US poker player loses London casino court case

[micromachine]

London (AFP) - A professional US poker player on Wednesday lost his case against a London casino that accused him of sneaky tactics after he won £7.7 million (9.8 million euros, $12.4 million).

Crockfords Casino said the player, Phil Ivey, used a technique known as "edge-sorting" in a game of baccarat to work out which cards are which by how the patterns are printed on their backs.

The High Court in London ruled in favour of the casino in the upmarket city centre district of Mayfair, where Ivey played in four sessions over two days in August 2012.

"We attach the greatest importance to our exemplary reputation for fair, honest and professional conduct," a spokesman for Crockfords said after the ruling.

A spokesman for Ivey quoted him as saying: "I believe that what we did was a legitimate strategy.

"We did nothing more than exploit Crockfords' failures to take proper steps to protect themselves against a player of my ability," he said.

The casino sent back the player's stake money of £1.0 million but not the winnings.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-poker-player-loses-london-casino-court-case-194928540.html

 

[danielsim]

Phil Ivey! He should just stick to playing poker...

 

[Narong Wongwan]

This casino related to RWS?
This is an interesting tactic....wondered how he do it and then get caught

 

[yellowarse]

This is an interesting tactic....wondered how he do it and then get caught

The player has to ask the croupier to turn the cards one way for low cards and the other way for high cards, to gain an advantage. Most casinos consider this cheating.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edge sorting is a technique used in advantage gambling where a player determines whether a face-down playing card is likely to be low or high at casino table games by observing and exploiting subtle unintentional differences on the backs of some types of card, after persuading a croupier to cooperate by unwittingly sorting the cards into low and high.[SUP][1][/SUP] Some packs of cards produced by some manufacturers have an unintentional regularity. Typically all the cards in such a pack have long edges which are systematically distinguishable, they are not totally symmetric. During the course of a game, a player will ask the dealer, a casino employee, to rotate cards one way if are shown to be, typically, 6, 7, 8, or 9 (low), and the other way if high, perhaps saying they feel it will bring them luck. The dealer is also asked to shuffle the cards with an automatic shuffler, which does not change the orientation. The dealer is not obliged to comply, but will usually do so if the request is thought to be due to gamblers' superstition or mistrust. Over the course of a game, low cards will tend to be oriented one way, high cards the other.[SUP][2][/SUP] Once a significant proportion of cards have been rotated, players can gain a statistical edge more than outweighing house edge by using the knowledge whether the card to be turned is likely to be low or high.[SUP][3]
[/SUP]
Casinos usually regard this technique as cheating; many players say that they are legitimately playing to gain an advantage. A UK High Court judgement ruled that the technique, which requires the player to trick the croupier into rotating cards, is cheating in civil law, and that a casino was justified in refusing payment of winnings; this ruling would not be applicable if the player simply took advantage of an observed error or anomaly for which he was not responsible in, say, the backs of the cards.

 

[HorLee]

This casino related to RWS?
This is an interesting tactic....wondered how he do it and then get caught

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ng-by-casino-loses-court-case-and-12-million/

Famed poker pro Phil Ivey, accused of cheating by casino, loses court case — and $12 million

Imagine you go to a casino to play blackjack. You find a table, sit down and buy some chips. Gambling has few barriers to entry.

After awhile, you notice: For some reason, all of the cards higher than 9 are marked. Because of some slight imperfection in the deck, you can tell whether a card is an ace, king, queen, jack or ten before it’s turned over. Because of a manufacturer’s mistake, you have a huge advantage over the house. And the dealer doesn’t notice.

You decide to stay at the table. You win $12.4 million dollars. But later, the casino figures out how you won, says you cheated and refuses to pay. So you sue.

So: What’s a judge to do? Were your gains ill-gotten — or is it the casino’s responsibility to watch its own back?

A different version of this question was put before a British court after American poker pro Phil Ivey sued a London casino. In 2012, Ivey was accused of cheating at Punto Banco, a form of baccarat, by Crockfords, which withheld Ivey’s $12.4 million winnings.

And on Wednesday, Her Majesty’s High Court of Justice decided Ivey had done wrong — and won’t get paid.

“He gave himself an advantage which the game precludes,” Judge John Mitting said, as Bloomberg reported. “This is in my view cheating.”

Ivey was disappointed.