For those who aren’t familiar with poker celebrities, Phil Ivey is a 40-year-old Las Vegan who, according to a consensus of observers and players, could be the best all-around poker player in the world. He’s won 10 World Series of Poker bracelets, appeared at nine World Poker Tour final tables, and won one WPT title. He’s also a regular at the $4,000-$8,000 mixed cash game at Bellagio, known as the Big Game.
Ivey doesn’t play only poker. He’s also an advantage player of sorts, and that’s where his troubles lie. (We first wrote about this in the QoD on October 15, 2012.)
He’s been at odds with Borgata in Atlantic City and Genting Group at their casinos in London. Ivey’s problems with both stem from an advantage-play technique called "edge sorting."
In the case of Borgata, the A.C. casino lost $9.6 million to Ivey when he spotted a flaw in its cards, one that the casino had failed to notice. Borgata, which sued Ivey for his winnings, alleged that he exploited the flaw on the backs of its playing cards on four occasions in 2012. The defect in question traces back to card manufacturer Gemaco. As Yahoo News reported, "The cards have rows of small white circles designed to look like the tops of cut diamonds, but the Borgata claims some of them show only half or a quarter of a diamond."
(Gemaco was involved in another Atlantic City blunder when it supplied unshuffled card decks to the Golden Nugget. The latter compounded the mistake by putting the cards into play in their unshuffled state. Players who picked up on this took the house for $1.5 million. Borgata is suing Gemaco along with Ivey; it doesn’t seem to care who pays, just as long as its $9.6 mil is returned.)
According to Borgata’s lawsuit, Ivey’s Mandarin-speaking companion Cheng Yin Sun told the dealer to rotate the face-up cards in their baccarat hands 180 degrees, depending on whether they were a desirable value in baccarat – 6 through 9, for instance – or not. The idea was that Miss Sun, who reportedly has particularly acute vision and had practiced the edge-sorting method at home it for as much as three years before unleashing it on Borgata and Crockford’s, would be able to spot the irregularly cut cards when they came out of the shoe again. Sun cited superstition as a justification for the unusual card turning.
Ivey and his Chinese companion used the same edge-sorting technique at Crockford’s casino in London, where they won the equivalent of $11 million, which the casino refused to pay, accusing them of cheating in the process. Ivey lost the case in November 2014. The presiding judge ruled that Ivey was not entitled to an edge over the house. "He gave himself an advantage which the game precludes. This is in my view cheating," was the view from the bench.
To that, one gaming authority said, "If a pit boss even suspects a blackjack player of skillfully counting how many aces and face cards have been played and adjusting his bets accordingly, the casino will ban him and forward his picture to every pit boss in town. But when the shoe is on the other foot, and a cunning player exploits a casino’s mistakes, it cries foul and refuses to pay him."
In an interesting side note, after hearing arguments for and against the judge’s cheating comment from a distinguished panel of gambling experts at the London School of Economics, 100 members of the audience voted overwhelmingly to acquit Ivey of the charge.
Back on the legal front, Ivey appealed the Crockford’s verdict and was in court in April 2016 in an effort to get it overturned; the decision was postponed and expected to be handed down in September. So far, it hasn’t been.
The Borgata case continues to plod forward without resolution. Such are the ways of the legal system. (After all, Ivey has been fighting Genting for four years.)
Anyway, if the poker and baccarat action don’t work out for Ivey, there’s always one more way of making money: He applied for a license to run a medical-marijuana dispensary in Las Vegas, which was approved by the Las Vegas City Council. No word yet on whether he’ll pursue that line of business.
