count is positive and less when the count is negative. This eliminates the house’s mathematical edge and gives the player an edge over the casino.

The high payout (3 to 2) for a blackjack is what creates this mathematical discrepancy. Many casinos have eliminated the possibility of an advantage player getting an edge over the casino by one of two techniques.

The first technique is to shuffle the cards throughout the game. Since the cards you counted go back into the deck, it’s impossible to get an edge.

The second technique is to only offer a 6 to 5 payout on a blackjack. The reduced payout for that hand increases the house edge so much that counting cards can’t make up for it.

Another Example of an Advantage Gambling Technique

Many advantage gamblers are smart mathematicians who look for opportunities to get an edge that casinos haven’t noticed yet.

One example from a few years ago is explained in a New York Times article about advantage gambling from 2016. The article explains how James Grosjean had devised a strategy for beating a card game version of craps.

In some jurisdictions, it’s illegal for casinos to use dice to determine gambling outcomes. Shrewd casino operators devised a system to offer craps using playing cards instead of dice and theoretically offering the same odds.

The game in question used 12 playing cards to simulate the numbers on a pair of dice. Each die is numbered from one to six. The game used a machine shuffler, but Grosjean was able to see three of the cards even when they were in the machine.

Two of the cards were exposed during the previous bet, and the other card was in the hands of the dealer. The result was that the probability of getting any of those three cards lowered dramatically.

Using computer simulations, Grosjean determined which bets offered him an advantage based on which cards were out of action. How effective are advantage gambling techniques like this?

Grosjean claims his team won over $300,000 at a casino in Palm Springs using this technique.

Using Devices During Gameplay Is Cheating

By definition, using any kind of device during the play of a casino game is cheating. It’s okay to count cards in your head, but if you’re using some sort of mini-computer to do the same thing, then you’re cheating.

In the card-based craps example in the last section, I pointed out that Grosjean had used a computer to analyze probabilities. But he wasn’t using that computer during gameplay. If he had, that would have been considered cheating.

Advantage gamblers and even regular savvy gamblers use computers all the time. The correct strategies for blackjack and video poker are computer-generated, but no one thinks those are cheating techniques.

The casinos’ response to an advantage gambling technique like the one described above is usually the same. They change the conditions of the game to eliminate the loophole. They just have to figure out what the advantage gamblers are up to first.

Conclusion

Advantage gambling and cheating are two different things. Advantage gambling uses smart strategy to take advantage of oversights from casinos and casino game designers. Advantage gamblers are just paying close attention to the games’ conditions and making intelligent decisions based on those conditions.

Cheating, on the other hand, changes the conditions of the game in some way. Marking cards is cheating, but counting cards is advantage gambling.

Both techniques are more trouble than they’re worth for the average recreational gambler.