Bonnie and I were recently returning from a cruise and were waiting in the Fort Lauderdale airport for our flight home. We were sitting next to some Vegas friends who were on the same cruise — a man and his wife, their 13-year-old son and their 11-year-old daughter.
I was absorbed in a book and wasn’t following what was going on, but all of a sudden, the girl, Kelly, asked me if I wanted her to get me a free drink from a vending machine? There were sodas, water, and a few types of energy drinks available. Maybe other choices as well. It was across the room and I didn’t look closely at it.
“And just how are you going to get me a free drink?” I asked. “They are usually sold at a premium in an airport and not given away.”
“Daddy found this code on the Internet. You enter the code into the vending machine, and it thinks you’re an employee. You then get whatever you want.”
“Have you tried it?” I asked.
“Well, we tried it and got to the last step and then we chickened out. I’m not a thief and couldn’t bring myself to do it for me. But to give to somebody else, that’s different. And I really want to see if it works. So, what do you want?”
“I want to pass on this,” I replied.
Kelly then asked Bonnie, who didn’t really understand what Kelly was suggesting, so she looked at me for guidance. I told her it looked like a scam that may or may not work. But if it does work, it’s clearly stealing from the vending machine company. When I phrased it that way, Bonnie wanted no part of it either. Kelly got a similar response from both her parents.
Since none of the adults wanted to do this, Kelly concluded that it wasn’t the right thing to do — so she let it go. Had she taken the free drink, I would hope one of her parents would instruct her otherwise. For me to do so would be hypocritical, as I’ve done far worse. Some of those instances readers of my columns have heard about. Some they haven’t.
This is something I might have said yes to 25 years ago. I was new in Vegas and desperately trying to make it. Three dollars saved is three dollars earned.
Even then, however, I wouldn’t have done it in front of five people who knew me and looked up to me. It would have been something I did by myself or with at most one accomplice.
This time there was a dome on the ceiling housing a security camera — which may or may not be active. They didn’t have those 25 years ago. You could just look around and see whether anybody was watching. Not anymore. Although it is doubtful the security system was there to protect against this kind of scam, you never know. The chance of being caught definitely enters into the equation when you’re considering crossing a line.
Would you have taken the free soda?
In casinos, there are numerous situations not so different from this one. When they unexpectedly arise, you need to make a decision. Those with a strong moral compass have no trouble at all with these decisions. The same is true for those with no moral compass at all, although they make the opposite decisions from the ones in the previous category. Where it presents problems are for those of us who look at each situation as a new problem to consider.
I’ve heard it said that the difference between an advantage player (which I consider myself to be) and a cheat (which I do not consider myself to be) is that the advantage player always does things in a casino legally. I wonder. Temptations arise and we make decisions. Even on the decisions we can justify to ourselves, others may decide we have “crossed the line.”
I chatted about this article a bit with a friend and he listed a couple of cases that would be taboo for him that I thought would have been acceptable for me. And vice versa. He was amazed that I considered something off limits.
Dan Ariely is a professor at Duke University and the author of many books and articles including “Ask Ariely,” an advice column in The Wall Street Journal. One thing I’ve learned from reading Dr. Ariely’s works is that the decision we make now (when temptation is far away and just a theoretical concept) can be different than what we decide in the heat of the moment. Although Ariely’s conclusions are often about sexual matters, I believe they also apply to financial matters. Getting “more money” is one of the major things that inspire those who gamble — whether it’s gambling with or without the advantage.
The old maxim comes to mind about true character being how you behave when no one is watching.
Back in the eighties/nineties seems like every street tramp knew this little thievery. Take a bottle of water, load it up with salt, then squirt it into the bill acceptor on a coke machine. It would cause something to go haywire and drop all the quarters down to the coin return.
About 20 years ago I was hosting my brother and his two preteen kids. We were in a park on the grounds of Fort McHenry after getting off the water taxi and were very thirsty. We saw a soda machine on the way to the fort, so went to get a soda from the machine. Turns out it was malfunctioning and dispensing free sodas. This was the type that poured a soda into a cup that came down. We did each take a soda. On the way back to the water taxi after visiting the fort my nephew wanted to get another free soda but my brother, his father, told him that he was not really thirsty this time and it would not be appropriate to take more.
Technically we did steal at least three sodas, once one of us hit the button for the type of soda they wanted and the machine dispensed it we knew it was broken. I don’t really remember if someone told us or if it would not take our money but that does not matter. Would we really be any “more wrong” getting more on the way back. Was our thirst and not wanting to drink from the water fountain justification enough the first time? I think what my brother did was a great teaching moment for his kids, but I remember to this day that I would have gone and gotten another soda if my niece and nephew were not there. Not sure what I would do today.
Point is, if we have to think of a way to justify what we are doing, we know we should not be doing it. Everyone does it to some extent. Honest advantage play does not fall into this category for me. Back in the late eighties, I once stuffed a free raffle for a coca-cola smoker by filling out a few hundred tickets at a gas station. I won. I was allowed, I put in the time and effort, and I could still have easily lost. I had no idea how many tickets were in the box, but calculated that the advantage I gained was worth the time put in. I was a college student; today it would not be worth the time. If I tried to take out other people’s tickets, I would have been cheating. What I did do was fair in every way, as is any legal advantage play.
I have read your columns for years. Even when I disagree with you, I’ve always appreciated your logical thinking on virtually any subject. However, when I read:
“This is something I might have said yes to 25 years ago. I was new in Vegas and desperately trying to make it. Three dollars saved is three dollars earned.
Even then, however, I wouldn’t have done it in front of five people who knew me and looked up to me. It would have been something I did by myself or with at most one accomplice.”
It occurred to me that maybe we are all influenced by situational ethics more than we would like to admit, i.e., once we get where we want to be, we can follow the rules, but until then, everything is a “situation”.
Regardless, huge fan, keep up the good work.
About ten years ago, two guys discovered a glitch in IGT machines when the double up feature was available. They were able to play for low denominations and then when there was a big win adjust it so the machine would think they were playing a higher denomination and get paid at the higher amount. How they discovered this is still unknown. That is definitely cheating.
If I go to an interstate rest area and buy a Hershey bar out of the vending machine and the machine accidentally drops two bars instead of one, I don’t believe it is stealing to take both bars.
I’m not so sure that first example is _definitely_ cheating. They do not have an advantage over the machine that ONLY they can access. Theoretically, any schmo off the street could have pressed the same buttons in the same order those guys did and access the glitch as well.
I recently had 2 DVDS rented from Rebox that didn’t work. I contacted them and never heard back. This is their advantage! Their machines put a lot of people out of work! One of the disadvantages for them is when there is a malfunction in favor of the consumer! So taking a “gift” from the machine is part of the economic calculation.
I want to comment on Mark’s statement: “. . . if we have to think of a way to justify what we are doing, we know we should not be doing it.” Not to put Mark down, but I do not agree. That statement reflects our society’s obsession with making everything reduce down to exactly two opposite options, in which one is obviously right and the other is obviously wrong. We’re obsessed with bifurcation because we want things to be simple and sure so that our lives are not complicated. But real-life situations don’t all fall into two opposite positions. Rather, much of life consists of continuums or spectrums, and many things are gray areas. And I’m disagreeing with Mark in that I feel there may indeed be situations in which we need to think of a justification for doing something because either the situation or its justification might be something that we’ve never encountered before, and so we don’t have the situation totally understood at first.
In the situation of the broken drink machine that won’t accept money, there are not just two options (taking the drink without paying for it, or denying yourself the drink because you won’t have paid for it even though you are thirsty). A third option is to take the drink and quench your thirst now, and then pay for the drink later. There may very well be a small rectangular plate on the machine showing the name and phone number of the distributor or the lessor, whichever collects the money. You can either call them and explain the situation and say that you want to get the money to them, identifying yourself if they ask, or you can do this anonymously if you’re afraid of them charging you with a crime: you would either mail or drop off the money. You will have paid for your drink; you will thus not have stolen it.
I consider myself to be an extremely moral and ethical person, but not all situations are simple. Some do require thought, and for us “religious types” we also believe in praying to God and waiting for an answer. Let me revive a classic situation that we all know about: During World War II, many Europeans hid Jews in their abodes to save them from the Holocaust. Nazis routinely went around knocking on doors and asking the residents if there were any Jews in their home. The extreme or absolute moralist would say that we should never lie, and that they had to tell the Nazis that yes indeed they had Jews hidden in their homes. But if that’s the moral imperative, then why hide them in the first place? And what would God have them do? Would He rather they tell the truth and trigger the sending of Jews to concentration camps where they would likely be killed? I don’t think so. What I’ve found in life is that very often two principles will come to contradict each other, and when that happens, I feel that we should honor the higher principle. I think the principle of saving innocent people from the Holocaust is higher than the principle of telling the truth. And if anybody believes that we have to tell the truth 100% of the time or else we’re being immoral, let me remind us that every April Fools joke, and most things we say when we’re teasing someone, and a large percentage of things we say when being sarcastic or satirical or even humorous are false. Does God condemn these instances? I don’t think so. I think God looks at the individual’s heart, what the spirit or goal of a false statement is. So I think this topic is very much a case of “It depends”.
Bob Dancer said that there were some things he felt fine with while he felt other things were unacceptable, while an associate with whom he talked had different or opposite lists of what was OK or not OK. I would like to know what those different situations were, and I’m sure other readers do too. Bob, can you fill us in?
Good Post. A bit too long. Could you keep The Nazis & Jews out of Them. B-)
To GWB: Why in the world should I keep the Nazis & Jews out of the posts? I’m curious as to what your reason is.
Because someone is butthurt and chooses to be offended by historical facts
Bob, I’m curious what your thinking is on the Phil Ivey-baccarat case that occurred a few years ago in casinos in London and Atlantic City. As You recall he and an accomplice found a flaw in the card decks being used and used that flaw to win millions. The casinos refused to pay and are demanding their money back. Did he cheat or not? Is he entitled to his “winnings” or not?
Thanks
My opinion is that Phil Ivey and Kelly Sun were not cheating. They were using their brains. It should be up to the casino to protect itself.
Obviously, several courts have disagreed with my opinion
If in doubt, there is no doubt.
No postings since Dancer’s Tuesday, 7/2, column?
Smart of Ivey and Sun, but I see the issue as more of a machine malfunction that they were taking advantage of illegally. Certainly, the casino, nor the card manufacturer did not intend to have the preshuffled cards appear in the same order in box after box of cards. Some might think it’s the card manufacturer’s fault or the casino for not checking for such a situation. But the court should and did rule in favor of the casino, because (in my opinion and theirs) their intention was not to offer a rigged game.
I see this akin to the Revel offer a few years back that offered extremely large amounts of free play back (split over a lot of weeks unfortunately) to cover large amounts of losses. Many players tried to cheat the Revel’s mechanism of recording wins and losses by pulling their cards from the card reader when their machine was at a position of future advantage, such as a when large multipliers were present for an upcoming hand in Ultimate Times VP. This way, the large wins were hidden from the casino while the regular losses were not. Should the casino have excluded these games? That’s a tough call. Did all of the players doing this know they were cheating? Absolutely.
If I were a judge, I too would try to make judgement based on the intent of the two parties involved. In both cases, the players were trying to exploit an unintended and (unknown to the casino) shortcoming of a game. Should the casino be responsible for closing every possible shortcoming? I would say, “no.” Heck, if they did…there would be no opportunity to be an Advantage Player. I don’t think it’s fair to ask for it both ways.