Yes it's WRONG to look and not say anything. You are CHEATING by looking at his cards and not saying anything. I'm pretty sure if you "accidently" see his cards you must tell the rest of the table right away when you see them.... not doing so is practically collusion.... unless you were already heads up when you saw them... in which case, i dunno but I disagree that this is a good analogy anyways.

this.


Is it asking the dealer to swirl that is manipulating the outcome? Was it the dealer physically doing so that was manipulating the outcome? Doesn't the dealer have control over his/her own actions?

Ivey admits to "edge sorting" according to court documents, says he's not a cheat.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...technique.html

Do you think playing dumb would be better for his case or is his case pretty cut and dry, I mean edge sorting seems about as much cheating card counting is.And as far as i know if you get suspected of counting they dont take your chips from you. They can just ask you to leave with what you have allready won right?

Really doesn't make a difference if Ivey found an edge against the casino, that's their fault. You would think any capable casino would have a system set in place to avoid this type of malfunction.

Agreed. Poker is all about finding edges, and if someone screws up, it's that players fault, or the casino's fault. I find the mistake, I have an edge, that's poker.

If capitalizing on someone's mistake is a bad thing, why do we all study tells?

See the section "Playing baccarat the "Macau way" which explains the method in detail:

http://www.worldgameprotection.com/t...l-Engineering/

Note the date this article was published: August 1 2012 and yet Phil was able to use this method to win millions in August 2012.

Interesting insight 18000

The thing is, the issue of what constitutes prudent casino management and whether Ivey is owed this money are two very separate questions.

You should lock your front door and not drop your car keys next to your car. And failing to do so would definitely make you partially morally culpable if a thief took advantage of it.

But that doesn't mean that you have actually legally consented to a thief stealing your car or entering your home.

The thing people have to understand about this is that there are a set of legal rules, hopefully written down but perhaps unwritten, that deal with these sorts of situations. I think we would all agree that in the looking at the hole cards situation, if the casino discovered you did it and had an explicit rule that said "if management determines that a player has won a substantial pot by virtue of observing another player's hole cards without immediately announcing to the table that they were exposed, the management has the discretion to order that the player forfeits the pot", the casino could make you forfeit the pot. The use of information in games of chance is subject to whatever the rules are. That might be a very bad rule for a cardroom to have, but if they had that rule, your choices would be to live with it or play somewhere else.

And rules may be unwritten too. There may not be something specific that says that some particularly wild angleshoot in a poker game is impermissible. But if it happens, and management determines that it was unfair conduct, they have some discretion, like it or not.... (The classic non-poker example of this was Tommy Lewis coming off the bench and tackling Dickie Maegle in the 1954 Cotton Bowl when he was en route to a touchdown. Maegle's team, Rice, was awarded the touchdown instead of a normal 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Nowadays, this is covered by a written rule ("palpably unfair act", but at the time, it was just a discretionary officials' ruling.)

The thing is, I think there's a tendency of people to think that anything the players can think up to beat the game has to be permitted. But that's not how it really works. Punto Banco is supposed to be a -EV game. The casino offers it as one, and doesn't promise anyone they will be able to beat it. If someone figures out a way to beat it anyway, well, there's going to be a question as to whether it is cheating. And that's going to require interpretation of the rules, including the unwritten ones.

And one more thing I will say, back on the moral issue. Again, it is true the casino left the front door unlocked here. But it's also true that Ivey took a risk. He had to understand that there was a possibility that the casino could refuse to pay him. He's a very smart man. If we are going to talk about people assuming the risks of their conduct, that door swings both ways.

he's worth about a 100 mil reportedly...hardly overated; though i agree that its the casino's onus here

Those high net worth estimates were from his stake in Full Tilt, now worth $0.

nah, idiot, that was from earlier in 2013...go away

Wow the Macau way baccarat scheme is crazy. Very interesting read.

Checking the deck is for casino employees. If players are supposed to regulate the deck then how much are we getting paid to do it?

Ill go as far as tto say that if the casino is allowing a bad deck on game of millions then they are absolutely incompetent.

Nah, those greedy bstards thought THEY were free rolling HIM; that's why they allowed it to go so long. Eff 'em, pay that man his money!

Did ivey ever get paid?

IIRC (possibly a rumor, can't remember where I heard about this), at the time of Chip Reese's death, he had a bunch of money loaned out to various players on handshake deals that his wife didn't know the details of. I think I read somewhere that Ivey was the only player to come forward and talk to the widow and pay up an amount that she wasn't even aware that he owed.

Yes Doyle was the one who said this. Phil called Doyle up and said he owed Chip a not-insignificant sum of money and asked how he could pay it.

Ivey went through a divorce (in Nevada, which is a state that divides all $ acquired during the marriage 2000-2009 evenly when the divorce is finalized) and is a degenerate gambler. When you factor in income tax, the divorce, his gambling outside of poker (craps mainly), his 2013 online poker results (down almost $3,000,000) and his tournament cashes in 2013 of around $100,000, his net worth has certainly been reduced significantly.

I do think it's clearly the casino's fault for complying with Ivey's request to only use 1 deck so he could pick up on small differences with the cards and know when a useful card was coming (9 is the best card you can be dealt in punto banco) but I think Ivey is going to waste a bunch of money paying both his lawyer and crockford's lawyer when he loses in court. In England, they use the "loser pays" system for attorney's fees, so Ivey could end up footing a hefty bill for crockford's attorneys in addition to his own attorney's fees.

To anyone that is calling Ivey unethical or accusing him of stealing, as in the post above, I am not sure understands the nature of what casino betting is. Entering a store and stealing for 1 is illegal, you are stealing something that is not yours that a person gave you no permission to do.

Essentially, the casino is just a bunch of people / the house who are betting / gambling against anyone who walks into the casino. They are daring you to bet against them and to try to win. However as we know, they have created all the games so that the odds are in their favour and they will win, but they are still wagering house money on their own games. If someone comes and finds a way to beat them at their own game, this person has no obligation to point this out. The Casino bet Phil Ivey x amount of money that he could not beat their game, and he did. He did not cheat, he merely made simple requests to the Casino which they granted. He followed the exact rules they had set out for him to play. There was no rule saying 'Do not ask us to lay out the cards in a way which allows you to identify which cards are which". He requested this, the Casino obliged. It was up to the Casino to keep the odds in their favour and not allow Ivey a way to beat their game, they were betting on the fact he couldn't!

Take this example:
If I bet you $20 000 that if I roll a dice, it will land on numbers 3,4,5 or 6. We use a dice that I have provided, which you have not tampered with, this is a game that I created. You are a genius and somehow realise this dice is flawed, not shaped properly and weighted in a way which makes it more likely to land on 1 or 2, you take the bet and win. Have I been cheated? No - I just made a bet where I thought I was a large statistical favourite, thought I was suckering you in, but you noticed a way to beat me and took it, I end up with egg on my face. Should I refuse to pay you because the Dice had a manufacturing flaw? No, I created the game, I bet and risked my money with my own dice, I lost. The end.

^^^Pretty much this! I don't see how anyone can argue this...

Yes, Ivey had an edge, but he didn't cheat. The casino was using faulty cards(which they didn't inspect). Ivey simply noticed and took advantage of it, it's 100% the casino's fault...

The problems with judges & courts is that you never know how a court will rule. Courts release non-logical rulings all the time. What if there is some archaic common law case law that says that using your brain is not allowed? Like in Nevada if you keep track of exposed cards you are cheating?

I hope Ivey prevails but you never know how the court will rule - in the UK or the USA.

That's not cheating in Nevada. You can get 86ed for it, but it's not cheating.

True per se. It's weird though as the courts have ruled that counting cards using your brain is not cheating, casinos can ban you for doing it. Same end effect - you can't play if you count the cards.