Phil Ivey Loses £7m Court Case Against Crockfords Casino

[baldidiot]

For those of you who have been following it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29543448

[Jokerman99]

Sets a dangerous precedent. Don't agree with the ruling at all.

[DaftDog]

Cheating is cheating in my opinion. I'm sure if Phil Ivey lost a poker tournament, because his opponent was reading imperfections in the cards, he would accuse him of cheating.

[rak]

I'd call this cheating too! Not the first time he has done it too

"Genting’s Crockfords had returned Ivey’s original stake, but refused to pay out the rest. Eventually, and as a result of the Crockfords incident going public, Atlantic City’s Borgata casino sued Ivey for $9.6 million, saying that the poker pro also edge sorted against them in 2012. In the Borgata case, the casino is trying to recoup the money it paid Ivey.'

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/17902-judge-poker-pro-phil-ivey-cheated-at-london-casino

[Sherlock]

There is nothing like black and white. Human action is never 100% pure, never 100% cheat. This is apparently edge situation. He was caught, that is it. The truth about economy is that testing the edge is the best way how to make money. On one way the edge is a place with considerably high ROI because not many are in that area and because higher risk=higher revenue; on the other side if things for the person on borderline go wrong, the punishment is not fatal. As he is an excellent gambler always counting odds he is for sure aware of it.

What is interesting here for me is that casinos let play a gambler who never takes -EV bets.

[Doolally]

I see it as cheating as well although it's not the clearest cut case I've ever read about. However, didn't the casino think on changing the deck a little more often so to confuse anyone trying to read the imperfections in the cards?

[Sherlock]

From what I have read Phil Ivey asked for this brand of cards (because he observed the bug). And casino complied.

[Doolally]

So it was a fault in the manufacture of the cards? If it was then I can see slightly more clearly why it was denounced as cheating.

[Sherlock]

Yes, I think it was manufacture bug that Ivey spotted and took advantage of. The bug was not probably made on his request. It was general bug that occured at any pack of cards.

[markus3]

I suspect Ivey would be pretty quick to denounce an opponent using the same trick - especially if they beat him. It's just disappointing to see a talented poker player resort to edge sorting.

[AffGambit]

Don't want to add fuel to the fire but is Ivey near broke after losing this case?

[TomPregon]

Where and when do they 'make known' what 'strategy' is legit and not? Do they run it by the players exactly what strategy they can and can not use? And, when do they decide on whether or not it is legit, or 'cheating'?

'He was told his winnings would be wired to him, but they never arrived.'

After that decision so... Isn't telling 'his winnings would be wired' a verbal agreement? Acknowledging he won legitimately?

[iGamingWriter]

This was a fairly appalling decision and the denial of the right to appeal makes it all the worse.

The simple facts in this case is that Crockfords could at any point have declined to allow Ivey to retain the same cards, they could have declined to grant the request to turn round certain cards (this was a discretionary procedure that they opted to allow Ivey as a desirable player) and they could have implemented a very basic shuffle procedure that would have eliminated any possible edge and taken next to no extra time (180 degree rotation on every second grab of cards during the shuffle).

Edge sorting is a well publicised technique - the failing here was in an inept Crockfords security/management team. Running a casino they should be well aware of this type of play and educated enough to take appropriate action against it. Crockfords allowed Ivey to turn cards round and he used this alongside information freely available to everyone within the vicinity. That's not by any stretch cheating. He certainly played on the ignorance of casino staff and whether you view that as immoral or not is a personal opinion, but he was under no obligation to correct their failings for them.

And comparisons to poker don't hold water. In poker you're dealing with a single deck of cards. The dealer - assuming your playing in a formalized setting - should be more than proficient enough at shuffling that turning cards round wouldn't retain its integrity through a shuffle. Alongside this you don't get contact with enough cards to create worthwhile information in any reasonable time frame. Ivey and his associate will have played through a complete shoe several times before starting to play for real ensuring as many cards as possible held the right orientation - you couldn't get that free access to enough cards at a poker game as why would the dealer/other players agree to your requests to turn cards round? Also as other players are constantly handling their own cards there's simply no way that you could guarantee that the cards would retain their orientation. In short, this isn't a technique that's viable at the poker table and as such comparisons to what Ivey would do/say if this was being implemented at poker are weak. They don't compare apples to apples. It would be more valid to compare this to players using involuntarily marked cards - i.e. where a player has accidentally creased a card, nicked an edge or over bent the cards when checking them. In these situation - as long as you've not intentionally/inadvertently created the marks yourself - you're not cheating, simply using information that is freely available to all players on the table. If other players aren't perceptive enough to pick up on the same information you've noticed that's their loss, much like spotting a tell in another player that no-one else has seen.

[Caruso]

I'll copy and paste from my penultimate article on the subject here:

My own opinion...is that Phil Ivey did not cheat because he did not do anything to subvert or alter the game as it was delivered to him or to any other customers who might have been playing at the time. All information he gained was from his observational skills, and all requests he made were willingly acquiesced to by the casino. He did not use mirrors or accomplices to see around to the other side of the cards to read their values, nor did he collude with any casino employees to achieve similar ends. In essence, in skilfully using his observational skills to gain a mathematical edge he did exactly the same as a card counter in blackjack does, using observation alongside simple addition and subtraction to chisel out a winning game. Card counting is not cheating; casinos are entitled to deny card counters a game, but if they deal to them they must pay them; they cannot retrospectively deny them their winnings.

I also wrote up the judgement: http://www.hundredpercentgambling.co...icle.php?id=91. I won't copy & paste it as I'd have to copy the whole lot for it to make any sense.

This was a comedy of errors. Ivey's lawyer was useless; the casino's lawyer was useless; the judge was a bit better as he got to the nub of the matter, but he got it wrong.

Ivey is plainly a rascal, but he is owed this money because he did not cheat. He induced behaviour, but the casino readily acquiesced. For the judge, this equates to "cheating". Of course it isn't. What nonsense.

The fact of the matter is that people in general just hate the idea of winning gamblers.

[iGamingWriter]

This was a comedy of errors. Ivey's lawyer was useless; the casino's lawyer was useless; the judge was a bit better as he got to the nub of the matter, but he got it wrong.

I've not read up on the court transcripts or anything similar and it surprises me to say this as I'm sure that Ivey has the resources to allow him access to the best lawyers in the field, but an inept lawyer and a ill-informed judge are the only conclusions I can draw from this particular verdict.

And I've got to agree regarding winning gamblers - there's something about being able to beat a game that supposedly has a house advantage that a lot of people immediately view as immoral. It seems to undermine their world view and the stability they take from the unshakable truth that the house always wins.

[Roulette Zeitung]

Ultimately, edge sorting is the same as winning with biased roulette wheels.

Real skill is the future roulette spin prediction (9 numbers wheel area) of an unbiased (!) wheel by visual techniques. This is the supreme discipline in gambling.

But if the casino rules says "It's cheating.", then it is cheating, and the player -also Mr. Ivey- have to live with it, because he has no legal basis to change the house regulations, and by the way ...

The opaque Ivey knew exactly the house regulations and what he was doing, despite hearing the opposite occasionally. He is no idiot.

A real professional gambler will never go broke, especially after winning so much money!

Look into his history ....

If he's winning, you hear cockerels crowing and articles are written everywhere, but if he is losing ....

Silence.

1-1= 0 and not 2!

Leopold

[Caruso]

But if the casino rules says "It's cheating.", then it is cheating, and the player -also Mr. Ivey- have to live with it, because he has no legal basis to change the house regulations, and by the way ...

The opaque Ivey knew exactly the house regulations and what he was doing, despite hearing the opposite occasionally. He is no idiot.

The fact that the casino says "it's cheating" does not mean that cheating happened. It means at best that the casino hopes it's cheating and will not, therefore, have to pay. No more than that.

And no, casinos cannot put any old rubbish in their terms and thereby change the law. If that were the case, no casino would ever pay anything. And again, casinos may hope for that, but it isn't - or at least shouldn't be - the case. However, as we know, casinos do by and large put rubbish in their terms, and that rubbish is invariably held up by whoever judges the matter, assuming the player ever takes it that far. But the fact that casinos still get away with just about any abuse imaginable doesn't make it right, including withholding this payment from Phil Ivey.

A real professional gambler will never go broke, especially after winning so much money!

Look into his history ....

If he's winning, you hear cockerels crowing and articles are written everywhere, but if he is losing ....

Silence.

1-1= 0 and not 2!

Leopold

I appreciate your first language isn't English, but I can make neither head nor tail of that explosion of incomprehensibility. If you want to rephrase into something coherent, please do.

[iGamingWriter]

But if the casino rules says "It's cheating.", then it is cheating

Cheating's a legal definition. The 'house rules' don't change the definition of cheating within a legal system. The house can prohibit whatever it likes (up to the point of discrimination), but that doesn't make what they prohibit illegal. Card Counting's the perfect example of this - it's prohibited in the vast majority of casinos and you'll be asked to leave, or at least asked to stop playing Blackjack, if the casino believes you are counting cards, but the fact that the house prohibits this practice does not make Card Counting illegal.

[Cus81]

I see what he was doing as cheating, although many will disagree.

[Sherlock]

I see what he was doing as cheating, although many will disagree.

I see what casinos and affiliates are doing [aggresively persuading potencial players to play, giving people fake hope etc...] as cheating as well. And many people will for sure agree. Even the ones who are playing at casinos. Especially the ones that lost.

But my opinion in this case is as irrelevant as your opinion in Phil Ivey case. Or the opinion of the casino, that says it is a cheat.

What will matter the most is what the court says and then if the law will be enforced or not.