The casinos get it wrong all the time. Proven by the fact they got hit for millions after edge sorting was public knowledge.

That is why regulators are supposed to protect players. In jurisdictions where they don't(Native American) my hunch would be less "whales" would be willing to gamble big money with no guarantee of being paid.

It's quite the slippery slope enforcing an implied contract that no one can nail down. How is the player supposed to follow a set of rules that aren't laid out?

Under this supposed imaginary contract I have no idea whether hole carding and shuffle tracking are allowed or not. What is it exactly that advantage players are allowed to do?

The implied contract is not hard to "nail down". It is, in fact, very simple; We will follow the rules of the game and so will you. We will not cheat you and you will not cheat us. That's it and nothing more.

It's the same "contract" you enter into when you play in a poker game with your friends, or Monopoly with your kids. Everybody plays by the rules. Nobody cheats. If you are smarter than your friends or your kids, or if you are luckier than they are or if you are better at math than they and that helps you...well then you may have an advantage using those skills/traits while you are playing, but you would not be breaking the implied contract to play by the rules. However, if you use marked cards, or loaded dice or move your game piece more or less spaces than you are supposed to to gain an advantage then you are cheating and that breaks the implied contract, even if nobody catches you the first 50 times you do it.

The cards were specifically requested by Ivey per court filings. I do not play Baccarat and have never been to Borgata but presumably Borgata has different sets of decks they use and through past play Kelly Sun had noted the flaws in this specific brand of cards

Right, so how stupid do the casinos have to be to not think something is up when a specific brand of cards is requested?
Either they were totally incompetent, and should blame no one but themselves, or they were deliberately freerolling; knew they were giving away EV but planned to sue to reverse the results if they lost.

You should find the UK ruling more reassuring - the only thing all 4 judges agreed upon was that card counting where it was the skill of the player alone, no interference there could be no cheating. From memory the same is so for Borgata so just playing basic strategy and collecting bonuses or an enhanced BJ price is fine.

Check the article in the OP

So shuffle tracking, hole carding, tricking your host, etc are okay or not?

Doesn't seem so simple to me when I can't figure out what the rules are or what defines cheating.

There is a good reason the book is called beyond counting.

I have no idea what "tricking your host" is, but the answer to the other two examples is pretty simple. If you are good enough observer to shuffle track a deck or shoe then you are good to go with respect to playing by the rules. There is no rule that says a player can not watch the game, including the shuffle, and make decisions on betting based on those observations. As long as you don't use any device, or trick, like marking certain cards to assist you, you would not be violating the implied contract.

Hole carding is not against the rules either, as long as you are observing the cards as played with the naked eye. A dealer is definitely part of the game as played. If the dealer is "weak" and sometimes exposes his hole card and you see it you are allowed to act according to your observations. However, if you use mirrors or other devices to "peek" at the card to get the information you would be cheating.

Hole carding has been determined legal by the Nevada Supreme Court:

From AP Heat by Eliot Jacobson

"At the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas on November 22, 1983, Steven Einbinder and Tonly Dalben were caught hole-carding, with Dalben signaling the hole card to Einbinder. The Supreme Court of the State of Nevada found that:

Dalben was lawfully seated at his position at the blackjack table, that he did not use any artificial device to aid his vision, and that he was able to see the dealer's hole card solely because of the admittedly sloppy play of the dealer. Respondent Dalben then communicated his information to respondent Einbinder. The district court ruled that respondents' conduct did not constitute a violation of the cheating statutes. We agree.


In Nevada, a team of APs can legally sit at a table game with one of the players viewing the hole-card and communicating the information to confederates at the table. Similar conclusions have been reached by courts in other gaming jurisdictions. There is no legal issue in a team approach to crushing a hole-carding opportunity. The casinos might not like it much, but it is no more against the law than eating an apple in a meadow with butterflies circling."

so if its so simple why is ivey not found guilty of any criminal charges if he cheated? cheating is a criminal offense right? its not very simple if you say he cheated enough that his wins dont count but he didnt cheat enough to where he goes to jail. if he didnt commit a crime then its not cheating.

This has nothing to do with the "contract" cited by the judge.

While I see the logic of what you're saying, the balls it takes for the individual casino employee to make the decision to do this and risk being responsible for a multimillion-dollar loss that doesn't get recovered... is unimaginable.

The Ivey cases, both here and in England, were filed as civil actions. In England it was Ivey that sued the casino. In the US it is the casino suing Ivey. In both cases the plaintiffs were seeking money.

Cheating can be a criminal offense. It can also be a cause for action in a civil case, as is presented in the Ivey cases. In England Ivey wanted to be paid money so he sued the casino to get that money. He did not accuse the casino of cheating. He accused them of withholding money he claimed to have won on the square. The court there disagreed. They said he "cheated". He lost. In the US the Borgata sued Ivey for money in a civil case. They said he cheated (among many other claims). They said he marked the cards. They said he breached the implied contract. The court agreed with the Borgata. The court found that Ivey had effectively "marked" the cards, which is cheating and, that in doing so, he had breached the implied contract.

By the way, it's not just me that says he "cheated enough so his wins don't count" it is also a US Federal Judge, an English Judge from the High Court of Justice and 2 Judges from the England and Wales Court of Appeal that say he "cheated enough so his wins don't count".

As far as criminal charges go, I have no idea whether or not prosecuting Ivey for a criminal offense was ever considered in New Jersey. I am sure the Borgata preferred a civil remedy because what they wanted was their money back and a criminal conviction might have placed Ivey in jail where he would not be able to pay them back.

I think it is important to note that although Ivey lived in Nevada he did not use this scheme there. He was smarter than that because Nevada does not mess around with people that cheat. They prosecute them and I believe Nevada would have prosecuted Ivey for this kind of conduct without hesitation. But, that's just my opinion.....

It has EVERYTHING to do with what the judge ruled!

"The Court finds that Ivey and Sun breached their contract with Borgata to play Baccarat in compliance with the CCA by violating N.J.S.A. 5:12-115(a)(2) and (b) when they knowingly engaged in a scheme to create a set of marked cards and then used those marked cards to place bets based on the markings...... Ivey and Sun’s violation of the card marking provision in the CCA constitutes a breach of their mutual obligation with Borgata to play by the rules of the CCA."

In short, per the court, the implied contract is a mutual agreement. To honor the contract, you can not cheat. You can not mark the cards and use them to cheat. You have to play by the rules. In life I would hope if you play a game with anybody, be it a play game, money game, golf game, whatever game you understand there is an implied agreement that you both will play the game fairly.

I would firstly want to know whether the code that underpins the playing regulations of the Casino would allow for the arrangement that Ivey and the Casino made as otherwise the contract, whether implied or not (which includes the 5 stipulations that Ivey had), is invalid and therefore goes back to whether Ivey's actions were in accordance with the code (and that includes the reasoning of the judge referring to the history of, and the intention behind gambling regulation which is that the house is eventually meant to win and which is based on the normal operation of its games).

If it was done for a deliberate freeroll, I certainly don't think it was decided by one low ranking employee on his own. I imagine the whole thing had to be approved by someone high up.

I keep seeing this nonsensical idea posted ITT. Does it really make sense to anybody, even those that want to believe Ivey didn't cheat, that the casino would invite Ivey to play and even send a jet to pick him up so that he could come in on 5 different occasions over a year or more and cheat them while they watched knowing he was cheating them out of millions of dollars and that they would then pay him the money he won by cheating them on each occasion all the while KNOWING that he was cheating just so they could later sue to MAYBE get their money back? Really? I mean really??

Is there any guarantee that Ivey even has or will have $11,000,000 to pay them back? I think not

How could they not have known he was "cheating" then? I do not work in the casino industry, have never played baccarat, and had never previously heard of edge sorting, and I am 100% sure I would have known something suspicious was going on within 2 seconds of seeing the request for a specific kind of cards.

Gamblers, especially high rollers are weirdos when it comes to luck/superstitions.

But when this particular gambler is a professional who is very well-known and believed to be one of the best advantage gamblers in the world, you suspect nothing? Really??

You don't just go around accusing whales of cheating unless you are pretty damn sure. Stopping him from playing is basically accusing him of wrong doing.

They wouldn't have had to accuse Ivey of cheating, or even stop him from playing in their regular room, just not go along with his list of requests. Doesn't seem difficult to me.

If the casino's business is to make money, I am wondering why wouldn't they be acquiescent to any condition they make with Ivey for a contract if they knew that there would be a further implied and indeed overarching condition of that contract that the house must be favoured to win in the game from the outset.

So, if Ivey did anything during the performance of that contract to tip the odds further in his favour (which it appears that he did through edge sorting), then at the very least he is breaching that implied condition that the house is to win.

That is a complete joke. Phil Ivey is a great Poker player. No doubt at all. He is NOT one of the "best advantage gamblers in the world". He is one of the biggest degenerate pit game gamblers in the entire world. He is not, or at least he was not before he started cheating, a winning player in pit games. That is why casinos send airplanes to get him.

You're way too optimistic in your definition of "cheating". This was a super gray area. How is something cheating if the casino (who makes the rules) agrees to your terms? Just because they're too stupid to know that your terms gives you an advantage doesn't necessarily mean you're cheating. What if you ask if you can mark 10 cards and they agree. Is that cheating as well? What if their shuffler happens to mark 10 cards and you notice and they don't. Is that cheating? I think the casino should be responsible for the integrity of the game they provide, any when they accidentally screw up and give the players an advantage, they should eat the cost. I think it's not clearly cheating if you're just watching and making bets, while not altering the agreed upon rules of the game.

There's clearly a difference between playing a game with your friends/kids and betting millions of dollars vs a professional gambling business. Compare professional sports vs playing with your friends. Pros play dirty and angle the rules all the time. That doesn't come up when playing for fun with your friends, because people don't play win at all costs when playing for fun. Throw a couple million dollars on the line, and the exact rule interpretations become important, and the spirit of the game is generally out the window. I'd argue the "implied contract" the judge is espousing is more the "spirit of the game" interpretation of the rules. I'll agree, it's against the "spirit of the game" to use edge sorting, but I don't know if you can just claim "spirit of the game" after entering into a contract to wager millions on something. That's why I think it's a gray area, because clearly the judge thought differently. It seems one could argue that card counting is against the "spirit of the game'" for blackjack, but that's not the case, which makes this a really interesting case.

I assume he has no advantage on craps and the other pit games he plays for huge stakes. I'm pretty sure even if he got away with all this edge sorting profits, he would still be a big loser at casino gambling games (other than poker obv).

It is interesting someone as intelligent as Ivey wouldn't be smart enough to milk a scheme like this.