Nimrod103 wrote:Hallucigenia wrote:It seems Guido is unaware of
section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 which makes it an offence to cheat at gambling.
And "they were all at it, even journalists" is not a defence.
Guido says you are not right:
Section 42 definition of "Cheating" as per the Gambling Act applies when you nobble a horse, bribe a croupier or mark cards not when you have inside information that your bet is a dead certainty. It requires interference to be a crime.
As reported on his X account. There was no interference here. I'll leave it to the lawyers.
Guido is most definitely wrong. Section 42 does
not define the word "cheat". It gives a couple of examples of what might amount to cheating, but that's all they are - examples.
The leading case is an interesting one, which in 2017 went all the way to the Supreme Court,
Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd (t/a Crockfords) -
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/67.htmlMr Ivey was a professional gambler, and rather successfully used a technique known as edge-sorting to win the not inconsiderable sum of £7.7m whilst playing baccarat at Crockford's.
They didn't initially realise what was going on, but thought it was suspicious, so they hired experts to study the CCTV of the games, and it was then that they discovered how he'd won.They refused to pay out, so he sued them.
The Supreme Court decided that what was required to prove cheating was that the act would be considered dishonest by an ordinary, reasonable person. In particular, they found that Mr Ivey had used deception to win the money, and he was not therefore entitled to keep his winnings. Whether he bet on the outcome of the case is not known!
On the face of it that may seem unfair. After all, card-counting isn't illegal, so why should a very acute observation of tiny differences in the card design be any different? However, on reading the judgment it went much further than that, in that Mr Ivey and his accomplice deliberately got the croupier to rearrange the cards in such a way that the edge-sorting would work.
And on the same basis it's likely that betting on the election date with inside knowledge is cheating because it involves deceiving the bookmaker into thinking that you are an ordinary punter without any specific information.
But it's a grey area, and I would think the chances of a criminal prosecution are extremely small, if only because most jurors are likely to take the view that bookmakers are far bigger crooks than the punters, and that they would therefore probably acquit even if the offence had been technically proved.