real life

Oh no. Ben Affleck's caught cheating (but not like that).

We’d bet Jen Garner’s secretly pleased that Ben Affleck’s been slapped with a lifetime gambling ban.

Ben Affleck, 41 and his wife Jennifer Garner, 42, are 100 per cent one of our favourite Hollywood couples . But last week Ben’s good-guy crown slipped a little when he was busted ‘cheating’ at a casino.

Ben was playing blackjack at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas last Tuesday night when security allegedly caught him counting cards and banned him for life.

Ben and Jen were at Sin City in Vegas on a couples’ break, spending some one-on-one time together before he heads to Detriot to film the new Batman movie for a few months.

But things took a turn for the worst when, according to a Hard Rock source, security surrounded Ben who was playing blackjack at a high rollers’ table. They told him that he could no longer play because he was an ‘advantaged player’ and had been seen counting cards (a gambling strategy that decreases betting risk).

Though counting cards isn’t illegal, people often get booted from casinos because of it, which was eventually Ben’s fate.

This isn’t the first time the actor’s been caught out cheating in cards. In 2001 he apparently won $800,000 in blackjack at the Hard Rock by playing three $20,000 hands at the same time.

Ben has battled gambling addiction and alcoholism in the past. “I went to rehab for being 29 and partying too much and not having a lot of boundaries and to clear my head and try to get some idea of who I wanted to be,” he says of his wild days. “It was more a ‘let me get myself straight,’ before it became a rite of passage.”

CLICK THROUGH this gallery of Ben and Jennifer’s love story…