Barred From A Vegas Casino...

Casinos can only legally detain you if they suspect you of committing a felony. That is the ONLY way that I know of. If you are detained, be sure to make a clear, non-aggressive gesture showing it is your intention to peacefully leave the premises. If you get tackled and roughed up you could have a big lawsuit on your hands, especially if you have not committed a felony. Anything you want to know on this subject is in the book Beat The Players by Bob Narcesian (sp?).

Bob Nersesian's book, available at [URL="https://www.shoplva.com/products/beat-the-players-casinos-cops-and-the-game-inside-the-game"]ShopLVA[/URL], is one place to learn more. :)

Right to detain It was stated up the line that the only reason a casino can detain you is for a felony. This is false. The legal authority for a casino to detain is found in three places: 1) They can detain you if they have reasonable suspicion (analogous to "probable cause") to believe that you have committed a gaming crime on premises; 2) They can detain you if a felony has been committed and they have reasonable cause to believe that you are the person who committed the felony. This detention cannot, however, be an investigative detention, and must be accompanied with notification to a peace officer that they are detaining you; and 3) They can detain you for a citizens arrest. In this last circumstance it has to be for a felony or for a misdemeanor actually committed in the presence of the person initiating the detention. If they are mistaken the citizen's arrest is invalid and the detention is without legal authority. Detention without legal authority is false imprisonment.

This is Bob Nersesian. We're pleased to have him here. He knows it best.

Bob Nersesian's Interview Back in July of 2008 I sat down with Bob Nersesian an attorney who has had great success in winning lawsuits against casinos and their illegal actions against law abiding citizens. Here is a copy of that interview. INTERVIEW WITH BOB NERSESIAN By Joe Pane Joe Pane is a skilled advantage blackjack player, and an experienced tournament player who has won lifetime over a million dollars in blackjack tournaments, including his recent first and third place finishes in tournaments sponsored by the IP in Biloxi, MS. Joe is the #1 ranked tournament player in the country and was named 2007 Player of the Year by Las Vegas Advisor publisher Anthony Curtis. In Joe's last 11 tournaments in 2007/2008, he made the final tables eight times and won two of them for an impressive 73% final table appearance rate with just over $225,000 won in the past 12 months. Joe is also the Assistant Director of Tour Operations for the Ultimate Blackjack Tour (UBT, as well as the Team UBT Coordinator. He is co-host of the radio show, "Queens vs. Kings – It’s All About Position" on [url]www.holdemradio.com[/url]. His peers consider him to be one of the strongest blackjack tournament players on the circuit. Editors Note: Bob Nersesian is a Las Vegas attorney who is famous for successfully defending the civil rights of advantage players (APs) from the often bullying and illegal tactics used by casinos to harass them. Nersesian is the author of the book, Beat The Players. Are you required to have a government issued ID on you to play in a casino if it’s clear that you are over the age of 21? You are not required to have a government issued ID on you at any time, save for while driving. If you are under 21 and playing in a casino, you’re breaking the law. There is no law that says you have to have ID to play in a casino. If a casino supervisor asks you for identification, do you have to show him? No. If a casino supervisor asks you to stop playing and to come with him to the "back room," what should you do and say? Say, no thank you, I was just leaving. If the above scenario occurs, what is your best course of action? Proceed directly to the nearest exit, do not pass go and do not collect $200. You’re likely going to be 86’d on the way out. So only if you have no foreseeable reasonable opportunity to cash your chips should you go to the cashier’s cage. What should you do if casino security blocks your exit while you are attempting to peacefully leave the casino? Turn the other way and proceed around or directly to another exit. If they persist, inform them that you are being kidnapped, quietly, and still seek to leave. If none of this works, stand silently with your hands at your sides until you are either forced to submit through handcuffs or otherwise. You should also attempt through the earlier turning and walking to get to the most clear proximate area. Security has a funny way of stopping advantage players where there is no surveillance coverage. If a security guard "forcibly" tries to escort you to the back room, what should you do? Succumb. You have a right to resist, but proving later that this is what you did may prove problematic. If you find yourself in the "back room" being interrogated, what should you say or do? Use all words clearly. Ask to leave. Ask to call your attorney. Answer no questions. Inform them that this is an illegal detention. If they try to take your picture, passively resist (turn your head, close your eyes, wink, contort your face, etc.). What is the difference between being backed-off and being trespassed? Being told to leave and never come back is a trespass. Anything less is being backed off. If you are leaving the casino and the security guards are reading you the trespass act, but you neither respond to any of their question or sign any document in regards to this trespass reading, are you legally trespassed off the property, or must you have signed the form to acknowledge their intentions. You’re legally trespassed if there is such a thing. I am currently challenging the trespass law in reference to APs. Ken Uston did this year’s ago in Atlantic City. Although a local federal court has ruled on the issue, and the Atlantic City case was not adopted, the Nevada Supreme Court has never answered the question of whether a casino can trespass a non-disruptive guest and bar them from playing legally. The argument, briefly, is that a Nevada statute requires that casinos remain open to the general public, and that access to gaming remains open to the general public. The statute contains an exception providing that casinos can exclude patrons for any common law reason. The Nevada trespass statute is a statutory reason, not a common law reason, and therefore would be trumped by the statute mandating access. The question is then whether at common law a place of public amusement could exclude any one for any reason, or whether there is a conditionally revocable license requiring cause. New Jersey found the conditionally revocable license. Other states are split, and as mentioned, Nevada has never answered the question. If you are 86th from a casino and 6 months later that same casino is sold to another individual or corporation are you still not allowed back on property? It depends. If the same corporation owns the casino and only the stock was transferred to the new owner, then no. This is also contingent on the issue in the preceding question. I have been told that if you are just verbally read the trespass act and do not sign off on it that it is only valid for 6 months. Is this true, or just another advantage player false rumor? Just an AP false rumor. If you are trespassed, what should you do? Don’t go back. Or, pay me $20,000.00 to bring the challenge talked about a moment ago. Is it legal to carry and use a false ID in the casino? It is a crime to carry false ID anywhere at any time in Nevada. The true issue here is: What constitutes false ID? You have a right to adopt whatever name you want to use so long as that name is not adopted to defraud. Playing under an alias is not fraudulent as to a casino under a case known as Chen. Nor is a legitimate alias name a "false" name. If it is a well-established nickname or alias, it is unlikely that identification in that name would be false. The identification should not, however, purport to be government issued identification such as a driver’s license. Alternatives might be to carry a "Divers" license, or an identification card. It is also always illegal to pass yourself off as a different actual living person through the use of identification. If you are a staying in a comped room and the casino backs you off and asks you to immediately vacate your room, what should you do? Protest. If it doesn’t work, then leave. If you have traveled an appreciable distance, have to get substitute quarters, or it was a paid room, you likely have a pretty good lawsuit. You find out that a flyer has been issued on you and it states you are a part of a professional BJ team when you aren’t, nor never have been? What should you do? Take pride in being recognized as having skill at that level. If the team is a "cheating" team, see a lawyer about a defamation suit. Otherwise, the false statement is not defamatory unless you can show a special damaged tied to the misrepresentation. It is likely that you cannot because it is your skill that will have you barred from other properties and not the affiliation with the team. You’re playing in a BJ tournament and make it to the semi-final round. The pit boss approaches you and asks you to leave the casino? What should you do? Protest vociferously. Get your lawyer on the phone and try to stop the game until it’s sorted out. This is outright theft of your entry fee in my opinion. You have purchased a license coupled with an interest with your entry fee, and the trespass rules are out the window for the casino at this point. If you’re really gutsy, stay and make the police remove you from the game. That is not to say you will succeed. You may find yourself jailed and convicted of some crime on trumped claims of the casino. You’ve won a lot of money playing BJ and it’s all on your person. You’ve got to go take a flight home, which means you’ve got to go through airport security. What should you do with all the money you are carrying? The best thing to do is have the money turned into a casino check if you are certain the casino will not be going under presently. Alternatively, you can go to a local bank, and if they’ll accept you, fill out the appropriate ctr’s and open a checking account for all but some hundreds of dollars. I am completely familiar with DEA agents seizing cash from gamblers for no reason other than the size of the bankroll. If you must carry the money, get the newest bills you can from a clean source (avoidance of drug dogs hitting on well used currency). Carry them openly. If you can get a win report from a casino supporting the cash, carry this as well. If casino security insists on interrogating you, should you ask them to call the local police? As often as not, this results in you being arrested. This is a hard question with no good answer. Still, if there was false imprisonment, do this in the security office, and the fact that you want the police there will help your case later. The floor person tells you that you are only allowed to bet the table minimum while all the other players on your table can bet more. What should you do? Obviously you can’t win. Leave. The interview will be continued in the next post.

Part 2 of the interview You have been asked to leave a casino and not return. Yet two months later, you receive an offer from the very same casino inviting you back for an offer/promotion/tournament. Should you accept the offer and return? It is my opinion that the later invitation, especially if it is received in the same name you were trespassed under, revokes the prior trespass. Carry a photocopy of the offer with you and keep the original at home; or visa versa. Curiously, nonetheless, I am involved in a situation where the police officer was shown the later invitation and responded, "That’s pretty weak." He then proceeded to criminally charge the AP with trespass. The prosecutor did not prosecute, and the police officer is currently the subject of a federal lawsuit. This does not mean, nonetheless, that it will not happen again, or that the invitation will avoid jail time. If a dealer pays you on a hand that was not a winner and a short time later the pit approaches you and insist that you return the money, are you legally bound to return the money? It depends on whether you recognized it at the time. It is illegal in Nevada to take money from a gambling game that was not won. This still has to be intentional though. Therefore, if you were familiar with the situation at the time, you are obligated to give the money back or face prosecution. Still, even with this you have an argument. Take for example that the gambling game is ’21.’ Under the rules of ‘21’, you can argue that it is the dealer’s duty to call the hand, and that once the dealt cards on the hand are mucked, the hand is over. As the dealer called you a winner, you are a winner, regardless of the actual cards dealt, and the mucked cards prevent a look-back. If you did not know it at the time, it is my opinion that that money is yours. Don’t accept an invitation to watch a video. You might learn something different than what you know and don’t know. This may sound unfair, but anecdotally I have heard of over a dozen incidents where the casino comes back to the player and demands that they return the money and state that there is video evidence to support their position. Conversely, I am familiar with two incidents of the casino returning to a table and paying the patron for a winner or push that was mistakenly collected by the dealer. Logic dictates that in a fair game the balance here should be 50/50. As the balance is closer to 15/85, obviously the casinos use their surveillance departments to support a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ system. There is no reason to support such an unbalanced system, and the casinos have apparently more than made up for unearned wins and pushes through keeping unrecognized losses by patrons. If a sloppy dealer is exposing the hole card to you can you legally use that information to your advantage? Yes, unless the math is above you. Can you also signal someone at the table about the information you can see from this sloppy dealer but they cannot? In my opinion, yes. I have also had two gaming agents agree that this is not illegal. The unpublished decision of the Nevada Supreme Court in Einbinder confirms this as well. A copy of the Einbinder decision appears in my book. An exception may well exist, nonetheless, if a game is posted barring the sharing of information or communication. Speaking of your book, "Beat the Players," how has its reception been? Well, I have a hard time getting channel 27. Seriously, though, the feedback has been wonderful and even gratifying. I’ve gotten a few calls where people have said that this or that in the book has, in their words, saved their ass. As I look back on it, I find it a little too dry, and stating stuff that is likely too evident. Nevertheless, the people who’ve bought it aren’t telling me this, and do tell me that it’s a great read. Are you writing anything else? Rob Loeb, my wife—Thea Sankiewicz, and I hope to put together a reporter on patron dispute cases. These are issued by the Gaming Control in the States, but have not been compiled anywhere as of yet. It’s in the works, but going a bit slow. My fault. Are you working on anything particularly interesting at this time? There’s the challenge to the trespass law we mentioned earlier. Additionally, I’ve currently got a case with some interesting issues before the Nevada Supreme Court. It’s a patron dispute where the casino knew that it installed some machines that published very large progressives as a result of a defective communications board in the machine. They left them in play without fixing them even though IGT would have replaced them for free. My client, a library director from the Midwest, hit a $1.4 million dollar progressive jackpot on one of the bad machines, and the casino refused to pay. At this point, the Gaming Control Board has sided with the casino, and the case is on appeal. The Board held that my client actually contracted for a specific lesser jackpot that was never published, and held in the alternative that the casino does not have to pay because the machine malfunctioned. Some of the issues on appeal are: 1) Whether a patron can contract for a sum that was never offered even when a different offer was actually made? 2) Does the continued use of a defective machine with knowledge prevent the casino from asserting malfunction when the known defect causes a large jackpot? 3) Is it even a malfunction if a machine willing left in play acts within the parameters known by the casino? and 4) Is it fair that casinos can collect on untold wagers with the rule "malfunction voids all pays and plays" in place, but only seek to void the game where the patron wins big while keeping all the prior bets on the games where the casino won while the alleged malfunction was occurring? Thank you Bob. My pleasure, Joe. Editor’s Note: Joe’s new radio show ("Queens vs. Kings-It’s All About Position") airs every Thursday night at 7pm Eastern Time on [url]www.holdemradio.com[/url]. Joe’s guest on July 10th will be Bob Nersesian.

Sometimes it takes Joe a little while to get started. But watch out once he does.

[QUOTE=anthony;22183]This is Bob Nersesian. We're pleased to have him here. He knows it best.[/QUOTE] the resources that become available at this site are incredible.

[QUOTE=tvrw34243;22194]the resources that become available at this site are incredible.[/QUOTE] Now we just need someone to get us free rooms!!! :D

I stand corrected.