He didn't say it was like card counting. He said that it exists on a continuum, somewhere that is clearly less legitimate than card counting but not obviously cheating like bringing loaded dice.
Your analogy is actually worse; the cards came pre-marked. So they didn't mark the cards, but they did go out of their way to exploit the existence of marked cards.
Your analogy is actually worse; the cards came pre-marked. So they didn't mark the cards, but they did go out of their way to exploit the existence of marked cards.