101–110 of 288 posts
I'm not sure if this reflects common usage in English but in Italian, Cosa Nostra is just a synonym for Mafia, not the name of a specific family. Also, in Italian it's never preceded by the article "La".
This is probably a very HN comment, but I cannot imagine why people actually like gambling and poker: - high likelihood you lose money - the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers - you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours - the only victory condition is that you take money from other people
There’s a approximately a 45% chance of losing money on any given day, even for the best players, but it decreases over a big sample. It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. That’s true of most things worth doing though.
It’s not lying when it’s part of the game, and kinda silly to view it that way. Is it lying by omission to not tell your chess opponent your strategy?
You are stuck sitting at a table, that’s true. But you choose when you’re there and the only rules really are basic civility so I never found that part difficult.
Money is the scoreboard. Everyone who sits down knows that. I’d argue it’s a lot less bad than how most tech companies make money these days. I’m not selling anyone’s data without them knowing about or understanding it. I’m just taking money from a guy who is trying to take my money. We both voluntarily put the money up to be taken and can stop doing so at any point.
This scheme doesn’t really make sense. Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the golden goose and doesn’t even necessarily increase total winnings, since it makes you win…
“just play better poker” like that’s an easy thing to do in a game of chance and incomplete information, with variance having years or decades long tails. not to mention it’s an unsolved game, so “better” poker doesn’t even really have a set definition and depends on tons of variables. and they literally knew what hole cards were coming - that’s vastly more of an edge than playing “better poker” than someone. Besides…
This is probably a very HN comment, but I cannot imagine why people actually like gambling and poker: - high likelihood you lose money - the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers - you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours - the only victory condition is that you take money from other people
It’s fun? Would you pay for an experience somewhere and then call it a loss because your bank balance is now lower? It’s not lying, it’s a game and everyone knows the rules. Cant the victory condition be… having fun? Why so transactional
It's deception at a minimum. Lying could have a stricter definition depending on who you're talking about.
Is this a case of bureaucracy forcing people into illegality?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read a theory that the poker winnings were not the scam. The scam was that the criminal element would HELP the NBA players cheat at poker, and then blackmail them with that info to change the outcomes of NBA games, which they were betting on, from which they could derive greater scale of winnings.
imo that doesn't make sense. All the online betting platforms will cut off the sharps. If you are net profitable and you make too much money from them, you will get banned.
However, if you assume they were feeding the information to the platforms...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read a theory that the poker winnings were not the scam. The scam was that the criminal element would HELP the NBA players cheat at poker, and then blackmail them with that info to change the outcomes of NBA games, which they were betting on, from which they could derive greater scale of winnings.
imo that doesn't make sense. All the online betting platforms will cut off the sharps. If you are net profitable and you make too much money from them, you will get banned.
This scheme doesn’t really make sense. Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the golden goose and doesn’t even necessarily increase total winnings, since it makes you win…
The trick isn't winning when the celebrity is at the table, it is in getting the celebrity to the table, then keepong the victim there. It's not about winning mote on each hand. It's about keeping the target happy as money drains away. And that was their aim. By controlling the whole game, they were able to psychologically manipulate the situation. The target was at tbe table with someone they respected. Saw others w…
Doesn’t sound that profitable to me. $7m is a lot of money. But not that much after building all of that custom tech, setting up a dedicated space, training and paying a whole bunch of people to run these games. Then whatever’s left over gets split between multiple crime families? Seems like a lot of work.
“An X-ray poker machine was employed to read facedown cards and a rigged card-shuffling machine was also used in the plot, prosecutors say.” Would love to know more about such a machine, if anyone has any insight. Are these developed underground? How expensive could they be? If it can efficiently take in a deck of cards and deterministically return a rigged deck in a reasonable amount of time, I would be fascinated a…
There's a device that can scan the _sides_ of specially marked cards and tell you the complete deck order. For the shuffling machine there is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA There are _so many_ ways to cheat at poker that you should basically never play a private game outside of close friends. If you wanted to spend a year or so practicing, you can learn how to do false shuffles and cuts, bottom dea…
Playing in an actual regulated casino or poker hall eliminates most of the technical risk of a fraudulent shuffle. The risk to the enterprise of losing their gaming license keeps things honest. Imagine the net effect of Bellagio’s shuffling machines or dealers being rigged.
But nothing can eliminate collusion of players. You’re best bet for that is your own self awareness. If your spidey sense is tripping, listen to it.