Morals, ethics, legalities or hardcore chip harvesting. (16 Viewers)

Here's an analogy that might be helpful. Remember how Ivey lost his case with Borgata? The issue was that even though the floor (or whomever higher up negotiated with him) agreed to Ivey's terms for the game, those terms still violated the gaming commissions rules or regulations or whatever. The Borgata wasn't legally allowed to give Ivey those terms (edge sorting or whatever) so the game was illegal regardless of what the Borgata guy and Ivey had agreed to.
Similarly, If Nevada law (or gaming commission regulations) state that the chips are always the property of the casino, then it doesn't matter if some nice cage guy says "sure, take all you want" and helps you sort through them - the chips are still legally the property of the casino.

Or here's an even more simple one. Say your friend is a cashier at best buy. He lets you carry a TV though his register and out the door. Do you think you now legally own that tv, just because the cashier said it was okay? Of course not.

Again, I don't care, and maybe nobody else in the world cares. But if we're discussing the law, lets not be persuaded by people who said some casino employee told them it was fine - regardless of their job, they don't make the rules.
 
cpiaaq said:
I have a picture of one of the signs, posted on the left side of a 50-foot wide strip-facing casino entrance. I can't find it though :rolleyes: It was maybe 6 inches square, white with black lettering.

Here are the Nevada laws that cover chips. There isn't much there except regarding counterfeits. tldr: Its illegal to modify a chip for the purposes of breaking the law.
Click to expand...
I've posted those types of signs up before. Friggen ridiculous. I would laugh when I had to point them out to people when they violated the statute.
 
Taghkanic said:
Say I get $500K worth of chips from the cage at a casino, and walk out with them.

I put them in play on a yacht where I’m running an offshore casino.

Then the yacht sinks… with all the chips on board.

This would be awesome for the casino, right?

Unless I took all 500K in fracs, they make a tidy profit on pretty much every other denom… More than enough to cover replacement cost.

No harm, no foul.


P.S.: Y’all might want to buy some scuba gear
Click to expand...


P.P.S. Milling harvested casino chips has the same basic effect as sinking them to the bottom of the ocean. It’s extinguishing the casino’s “debt” (obligation to redeem their face value).
 
upNdown said:
Here's an analogy that might be helpful. Remember how Ivey lost his case with Borgata? The issue was that even though the floor (or whomever higher up negotiated with him) agreed to Ivey's terms for the game, those terms still violated the gaming commissions rules or regulations or whatever. The Borgata wasn't legally allowed to give Ivey those terms (edge sorting or whatever) so the game was illegal regardless of what the Borgata guy and Ivey had agreed to.
Similarly, If Nevada law (or gaming commission regulations) state that the chips are always the property of the casino, then it doesn't matter if some nice cage guy says "sure, take all you want" and helps you sort through them - the chips are still legally the property of the casino.

Or here's an even more simple one. Say your friend is a cashier at best buy. He lets you carry a TV though his register and out the door. Do you think you now legally own that tv, just because the cashier said it was okay? Of course not.

Again, I don't care, and maybe nobody else in the world cares. But if we're discussing the law, lets not be persuaded by people who said some casino employee told them it was fine - regardless of their job, they don't make the rules.
Click to expand...

These are relevant examples. The water is a bit muddied by the fact many gamblers come and go with chips. It really is a small niche group silly enough to keep them.

I cant think of another sport or activity where this happens.
 
upNdown said:
Or here's an even more simple one. Say your friend is a cashier at best buy. He lets you carry a TV though his register and out the door. Do you think you now legally own that tv, just because the cashier said it was okay? Of course not.
Click to expand...

The analogy fails because you didn’t give Best Buy any money for the TV, but people have to give a casino money for its chips. (Either you, or whoever you won them from.)
 
Lemonzest said:
These are relevant examples. The water is a bit muddied by the fact many gamblers come and go with chips. It really is a small niche group silly enough to keep them.

I cant think of another sport or activity where this happens.
Click to expand...
No. When I caught a foul ball at fenway, I definitely didn't put it into play when me and my buddies got a baseball game going.
 
Taghkanic said:
The analogy fails because you didn’t give Best Buy any money for the TV, but people have to give a casino money for its chips. (Either you, or whoever you won them from.)
Click to expand...
Analogies are clumsy and they almost always fail.
But you're kind of missing the point. The point is that the TV isn't the property of the cashier and the chips aren't the property of the cage manager - neither have the right to make up their own rules about how to transfer title to that property.
 
Taghkanic said:
The analogy fails because you didn’t give Best Buy any money for the TV, but people have to give a casino money for its chips. (Either you, or whoever you won them from.)
Click to expand...
Oh! Here we go. You're 17. You want to get drunk. You walk into the liquor store, you take a bottle of vodka, you drop a $20 on the counter and run out with the booze. You've paid for it - does that make it okay?
 
turboj623 said:
It's probably a very small sign they are required to post somewhere. The next time you are in Vegas, walk around the casino and look at the walls. You will laugh at what you might see.
Click to expand...
I guess ‘conspicuous’ could be interpreted a few ways.
upNdown said:
If they're not the property of anybody other than the casino, then how can a harvester legally sell them?
Seems like more of a civil issue than a criminal one, but the language seems pretty clear. If you buy chips from a harvester, you do not have clear title to the chips, because they're still the property of the casino.
Click to expand...

Civilly wrt your agreement with the casino, yes. But wrt federal law it seems like the wrong-doer is the person using the chips as currency (we’d have to see the exact wording though).

The civil case is clearly never being brought against anyone since damages are tiny relative to legal costs and in many cases they’re actually profiting from it (they lose 25c when you harvest a 1 but profit 3.75 when you harvest a 5 so even if 5s are a small fraction of what you’re moving it’ll be close to a wash).
 
Stufflymcstuff said:
I guess ‘conspicuous’ could be interpreted a few ways.


Civilly wrt your agreement with the casino, yes. But wrt federal law it seems like the wrong-doer is the person using the chips as currency (we’d have to see the exact wording though).

The civil case is clearly never being brought against anyone since damages are tiny relative to legal costs and in many cases they’re actually profiting from it (they lose 25c when you harvest a 1 but profit 3.75 when you harvest a 5 so even if 5s are a small fraction of what you’re moving it’ll be close to a wash).
Click to expand...
Right, and the whole problem with this argument is that as far as I know, the intent of that law was to prevent chips from being used as currency (not to keep people from selling chips for use in home games.) But as far as I know, the ownership aspect is still good law. That’s why we have appellate courts - to interpret laws.
So one of you donkeys needs to piss of a casino by buying all their fracs and running off with them, and then get caught, and take it up to the Supreme Court. Then we’d get our answer.
 
ReallyGoodUsername said:
Let’s be honest there’s no good analogy or example to compare casino chips. Any comparison is going to lack important similarities which make harvesting casino chips very unique and likely misrepresent more than they represent the real thing.
Click to expand...
How about bowling shoes? If you pay $2 deposit does that entitle you to keep the shoes? Or trade your shoes? If you pay to bowl can you keep the ball without repercussion?
When you go to top golf can you walk out with their putters or balls?
these may not be relevant but there are lots of things we do where you use the equipment for a fee but you don’t walk off with it.
 
Also, what about tournament chips? If you buy in and decide not to play does that entitle you to the chips? Because you may play in a tournament in the future?
 
How about bowling shoes? If you pay $2 deposit does that entitle you to keep the shoes? Or trade your shoes? If you pay to bowl can you keep the ball without repercussion?
When you go to top golf can you walk out with their putters or balls?
these may not be relevant but there are lots of things we do where you use the equipment for a fee but you don’t walk off with it.
Click to expand...


None are great analogies. It’s not that there aren’t similarities it’s that the scale of the harm being done matters.

why stop with bowling shoe rentals? Let’s pick an even worse analogy and compare it with keeping a car that you rented.

here’s a better one. You pay for unlimited data internet service which stipulates that it’s only for your household and then charge your basement tenant for using it. Very minor harm to the company, major benefit to the owner, violates the rules but is never enforced. Not perfect but a much closer representation of the situation than any of the above.
 
cpiaaq said:
I have a picture of one of the signs, posted on the left side of a 50-foot wide strip-facing casino entrance. I can't find it though :rolleyes: It was maybe 6 inches square, white with black lettering.

Here are the Nevada laws that cover chips. There isn't much there except regarding counterfeits. tldr: Its illegal to modify a chip for the purposes of breaking the law.
Click to expand...
thanks for the input and resource links
 
ekricket said:
Also, what about tournament chips? If you buy in and decide not to play does that entitle you to the chips? Because you may play in a tournament in the future?
Click to expand...
ive never taken a tourny chip and don't plan on it. Even though there are some pretty sweet chips out on the felt right now that would go for some good money
 
the issue with tournament chips is less about the harvesting itself than it is the appearance of impropriety since they often use the same denoms for different buyin tournaments.


harvester: No sir I swear i just really like spotted yellow Thcs!

security: he’s talking gibberish… must be on drugs. Get the taser ready.
 
Excellent point. Casinos don’t give a rat’s ass about the cost of the chips, it’s not even a rounding error in their operations budget. They care about the integrity of the game - which is why they try to control the dispersal of tournament chips. If cash chips come and go they don’t care, as long as the ones that come back aren’t counterfeit. If the high denoms walk off they made money, and if the dollar chips walk off they still made money because the people who took them probably sat at a table and played. The casinos pay you to play; they’d probably be happy to comp you in Paulsons rather than booze if there were a way they could do it (there isn’t).
 
Haven't seen anyone really mentioning marketing. Many casinos make limited edition chips specifically for collectors to bring home.

PALMS obviously would not make 431 limited edition chips (according to chipguide) if people were not allowed to bring them home.

Casino Chips = marketing. Casino business is about making the customers happy and feel welcome and want to come back or recommend the casino to others.

Screenshot_20210817-140919.png

Screenshot_20210817-140928.png


Casinos want people to come play in their casino. If harvesting was not allowed, they would like others have suggested have put up signs about it. There is a dedicated segment on eBay for casino chips. There is a substantial amount of people that collect a handful of chips from each casino they visit, it is a souvenir. Casinos are obviously aware that harvesting is a thing, and if they wanted to it would be so easy for them to restrict it instead of catering to it.
 
Lemonzest said:
They were :)
Click to expand...

They were riddled with inconsistencies and lack of parallelism with the situation in casinos.

Take a bottle of liquor or a TV. If you take them without paying, or paying some random amount below the marked price, it is outright theft.

A casino chip is entirely different: It’s an IOU which has utility in a game. It is not a consumer product.

So what are chips worth to a casino? I’d say it’s the amount for which it is redeemable minus the replacement cost.

If you take a 25c chip, you are almost surely “stealing” value from the casino, since no matter what horrible condition the frac is in, the cost of replacement is going to be greatee than its redeemable worth.

Say the replacement cost is $1.50. If you take a 25c chip and never come back with it, the casino loses $1.25.

If however you take a $100 chip home, the casino profits $98.50.
 
Taghkanic said:
So, say you snag three racks of 5s, and send them to @Josh Kifer for murder.

You’ve just ripped up your contract with the casino to be able to redeem them for $1,500.

They replace them for ~$450 (300 x $1.50) and pocket a $1,050 profit.
Click to expand...

I think you overestimate the value of this from the casinos point of view. It's not like they can simply "profit" those $1050. They obviously need to have cash on hand to be able to cash in all chips they have outstanding with gamblers, collectors or whoever has their chips. If they run short on chips and need to reorder from GPI, they still need to be able to cash the precious issued chips and as such can't just "profit". Maybe down the line when the chips are made obsolete 5-30 years from now (or whatever based on rebranding or how the business is going), they might be able to finally "profit" on outstanding chips after claiming the chips will be obsolete if not handed in withing a given time frame.

Honestly I'm not sure how all of this works, but I'm pretty sure the casino do not just "profit" when someone buys a rack of chips from them. The chips will be redeemable for years, and the casino will obviously have an obligation to exchange chips that come in for cash.

Specifically for your "murder case", my point is that the casino will not be aware of which of their outstanding chips are still intact and redeemable, but have to assume that all of them are.
 

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