In Las Vegas it's illegal to win at gambling

The laws regarding gambling, both the 'real' laws and those apparently allowed established and carried out by casinos themselves, have often intrigued people and been the subject of movies. While it's understandable that you're not allowed to tamper with machinery or have teams of people in a game communicating information about the game, other things that seem astounding to me are rules against counting cards and similar winning strategies.

Gambling is risk with money, and favoring the house seems wrong. I'm no gambler, as you may have guessed. The idea of almost certainly losing my money doesn't give me any sense of well being. Quite the opposite. But if I were a gambler, I think I'd want the freedom to win. That part is fun, isn't it?

In this recent new article, 2 men were arrested for figuring out some video poker machines had a bug in them, and without tampering with anything, they were able to exploit that.

"John Kane, 52, of Las Vegas, and Andre Nestor, 39, of western Pennsylvania, allegedly pulled the caper in Las Vegas casinos over six weeks in the Spring of 2009. According to a criminal complaint filed in Las Vegas (PDF) on Monday, the men would make small bets over and over again until finally winning a hand, then use a special button sequence to change the credits to a higher denomination and "access the previous winning hand of cards," triggering a jackpot."

They're accused of conspiracy to commit computer fraud. To bottom line this, because they found a way to win with their advantage they have broken some law. If the casino has advantages of some sort by distracting or disorienting you, this is apparently allowed. Let's assume this world isn't entirely crazy and owned by casinos and they at some point are cleared of those charges. By that point the exploit will be cleaned up and these guys will be banned from every casino for life for being smart enough that they win.