Poker champ declared a cheat, loses his winnings
DEEMED DISHONEST FOR ASKING TO ROTATE CARDS
Phil Ivey’s casino strategy was so simple that it almost did not seem like cheating. By bantering with the croupier, and making odd requests, the American champion poker player would create what he called an “air of superstition” at the baccarat tables.
With his partner, Cheng Yin “Kelly” Sun, Ivey would every now and then ask the dealer to rotate the cards as they were dealt and re-used, apparently for no reason other than good luck.
In effect, however, Ivey was marking them and using barely perceptible defects and differences in the symmetry of the patterns on the backs of the cards — from a brand he knew well — to sort the cards into good and bad according to whether the pattern was pointing up or down. Done properly, this turns the traditional one per cent advantage to the dealer in the baccarat version known as Punto Banco into almost a seven per cent advantage for the player. It is known as edgesorting, and it is so clever it might not even be cheating.
Over time, and with big enough bets, edge-sorting can add up big time, as the Crockfords casino in London’s swish Mayfair learned to its dismay over two heady days in the summer 2012, when Ivey won $13 million. He had won and lost nearly 10 times before he called it quits.
But the casino would not pay, first because it suspected collusion with its staff, and then because it suspected cheating. So the matter went to court, leading to a highly unusual new ruling of Britain’s Supreme Court, which relied on the casino’s extensive surveillance footage, both video and audio.
Quite aside from the fact that Ivey will now not get his money, the top court has found that dishonesty is not even a necessary part of cheating, under the law.
Lawyers in Britain are now speculating that the decision will have sweeping effects on a whole range of criminal charges, likely making prosecutions easier by removing the burden of proving dishonesty.
Unfortunately for Ivey, however, in this case the court found he was plenty dishonest, notwithstanding his own opinion.
“If I am labelled a cheat, that’s death,” Ivey told court in earlier proceedings, which a judge accepted as an honest opinion. What he had done was not even dishonest, he argued, but rather what the court called “deployment of a perfectly legitimate advantage.”
Ivey’s lawyer argued that he is famous for his “advantage play,” and that he had used the same edge-sorting strategy at many casinos, including in Canada.
“He regards this as utterly fair play,” said the lawyer, Richard Spearman. “If the casino fouls up from start to finish, that is something which is the gambler’s good fortune. It is not an easy thing to do. It requires a lot of skill.”
The top court decided Ivey was mistaken in his opinion that he was honest. He had cheated, no matter how he felt about it, the court decided.
“It makes no sense that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, in my view, contrary to the facts and any possible logic involved in our industry,” Ivey said in a statement. “As a professional gambler, my integrity is everything to me. It is because of my sense of honour and respect for the manner in which gambling is undertaken by professional gamblers such as myself that I have pursued this claim for my unpaid winnings all the way to the Supreme Court.”
In a casino, which will discard a deck of cards if a player touches them, it seems strange that a dealer would agree to a player’s request to fiddle with the deck. But the Supreme Court pointed out that this is entirely in the casino’s interest, so long as it does not skew the game.
“Casinos routinely play on quirky and superstitious behaviour by punters. It is in the casino’s interests that punters should believe, erroneously, that a lucky charm or practice will improve their chance of winning and so modify or defeat the house edge. Consequently a wide variety of requests by punters, particularly those willing to wager large sums on games which they must, if they play long enough, lose in the long run, are accommodated by casinos without demur or surprise,” the ruling reads.
The judgment is likely to be closely scrutinized in the U.S., where a similar case is under appeal, involving Ivey and Sun’s use of the same technique at a casino in Atlantic City.
Ivey, 40, who lives in Las Vegas, has won many high-profile poker tournaments and this year was elected to the Poker Hall of Fame.
Paul Willcock, president and chief operating officer of casino company Genting, said: “We are delighted that the High Court, the Court of Appeal and now the Supreme Court have all found in Genting’s favour, confirming that we acted fairly and properly at all times and that Mr. Ivey’s conduct did indeed amount to cheating. This entirely vindicates Genting’s decision not to pay Mr. Ivey, a decision that was not taken lightly.”