Not sure why this is in reply to my post. Personally I don't think it's a freeroll as they couldn't be sure they would win the court case and they have suffered reputational harm and hassle anyway.

I like this and think it's one of the more accurate analogies so far, but to be fair it would be as if your Cantonese (I thought it was Mandarin but whatever) speaking maid agreed to leave the door open without your knowing.

Anyway, let's keep the analogies coming lads.

Oh you're a "professional", so somehow your opinion on a game that no one plays professionally is valuable?

No one including the judges in this case has said that card counting is cheating, in fact they said the opposite.

No one has stated that someone playing a flawed slot machine is cheating, but there are cases where a casino has refused to pay a jackpot from a flawed machine and this was ruled legal.

And finally "I'm right and if you don't agree with me you must work for a casino" is pathetic.

from the judgement

I am not a professional, but a cursory view of professional gambling sites/forums would tell you that edge sorting is not widely considered cheating.

But it favors the casino.

That's not what he did. He lost 500k playing through shoes that were not edge-sortable until he got to the brand of cards that were, and then the dealer rotated cards according to requests from Iveys companion. This is the key point here. At no time did Ivey touch the cards or arrange the deck in any way. The dealer rotated the cards (necessary for edge sorting).

He asked her to do something and she obliged. Whether she knew or not is irrelevant. There's a famous scene in Casino where a progressive jackpot gets hit 3 times in a row and De Niros character says to the pit boss "the odds against that happening are billions to one, either you're too stupid to know what's going on or you're in on it---either way you're fired." The casino is 100% responsible for their loss, any way you look at it. They could have done 10 things differently and not lost a dime. The first one probably should have been not agreeing to have Phil Ivey play Punto Banco for 150k a hand.

Cheating happens when one party has access to information the other party doesn't. All information was available to both parties here, it's just that the one who should have had their eyes wide open...the casino... didn't, and they deserve to lose every penny as a result of their ignorance/incompetence. Casinos couldn't have possibly stayed in business when 1. cheating/computers/advantage play was much more prevalent in the 50s-80s without highly competent and trained staff and 2. they were considered shady fraudsters by the community at large and didn't have the major backing of government/courts. In this age where the opposite is true and in the age of information and surveillance they have absolutely no excuse.

P.S.-stop quoting the court judgement. No one gives a **** what some British judge says

Everyone that matters does, but if you want to you can quote the US judge who also found for the casino and against Ivey.

I am proud to be British but I don't have complete faith in the true independence and impartiality of the judiciary here and would have slightly less confidence in the true independence and impartiality of the judiciary in the USA.

According to The World Justice Project's Rule Of Law Index 2016, the UK ranks 10th of 113 countries measured and the USA are ranked 18th. http://nomadcapitalist.com/2017/04/3...s-rule-of-law/

The top 5 are:
1st Denmark: 2nd Norway: 3rd Finland: 4th Sweden: 5th Netherlands.

All countries rankings are on page 7 here: https://worldjusticeproject.org/site...-Digital_0.pdf

Nailed it exactly.

The casino was not aware that a turn of the cards could and would convey information to the player. Therefore not all information was available to both parties.

Edge sorting has been around for decades. The information was in plain sight to both parties and if the casino didn't know about something as well known as edge sorting they shouldn't be in business as a casino.

Sounds to me like you would not care if Ivey was able to slip a setup of marked cards into the game if the casino was negligent in stopping him from using them.

The cards are marked during manufacture, you're aware of this fact right? A lot of casinos use decks that are not or are less edge-sortable, mainly because edge-sorting is a thing. Imagine going to a casino with a weak dealer; it's a similar flaw in game security and will be exploited. Is the casino liable at all in your mind? Or should everyone who gambles just go in and be happy to lose? I mean it's just human nature to find exploits and weak spots in games; it's like the definition of poker yet no one here (presumably) considers playing weak players with gambling addictions illegal or unethical. But as soon as someone does it vs. a casino itself, he's bad and a criminal and a cheater. What a crock.

Not only that, even with the 5% edge Ivey gained from the casino sorting the cards for him, he still could have lost, and I can guarantee the casino would have happily walked away with Phils money. It seems casinos get to win when they win and now they win when they lose. Reminds me of full tilt/Absolute/UB/etc etc etc

So, is that a yes, you would not care?

I wonder if the courts looked into how many of the casino's own rules and procedures it willingly broke.

Why would they? Ivey's lawyers didn't bring it up. I'm only guessing but probably because they realised that it had no value as a legal argument.

It just seems unfair to say 'we had no idea what was happening' if their own rule book includes things to prevent what was happening.

Whilst I think what Ivey did was cheating and he should not have profited, I believe that the casino should have been fined by the UK Gambling Commission and had their licence to deal Punto revoked for a time for breach of procedure.

The judgement shows that they did indeed look at the amendments requested, they are listed in detail and add up to "changing the nature of the game".

Having a rulebook that is well designed to prevent cheats is great but it does not form part of the game, especially when it is not always applied in full by those who don't understand why the rules exist. the manual shuffle rules, with the twists are there for a reason but requesting a machine shuffler is now seen as normal and staff not aware of the failure of the machine to duplicate what the manual shuffle does.

Now of course every casino will be sure to have turns in their punto banco shuffle but that was not the case back then when casinos assumed that as they could not touch the cards they were safe from marking or edge sorting,

I think the judges pre-judged, tbh.

I don't agree with the ruling. The casino has a responsibility to protect itself. They agreed to "changing the nature of the game" in the hopes that they would take a whale for a large sum. Its their responsibility to understand what is happening as they are the one offering the game. If they don't understand, don't offer the game. The employees were able to act on the behalf of the casino and they made a mistake.

Seems pretty clear cut to me. The casino offered a game that was edged against their favor. Don't offer the game in your casino and that doesn't happen.

Intent.

The judge says Ivey was cheating (I was wrong on that one, was thinking of the first British opinion), but that Ivey honestly did not believe he was cheating. Then, as you read the opinion, it seems to say that all of his requests would have been fine, if they had actually been for the superstitious reasons he stated, rather than the real reasons that it allowed him to edge sort.

But how can you have the intent to cheat if you honestly believe that you're not cheating? And if you don't have to have the intent to cheat, then that would imply that anybody who makes similar requests is guilty of cheating, even if the cards they are turning don't give them an advantage, or if they are not aware and thus do not make use of the potential advantage.

When I summarize the latest opinion, it still reads to me a lot like the first opinion, just written better. And that opinion seems to be that you're not supposed to have an edge against the house, you managed to do that, so you must have cheated.

I think the judges are idiots.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

As I understand it, the judges stated that he didn't believe he was cheating, but he believed he was advantage playing, which in his mind was not "cheating" as such.

This is totally different to the bold section above where you compare someone who merely asks for the cards to be turned for superstitious reasons, which is clearly not the reason why he had them turned.

That's a pretty slippery slope IMO.

It is clear he designed to mislead and trick the casino. But he thought they were fair game, so he did not consider his own actions cheating

However, based on both reason and case law the court deemed his actions to be unfair. So your case for Ivey is based on his own belief that has actions were fair.

But where do we draw the line? A drunk driver had no intent to cause harm, and held the belief that it was okay for him to drive. Case dismissed. A Harvey Weinstein truly believed that his position gave him the right to harass women. He believed it? case dismissed. A pedophile thought there was nothing wrong with having a sexual relationship with 14-year-old. He really believed it. Case dismissed.

Obviously these examples are absurd. But to hold that Ivey is not guilty because he didn't think what he did was wrong is also absurd.

As soon as Sun lied to the dealer, this became a scam. That Ivey knew he was running a scam is evidenced by the random rotating of cards after the new shoe was introduced, to disguise the intent. To hold that Ivey is in the clear because he thought it was okay to scam a casino is just silly.

One way to draw the line is to ask whether a reasonable non-gambler would regard Ivey's behavior as dishonest and, if the answer is yes, whether Ivey should have been aware of it.

I reckon ~80% of reasonable non-gamblers would class what he did as cheating. The other 20% might say "good on ya".

I feel that the reason why it appears to be something like a 50/50 split among poker players is that we are always searching for an edge, looking for the spot, the mark, the value etc, and some of us instinctively regard the Casino or The House as the bad guys and the enemy.

But detach ourselves from those thoughts and from being edge seekers in gambling games and what he did pretty much looks like a sting.

Where in the rules does it say you can't lie? Is that explicitly stated if you ask the dealer to explain the game?

If lying instantly makes something a scam what does that say about the casino lying, presumably under oath, about not knowing what edge sorting was?

Exactly. And people ITT defending it simply because it came from a 'judge.'