How many times have you been on a really bad losing streak and felt the casino had everything stacked in it’s favour. Of course this is always true, however for one lucky group of people this situation was briefly reversed.
Unfortunately for them, it didn’t end too well, with a judge ordering this week that they needed to hand their $1.5 million winnings back tot he casino.
The story took place in the Golden Nugget casino in Kansas City, after the group played mini-baccarat. However this eagle eyed group noticed something wasn’t quite right, the cards in the deck they were playing hadn’t been shuffled. They naturally upped their bets and won 41 straight hands before the management presumably noticed their mistake.
The owner of the casino – Tillman Fertitta, originally allowed the group to keep their winnings on the condition that they dropped some other legal claims they had made against the casino. They foolishly refused this condition and the casino sued for the return of the money.
You would have expected this to be a fairly fruitless appeal, after all it was the casino’s fault and no cheating was involved. However the judge sided with the casino stating that the games were actually illegal. The reason was that there are very specific gambling regulations stipulating how these games must be played in Missouri. These regulations state that because the cards were not shuffled according to the rules, then the games were illegal.
The official verdict stated that the game violated the Casino Control Act and were therefore not authorised to take place. The games were ‘null and void’ and the players were ordered to return all their winnings in return for their original stakes.
