I guess everyone is aware of the Bitcasino incident, which was also discussed afterwards in this thread. This is a topic that I thought about a lot in the past and which is super interesting, with even philosophical tendencies. And I guess it's a hot topic, with lots of different opinions and emotions.

I will stick with exploiting vs scamming here to make it easier. There is probably a fine line between these two phrases, but there is also exploiting and exploiting, scamming and scamming.

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1) Lets start with a simple example, a football match, which is offered by every bookmaker you can imagine. There is breaking news, that team A will miss a lot of their players due to a flu. Odds are dropping like crazy in all bookmakers, but there is one bookmaker that is slow and has bad software. While all bookmakers only offer 1.40-ish for team B anymore, that bookmaker still has the initial 2.00 for them. Is it ok to bet on this 2.00 ? What if a bookmaker is constantly slow with adjusting odds and you could regularly do it ? Not for 2.00 -> 1.40, but maybe 2.00 -> 1.80.

2) By accident you discover that a bookmaker allows to parlay 1X2 and Asian Handicap market, which is of course a software issue. So you could parlay home win with AHC -0.5 for all kind of matches, which will give you good value odds. Is it ok to parlay these two dependant bets ?

3) This is the quote from user LAngel from that thread above (can't quote properly, because thread is locked)


Is it ok to take advantage of this software issue in general ? For $20 ? For $500k ? (Leave aside the fact, that LAngel played with "cheated" money).

4) Lets say I have a trading bot (in betting or crypto exchange) and this bot goes wild due to misprogramming and I lose loads of money. Are all these users filling my orders scammers, when it's obvious that these prices are wrong ?

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What of the above is an exploit and what is a scam ? Where does an exploit start and a scam begin ? Are you clever or a cheater when doing this ? Is it more ok to do it for $10 than for $10,000 or $1.5mln like LAngel did ? Is it more ok to do it with a supposedly rich casino/bookmaker ?

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And what about fixed matches ? These matches do exist, every day there is match fixing, but most of the time we gladly don't know or aren't aware. If you (get to) know about a fixed match and bet on it, does that make you a scammer/cheater ?

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Gambling is a (most of the time unfair) competition in the end. Should the "software factor" be completely called immoral and unethical behaviour, when you take advantage of it ? If there is a line for you, where is it ?

There is way more to this discussion imo, but I will leave this as a start and we can work out more as this thread evolves (hopefully).

I made this thread self-moderated, because these kind of threads unfortunately get spammy very fast, with a lot of users just repeating things over and over.

Good post @20kevin20.


It definitely is, thats why it's interesting to hear different opinions while I am myself are still struggling with this topic. I didn't completely make my mind up yet regarding this matter.

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I don't think I agree with this. ETH is probably a bad example, since even when you click the sell button for $25, you will get matched higher, unless you have gazillions of ETH and can bring the price down to $25 with it.
But lets assume there is a "naked" market in an exchange for ETH. The price everywhere else is $250 and my bot puts up ETH to sell for $25 in this naked market, because I missed a zero there maybe. Would you buy them ? According to first quote, you are exploiting/scamming (me), since you "consciously take advantage" of an obvious mistake - whether it's software based or manual misclick doesn't matter here imo. According to second quote, it's my fault and ok to buy them.

In both cases there is a software issue, but different entities.

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You can for example bet on a home win in football in different manners. You can play the "1" for home win or AHC -0.5 - both are the same. If odds are 2.00 for both and you are able to parlay them, you will get 2.00 x 2.00 = 4.00 odds.

No. I will skip.

It's borderline. Bookie being slow is not my fault. Yet, the bookie will then cancel the bet anyway.




I would take it.

I'm betting on an outcome on the odds given by the bookie.





Is it ok to take advantage of this software issue in general ? For $20 ? For $500k ? (Leave aside the fact, that LAngel played with "cheated" money).[/quote]

I love exploiting everything 'within the conditions'.
If the conditions are set in my favor due misknowledge or else, it's not my problem.

Here we are talking about crossing the line and doing a pure scam.

I will pass 100%.




(note: talking about self-regulated markets like EtherDelta, Betfair, etc.)

I'm using bots (self-coded) for 90%+ of my bets and trading.

I have been on both sides - losing 3x10ETH in a matter of minutes because of my coding errors and placing orders on obsolete contracts, through many other errors, to bot explicitly made to catch errors in the market.

Nope, they are not scammers.

The market is not there to guard you. The market is there for opportunities - on both sides.

If X doesn't fill it, Y will - the (self-regulated) market is never forgiving in these situations. Both X or Y could be just better-programmed bots, not people trying to 'steal' from you.
 

Indeed it is a very subjective thing since this scenario cannot be called a scam.  It is under the boundary of exploitation. Since one of the definitions of scam is taking advantage of trust or ignorance of a person and steal from them for personal gain^[1].  I do not see any trust issue in this scenario.   

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[1] https://support.gamigo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204183367-ArcheAge-Scamming-And-Exploiting

In my opinion, the boundaries between exploit and scam are clearly drawn. One must first look at what the two words actually mean:


"Scam" is defined as follows:

So with exploits I am dependent on someone else having made a mistake which I can now exploit. However, you had absolutely no influence on the fact that the error is also built in. This is different with a scam attack, where I try to get my victim to make a mistake, so I deliberately deceive him.

What the two have in common, however, is deliberately fraudulent behaviour. As an exploit user or a scamer, I am 100% aware that I am doing something wrong and that I am gaining an advantage in the wrong way. Someone who buys a watch set at $10 on Amazon that actually costs $1000 knows this just as well as someone who searches for victims of a scam attack in Telegram.

Well, bookmakers have the right to not pay a bet since it could be an error of listing or because they are suspecting a rigged match.
I mean, they feel free to adapt and making what they want since you're using their service and accepting a TOS.
Likewise in my country (ITALY) we have a monopole about betting so fixed rules to be accepted, no real competitions etc etc.
For what I have seen, when there is an issue like this you're just not payed.

I think that this is ok. It's very rare as error, and most of the times... they just don't pay

Forcing the website to obtain a specific condition, no should not be ok. And of course they can't just not payed you if they find you're cheating

Absolutely not. You offered your bet = your bet has been accepted by some other one.
Like betting in an horse @1000 . Most of the times this horse is already out, it's your problem if you decide to make this bet...
There is the remote chance of an error listing or like "Pardubice" game, many horses that are running and you decide to bet on underdog

I think there is always a common sense / ethical to be used. Respect rules, respect TOS, respect local laws.

Sometimes ago a website has quoted Parma (Italian football team) to go in lower series (Serie A to Serie B).
However it was ABSOLUTELY sure they will go in the lower series due strong economic issues (they were selling autobus used for the player and so on). Some bookmakers were quoting the same ... They don't read newspapers? Yes probably

Thanks for all your posts and opinions, I wish I had more merits to send And when it looks like I argue against your points/opinions, this is not personally against you and probably not even my own opinion, but to keep a discussion going and have different point-of-views, so don't be mad with me

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This would actually mean that LAngel's case wasn't a scam, since Bitcasino knew about the software issue and even knew the person was a bad actor, as they stated:

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5260832.msg54754514#msg54754514

So maybe the very first attempt was a scam, but all things that happened afterwards probably not according to the above definition. Just remains the question, if he made the following "scams" with the "same cheated" money.

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And this is something, which I find kind of "unfair", if that makes any sense. I know there is no way around it, but it's the same scenario. It's just that I am a private person with no T&C and no possibility to cancel/void an accepted bet, while bookmakers are always protected by their T&C and can basically do anything they want. Something which @Upgrade00 stated as well.

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If you did a huge scam, there is always the question, if you actually could enjoy the money - I know for myself I couldn't.

Then one could also think about who the person is, who is scamming. If it's some poorer guy, who regularly scams smaller amounts from a (rich) casino site to feed some hungry mouths or send his kids to school, then a lot of people would probably be ok with it. If it's a person who has enough money (well, what is enough money) and just scams money to buy things he doesn't need, then most people wouldn't be ok with it I guess.

And then there would always be a judgement according to whom you actually harm with a scam. There surely is some difference in public opinion about scamming a bank, an insurance, a casino or a private person.

This is the borderline I can accept. As a user, I'm betting on whatever they are giving me to. I'm not altering anything.

Nothing scammy as the 'reseting' of the session of the slot topic. The situation there is a pure scam, intentionally altering the site's environment using a bug.



Many years ago. I can't even remember the odds providers names.

I guess you are aware that almost all of the bookies are using one of the few odds providers on the market.

Back then, a particular provider was significantly slower (5+ minutes) than the rest and all bookies using it was 'going behind' the odds movements - ups or downs. Soon after many people started exploiting this, the bookies changed their TOS and started cancelling bets.

Most of my answers on those numbered questions are the same as the others so I would start here.


I agree that there is this line between exploit and scamming and I guess it should not be exploiting but cheating. It is unfair for a scam to be compared with exploit since exploit can be ended with a good cause while scam is bad and it just ends there. A scam in gambling is usually on the part of the owner of the site like lying for that provably fair or maybe saying that there are supports 24/7 but they don't really care most of the time.



You are a cheater. That is an exploit in your side, those players are the scammers since people think they are playing seriously but they are not. @Lakai already said it and these team or group are scamming those people usually for the sake of money.



Well, that is cheating and that is just unethical behaviour since you take advantage of it but if not, then that is just good, you know. This depends though on how you found that exploit, right? If you did some hacking and dived to their system, then that is just immoral and unethical behavior but still could end up good, isn't it since we have a white hat and a black hat hackers. As @Upgrade00 said, the intent is both important on two sides since that usually will be the deciding factor of whether they will be taking advantage of it or not.

LAngel situation is funny but I will take it as an exploit but he should be paid for the winnings he got.

But then the casino investigated and the situation changed because it was found out the BTC he bet is actually from the casino itself. If it weren't investigated and probably he won just 0.5 to 1BTC, there wouldn't be any digging about his history but he will get paid. 

Anyway, exploiting and scamming has a fine line between them. An organization will likely pay the person who exploits the bug or even hire them for being a genius to which the casino also painted him as a genius. Now the casino is more prepared for that kind of exploit.