Well to my opinion casino should not be played for to earn profit from. Yes there are people who are making quite handsome and big earnings from the casino but these are known as the professionals. They work on it. For them gambling is their routine activity to go and to earn some from it. These are the genius and extreme lucky people.
AFAIK genius cannot make profits from casinos, yes your degree will not get you opportunities to beat the house edge and lucky people may not find possibilities to become professionals. Hence I am not finding any chances for those people to be existing in real life. Making profits from casino might be possible only in fictional stories.
People who got inspired by rumors do develop greedy opinions about entire gambling industry and keep trying to copy those fictional stories.
Have you not seen the movie 21 about the MIT blackjack team which is based on a real story? People still do that, just saw a documentary about it recently.
Card counting isn't even illegal under US federal law. Casino's can ban you or try to prevent you from doing it, but you're not going to go to jail for it.
Just stating that what you're saying is wrong, a genius can definitely make money from a casino, legally.
This documentary is a must watch IMO:
The Player: Secrets of a Vegas Whale
Synopsis:
Don Johnson is known for beating three casinos in Vegas in a single night. In the documentary, Johnson explains his strategy, and admits he needed a little luck, but his winnings were mostly due to smart gambling.
In the documentary, the big whale player explains how he beat the system, and how he managed to turn the odds to his favor playing table games. As most veteran players know, it is almost impossible to win lot of money with table games, as odds are always stacked against you.
The theory explained in the documentary is simple, when casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City were down in popularity and money, they needed big name whales such as Johnson to play. They offered whales benefits, which Johnson used to take advantage of the system.
His system was simple, he managed to arrange a 20% refund every time he lost money, and by splitting and doubling, he managed to get up to $50,000 in free play. Using different methodologies, as well as scaring dealers into committing errors, Johnson is still ranked as one of the top 10 winners in a single night in casinos.