Casinos are big business, very lucrative and with little investment in things like manufacturing capability or raw materials. Even the little pocket casinos that litter the main roads make big money from a small handful of customers.
That’s all okay. With freedom comes responsibility. Each of us is at liberty to utilize or discard our resources any way we want. We trade things we value more for things we value less. Lack of choice is for children who hopefully grow into taking full responsibility for their lives, liberties and properties. We call that “growing up”.
In this same free world, the casinos are at liberty to attract, entice, reward and get money from their clientèle in whatever way they feel is in their best interests. It is a fair bargain exactly like any other in an environment of unfettered exchange. If they are good at it, they thrive. If not, they collapse.
But some casino operators want an additional edge. They aren’t fully satisfied with the free market. They hire protection from a heavily armed gang: THE GOVERNMENT. They insist that it is okay if we fool you, but not okay to fool us.
A California casino caught a man getting an edge on them by marking cards in a Blackjack game. They could have asked him to leave, and even leave his chips behind. They could have shared his photo and story with fellow casino operators, an etiquette that would serve all of their long-term needs.
But NO. They call in an armed gang to abduct and cage him. They trot him in front of a tribunal whose dictums are anything but those of a free society. They find him guilty of violating their decrees and punish him. Rather obviously, this is to instill fear in others who might attempt to tilt the odds toward themselves than to achieve actual justice.
Well, he’s an evil gambler and, worse, a cheat (according to those who lost to him). Therefore he gets no sympathy from polite society and probably not even from himself. He got caught on the wrong side of The Deal. It happens.
But we should ask ourselves, “How would this work in a free country?”
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Famous Las Vegas gambler gets probation in card-marking case
(Reuters) – A Las Vegas gambler who once famously turned $50 into $40 million and then lost it all has been sentenced to three years’ probation for a card-marking scheme that got him arrested at a California casino, a San Diego prosecutor said on Thursday.
Anargyros Karabourniotis, who was also ordered to pay $6,860 in restitution, pleaded guilty to a felony count of burglary for entering the Barona Casino in the San Diego area in July 2013 intending to commit a theft.
Better known as Archie Karas, 64-year-old Karabourniotis is legendary for arriving in Las Vegas in 1992 with $50 and going on a three-year gambling streak that included poker, pool and dice games that raised his funds to $40 million, which he lost in a few months in 1995.
At the San Diego area casino, Karabourniotis was videotaped twice marking cards at a blackjack table. He won $8,000 in one sitting, according to court records.