Originally Posted by
unowme
Originally Posted by
kewlJ
The short and sweet of it is that if you sit down at a machine that has a pay table that states that four 3's pays 200 credits and playing a $1 you hit four 3's and manipulate the machine to pay you 2000 credits (the $10 level)….that is
WRONG! There is no grey area.
WRONG!
Illegal? I guess not.
Cheating? That is for everyone to decide for themselves. But there is no grey are in right or wrong. And if you think there is...well we will see how you fare trying to explain that to St Peter, Mr. former Alter Boy.
And I hope that day is far off.
Of course there are
always grey areas in 'right and wrong'. And not only that, there are degrees of 'wrongness'.
Grey Areas
Is it always wrong to kill? What if it's in self defense? Is it always wrong to lie? What if lying saves a life? Is it always wrong to steal? What if stealing a loaf of bread keeps your family from starving?
Degrees of Wrong
Is it wrong to call someone names for no reason? Sure! But not as wrong as punching them in the mouth for no reason. And that's not as wrong as shooting them in the head for no reason.
Is it wrong?
So now we get the the real question...."Is it "Wrong" to legally exploit a Video Poker game's software flaw? I would argue that this is a competition between player and casino and as long as the player is behaving perfectly legally it's the casino's responsibility to make sure their machines are paying off as they expect. Otherwise, one day you may find yourself arrested for taking advantage of seeing the dealer's hole card....as the casino could claim they didn't intend for the player to know what the dealer had. It's a slippery slope.
But even if you truly believe that it is wrong to exploit the double up flaw, how serious a transgression is it really? The bottom line is you took advantage of a casino....legally. Big deal. Are you really ready to moralize and condemn someone for that? Isn't that what all advantage players do every day? You're just arguing against the method they used to legally take advantage of casinos. The end result is the same.
Humans do things that are 'Wrong' every day. They spit. They curse. They Smoke and Drink. They speed and run stop lights and disobey all kinds of traffic laws. Some believe Abortion is a right. Others feel it is a sin. The fact of the matter is that we are all 'sinners'. It's easy to get on a self-righteous high horse and point out moral transgressions in others before we really consider our own non-perfect lives. That's wrong too, eh?
Ok...sometimes I wax a little philosophical.
This whole post is liberalism 101. Since I am an anti-liberal, I’ve got to respond. First, you pulled out the old tried-and-true go-to-liberal argument to try to show right or wrong is relative. What is that? The “stealing the loaf of bread so your family doesn’t starve to death” hypothetical. It’s a great hypothetical situation to illustrate a point, but the problem is there is no where in the world where you can give an example where this has occurred. Even in Third World poverty stricken nations no one is in that situation. There are small menial jobs someone can do to afford a loaf of bread.
Liberals usually use this example to excuse all the prisoners filling our prisons by stealing (and selling illegal) things. For the record, contrary to what liberals think, no one in America is stealing because their family is starving to death. It’s not occurring in the third world either.
As far as different crimes having a different degree of wrongness to them of course that’s true. That’s why we have different punishments for different crimes. All crimes obviously don’t deserve the death penalty. I failed to understand the point you’re trying to make here.
As far as if using the Double Up bug was wrong, KJ is right. It was wrong. There’s no moral relativism argument that can be used to make it right. Nester had to give all his winnings back to the casino once they caught him doing it. If what he was doing was right, he could’ve kept it.
My view and the court’s view is that people should try to beat the casino’s games the way they were intended to be played. This is why courts in two different nations, America and England, ruled against Phil Ivey in his edge sorting scam.
Saying all this, does not mean I wouldn’t have tried to take advantage of the double up bug if I came across it. But I certainly would not have been proud of myself or broadcast it to anybody that I did it. If I did something like this, I’d probably take it to the grave with me. But then I’d have to deal with St Peter and God on the other side so I don’t know if that’d be a good idea either.
Bottom line is KJ is right on this one. Using the double up bug was wrong. There is no moral relativism argument they can be used to make it right.