DAILYJILI Is Card Counting Illegal? What the Texts Say

Is card counting illegal? It depends where you play, and the saved court and statute texts say less than the headlines do: the New Jersey Supreme Court’s 1982 Uston decision, Nevada’s NRS 463.0129 and NRS 465.075. Each is quoted below with its jurisdiction beside it, so you can see what a text actually holds. Before you pick a table at all, the table limits printed at each live table are the first rules you meet, and the house rules sit beside them.

Is card counting illegal? The texts side by side

Uston v. Resorts International, New Jersey Supreme Court, 1982

Kenneth Uston was a card counter. The court’s own account says counters keep track of the cards dealt and adjust their bets when the odds favour them. Resorts International excluded him from its blackjack tables from 30 January 1979, and the Casino Control Commission upheld the exclusion.

The New Jersey Supreme Court decided on 5 May 1982. Its holding runs in three steps.

1. The Casino Control Act gives the Commission exclusive authority to set the rules of licensed casino games, including how they are played.
2. That precluded Resorts from excluding Uston for card counting.
3. Because the Commission had not used its authority to decide whether counters should be excluded, the court did not decide whether such an exclusion would be lawful.

Two details from the opinion matter for what follows. A Commission rule effective 5 January 1979 restricted how often decks were reshuffled in a way that helped counters, and Resorts conceded the Commission could write rules that virtually eliminate counting’s advantage, at the cost of slowing the game.

Nevada: the right to exclude and the device statute

Nevada’s NRS 463.0129 declares the state’s gaming policy. Two statutes matter here.

1. NRS 463.0129(3)(a) says the section does not abrogate or abridge any common-law right of a gaming establishment to exclude any person from gaming activities, or eject any person from the premises, for any reason. Subsection 3(b) lets a licensee set minimum wagers for any gambling game.
2. NRS 465.075 is a different kind of law. It makes it unlawful to use or possess with intent to use any computerized, electronic, electrical or mechanical device, or software or hardware, designed to obtain an advantage at playing a game, and it lists a device that keeps track of cards played among its examples. It names devices, so it does not speak to keeping a count in your head.

What a casino can do about a suspected counter

Read the two jurisdictions as two different answers to the same question.

1. In New Jersey, after Uston, the casino itself could not exclude a counter under the Casino Control Act; that authority sat with the Commission, and the court left open what the Commission could do by rule.
2. In Nevada, the statute preserves the casino’s right to exclude a person from gaming or eject them for any reason.
3. Anywhere else, the house rules of the table you are playing are where the casino’s own conditions are written down.

What counting has to work with in live-streamed shoe handling

The saved definitions explain why counting has less to hold on to at a live table.

New Jersey’s N.J.A.C. 13:47-20.2 defines “burning a card” as the dealer removing the first card and discarding it face-down without showing its value, and a “cutting card” as an opaque solid-colour card with no figures or value, used only for cutting a deck. A burned card is one you never see, so it cannot enter a count; the burn card and cut card definitions are on their own page.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s blackjack rules add that a reshuffle follows once the cut card is reached in the shoe and that the casino may decide after each round that the cards should be reshuffled. A reshuffle after every round leaves nothing to track from one round to the next. Live tables are streamed from a studio, while First Person games are a separate range, so read the rules of the table in front of you before you assume how its cards are handled.

Where to read the house rules of your table

No Philippine rule on card counting appears in the sources saved for this site, so the table’s own rules are the place to look. Work through it like this.

1. Open the Live tab on the lobby home page; the lobby lists Evolution and Pragmatic Play among its Live vendors.
2. Open the table you want and read its info or rules panel for the rules of that table.
3. For a question the panel does not answer, ask the customer service chat from the headset button or the chat bubble before you sit down.