Judge rules that winning casino baccarat by taking note of asymmetries in card-backs is cheating

[anon50609448]

@jnala

“Prop players” are commonplace in poker rooms in California, but they’re regulated. The casino pays an hourly fee to the prop, who agrees to sit at whatever table the cardroom wants them in, within a specified range of stakes and game types. The prop plays on their own money and keeps their own wins and losses. The house has no stake in their results, and the props are required to identify themselves to everyone else at the table.

I guess my question is what were the problems that California legislators thought they were solving when they introduced this law? Whatever those problems were, they are presumably happening in jurisdictions that don’t regulate this practice in a similar way (though legislators do sometimes pass laws to deal with imagined problems).