Massachusetts casinos did not break the law in paying only 6:5 odds for a blackjack, rather than the more standard 3:2 odds, the state’s high court ruled Wednesday, resolving two enormous class actions.
Although the court said the rules of blackjack as written by the state’s gaming commission were “garbled” and impossible to understand, the it deferred to the commission’s determination that what the casinos did was OK.
“Therefore, the plaintiffs lose this last bet,” Justice Scott Kafker wrote for the unanimous court, in a 31-page ruling rife with double entendres. “They should have quit while they were ahead.”
The lawsuits claimed that many players were unknowingly steered into a variant where they got only 6:5 for a blackjack — an ace along with a 10 or face card — instead of the traditional 3:2 payout.
