Yes. Some details here. https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/...gata-26638.htm

Also note that they paid him his winnings and took him to court afterwards.

This begs the question that the UK court ruling may have set a precedent whereby any UK casino can refuse to pay out based purely on suspicion or based on nothing other than a player won, when the player may well have won through pure blind luck.

Naturally, most players would not have the wherewithal or stomach to take the casino to court and especially if the sum involved was lower than or a high percentage of the legal costs involved.

@Sage Donkey pretty sure that advantage play blackjack counting was fully understood by the judges from the transcripts of the various court proceedings.

Also there was nothing earth shattering about refusing to pay out. They still have to justify it in court.

Okay. I haven't read the transcripts.

Part of the case should have been about the lure of a casino being the physical nature of games (i.e. results are not determined by a digital RNG).

Therefore players are attracted by their belief that they can either detect outcomes (e.g. watching the roulette ball), can feel something will happen (gut feel), or bet according to previous results.

Indeed the casino encourage this by displaying the marquee and offering cards and pencils to record previous roulette and baccarat results.

This goes to the core of how they attract players like Phil Ivey.

If the person playing the game had absolutely nothing to do with the marking of the cards and no connection whatsoever with whomever had marked the cards originally and picks up the marks purely on their own while playing or observing the game then this conduct would NOT be cheating. This would present a situation where it would be the responsibility of the Casino to protect itself.

This is not much different from roulette bias, wherein some gamblers have been known to track roulette wheels looking for wheels that may be balanced incorrectly and yield predictable, non-random results. This is also not cheating.

I believe that Phil Ivey had ~25% equity in the case (an award of ~1.8M + costs). He/his lawyers miscalculated in trying to go for 100%.

Had they proven the casino/casinos generally (pure conjecture by me) have monetary risk/game control procedures to limit stakes, ban players, pay out winnings but send the player on their way, when observing a player using physical skills (roulette ball tracking/card counting/skillful craps dice throwing) to gain a profit, then this would demonstrate that they applied different standards of treatment to Phil Ivey so should be held partly culpable/partly liable for their own losses.

Ah, so Ivey and Sun should have employed a "Strangers on a Train" scheme.

No, Ivey should have played the game straight up like everybody is expected to do. My answer to the question above is predicated upon the fact that the player legitimately had zero knowledge of the circumstances surrounding how the cards had been previously marked and that his advantage gained came solely from his own observations of the game. This would not be the case if the player knew of the marked cards from some other source, such as the person that had actually marked the cards in the first place.

It was a joke, a bad feeble joke.

Trying to lighten the mood of this thread after a certain poster (DoOrDoNot) has carpet-bombed the thread with endless and tiresome posts espousing his views against casinos, judges, court rulings, and other posters and in unwavering support of Ivey's edge-sorting scheme.

I got that....but wasn't sure "some" of the others reading ITT would! But, I'm sure the Strangers on a Train reference would be lost on them anyway. I don't think they get out much.

The US/UK rulings give Casinos immunity from their operational error losses. In both cases I believe Phil Ivey was due partial payment and was hard done by, being besmirched.

Other gaming parallels where the courts don't afford the operator a Get Out Of Jail Free Card are customers arbitraging slightly wrong (2% to 5%) spread betting sports prices, and peer-to-peer betting platforms seeding their own markets, again with slightly incorrect prices.

Casinos offer a physical gaming experience allowing the player to render some of the expected probabilities imperfect so should take some of the resultant losses on the chin.

and Whosnext it seems I might have been correct. Sigh......

I predict that if a mis-manufactured deck that contained natural markings that required no request from a player to be rotated, resulted in a player spotting the markings and going on a huge winning run, that the casino would go crying to the courts again and the courts would find in the casino's favour.

My reasoning is that the courts have a seemingly dogmatic view that physical casino games have absolute pre-defined probabilities unaffected by human involvement and that the live casino business is not reliant on players thinking/hoping/believing that they can in some way predict or affect the outcomes.

I think people staying in and, in 2017, knowing a premise from a movie from 1951 would be fairly strongly correlated.

And I predict you would be wrong. In your example the casino would have no cause for action against the player. They may have recourse against the card manufacturer, but the player would be in the clear.

Casino games are all based on mathematical probabilities and are all designed to provide the casinos with a mathematical advantage. Some games have a bigger edge for the casino than others. There are some games, blackjack for one, where a player may be able to reduce the casinos advantage by employing mathematics, observational skills and betting strategies. This is all understood by the casino and is an inherent part of the game as offered. The casino employs techniques to mitigate a player's ability to reduce the odds by activities, such as card counting in blackjack, by shuffling the deck more often, cutting the deck deeper after shuffle and using shoes with multiple decks. In Nevada, casinos are allowed to deny card counters the opportunity to play in their games based upon a Nevada state law.

Casinos are selling patrons entertainment in the form of gambling and they do so with the expectation of making a profit, as any merchant selling anything might reasonably expect. Nobody is in business to lose money. The object of running a casino is to make money for its owners and investors. A casino however, offers patrons the opportunity to win money with the product it sells. People that play casino games accept the fact they are supposed to lose, or at least someone is supposed to lose. They just hope its not them. Casinos expect they will have winners and losers, the games would not survive if nobody ever won, but they also know that the math guarantees them a profit over the long term, consequently they have an inherent self interest in protecting those mathematical advantages and employ an entire security division within each operation to do so. Sometimes however, the cheaters are better than the watchers. Crockford's was lucky. They caught on before they paid out any money to Ivey, the Borgata was not so fortunate.

I get what you're saying. You think it might have been more topical had whosnext's reference been to employing the "Throw Momma from the Train" defense? Nah....doesn't work for me.

The original movie is a Hitchcock classic and should be watched, even by young people. The book was very good as well.

In the UK it matters not a jot if you win or lose when you cheat. this is the law:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/19/section/42

You haven't read the judgement have you? They dealt with "advantage play" with a full understanding of the concept.

The second section of your piece that I've bolded contradicts the first section I've bolded and proves the casino are fully aware that in physical casino games a player can distort the probabilities. It's therefore a known factor and business risk that they live with and accept.

And you haven't covered ball tracking or people who practice rolling dice on their private craps tables.

I also predict that if the card manufacturer has a net worth and assets well below the losses incurred that the casino would go after the player, and would likely go after the player anyway.

I had better read the full judgement when I get time. To get a total understanding of the case and any possible deficiencies or mistakes in Phil Ivey's legal team's strategy or the points they made, one would also need to see every shred of detail of the presentations that were made to the court by both sides.

It is one thing for the judges to understand the concept of advantage playing, but another thing to persuade them that it is an integral part of why many people arrive to play in the casino in the first place.

strangers ona train. a hitcock movie where two strangers meet on a train and discuss how they want to murder their wives but know theyd be caught so they agree to kill each others spouses. never seen the movie im 31 and get the reference for some context people aren't all as dumb as you'd expect.

The casino would have to prove that a player spotted the markings which I think is impossible absent an admission.

Possible proof could be the circumstantial evidence of if the player achieved positive results well outside of expected probabilities over a decent sample size + if any significant alteration of stake sizes happening coincides with a >50% win rate in the corresponding hands + if abnormal eye movement paying attention to the shoe/the table is detected on camera footage.

That's a stretch. What's the court to say about a player who is just making bets and whose eye wobbles? NM the math, the whole idea of gambling on the player's side is to get lucky. Even those dumb-ass UK judges have got to get that right.

I mean I know there are people on earth who actually believe that the law=ethical behavior in totality but just lol.


In other words, it gives them carte blanche to define it however they want and get the best judgement possible for their casino cronies.

How can you determine someone cheated without a definition of what cheating is? Your posts are getting more and more incoherent.





Nope. Sorting and marking are two different things, and he did neither. The casino sorted the totally legal and agreed upon cards at his request.

Sorting and shuffling the cards is an inherent part of any card game, and Iveys companion asked to sort the cards based on how she wanted them sorted, and the casino agreed to it. This means they are partially liable for the result.



Guess that makes it ok in your mind. No one is arguing that this is what happened. What we are arguing is if it should have happened.

Ok, well that's ****ing ******ed.

If anyone has a narrow mind here it's you. You obviously don't have the capacity to glean the forest from the trees of what happened in the legal sense from one judges pretty weird opinion and what actually happened in reality, as well as the fact that just because something is written in law means that it corresponds to reality. Anyone who believes this is a very credulous and naive person.


I don't particularly give a **** what the law says. If it comports with my morality, or I'm forced by threat of violence, I follow it. If it doesn't, I don't. That goes for pretty much every reasonable person on earth as well.


You're just on a completely different level than the discussions taking place in this thread. I have no ability whatsoever to change the law, or change the decision, and neither does anyone else in this thread. We are discussing it from a philosophical perspective.




I don't take drugs very often; it was just an example. Nice try at shaming and ad hominem though...everyone can see how petty and defensive you are now.



Yet another snide comment from a credulous nitwit.



Ehhh, no we don't.

Lol. By electing non casino dick sucking representatives I suppose? Good lord you are naive.

Like I said, gaining a player edge doesn't necessarily mean he is cheating. In your example with blatant, one-sided marking I would say that is cheating. I know it's hard to read whole sentences and the words contained within them that are caveats, but try at least.