Crockford's motivation for flying him in, comping him expenses and giving him VIP treatment is a factor.

When doing so, they saw him as the mark and made a business decision calculation that it was +EV for them, perhaps based on previous data of his losing trips to them or to associated casinos or through shared data between casinos.

Who knows, maybe they knew he was skillful at Black Jack card counting or shrewd at pressing up staking on Roulette etc but historically still managed to have more losing trips than winning ones due to -EV play on other games.

Holes in security? Wtf are you talking about? What security holes were there?

The casino agreed to change the nature of their game. It absolutely is a factor they agreed to change the game. The court said it wasn't though so we should probably just take them at their word right?

Also why are you calling it a crime? No crime was committed.

Not proven is a criminal verdict not a civil one. Civil cases are settled on the balance of probability, so it would be absurd to have such an option. Judges are allowed to reduce damages for contributory negligence. The nature of this case clearly made that an irrelevant consideration. So all in all a fairly ignorant post and not at all surprising that it gets this response:

If you read the ruling you will find that the court found that Ivey cheated as described in Section 42 of the 2005 Gambling Act - which is a crime, with no statute of limitation and carries a maximum penalty of two years in gaol.

I think what bugs me and so many about this case is that although I believe Ivey and Sun cheated, I also think the casinos should be held responsible for their losses to them.

Analogy time - Say I run a daycare center in a small town. For the past few days, there's been news of a well known serial killer getting spotted around the town - I've seen pictures of her on the local news, and I think I see her walk into my daycare center. I do a quick google search, and I'm quite certain it's her. She comes up to me and offers me $100,000 to run the daycare center alone for the rest of the day. I express my concerns that she's going to kill all of the kids in the daycare, but she assures me that she isn't going to hurt anyone, so I agree to the terms. She then requests some knives from the kitchen, claiming that she has brought some food for the kids and needs to chop up the meals herself. I grant them. She also tells me that there were some creepy men following her around all day, so she needs a fully loaded automatic rifle to keep the daycare center secure. I grant it to her.

The thing that irks me is that the casino employees granted a bunch of ridiculous requests to well known professional gamblers because they thought they were going to make a lot of money off of them. Just like I made a bunch of ridiculous requests to a serial killer because I thought I was going to make $100,000. And when she goes ahead and kills all of the kids there and stiffs me on the payment, there's no way I should be able to plead ignorance and not be held accountable just because she lied to me about what she was doing and why she wanted those things from me.

A third option of "not proven" for civil cases would not be absurd, if you agree the purpose of a judgement is to determine guilt or innocence, right from wrong, or liability/non-liability, for cases where the answer is not clear-cut. "not proven" + a percentage of damages where appropriate is perfectly logical.

The ruling of all moneys effectively awarded to Crockford's is awful when there were multiple examples of contributory negligence by them.

Awarding them 100% of "losses" back plus legal costs is an absurd judgement and smacks of a cosy little arrangement the government have with the gaming industry.

Once again the concept of "not proven" in civil cases is absurd when "verdicts" for want of a better word are based on the balance of probability. It only exists at all in criminal law as a foil to "guilty beyond reasonable doubt".

The Ivey case was also not about damages caused by some action by the sued party. It was about Crockfords refusing to pay winnings because of Ivey's breach of contract etc and Ivey demanding his winnings. That has to be binary by its nature.

If Ivey had won, Crockfords suing the card manufacturer for damages (the losses) might be where contributory negligence could be argued. The manufacturer saying that the cards were slightly over tolerance, but the Casino allowed them to be used in an unusual manner and this was the primary cause of the loss.

The gap between "conviction" thresholds between a criminal case and a civil case is too wide IMO so should be questioned. A 10-2 minimum jury vote (with all 10 beyond reasonable doubt), compared to a majority 3/2 or 4/3 decision by judges with them basing it on as little as a 51%/49% likelihood.

Crockfords refusing to pay winnings without first proving that he was in breach of contract should also have been raised.

The decision was not binary if one believes that Crockfords were negligent in some way and/or in part culpable for the outcome of Ivey's winning run.

You can believe what you like, but it wasn't what the case was about.


The first judge agreed with (2) and subsequent appeals have not reversed that. Ivey has simply denied cheating, not "even if I did cheat, I wouldn't have cheated if the casino hadn't been dumb so they should have paid me" or any other similar argument. This was a civil case settled on the decision that Ivey cheated, it must be binary because of this, however much you wish that it was about something else or the legal system was completely different.

My point is the casino was partly culpable for the cheating (enabling advantage playing, if you will) so shouldn't be given the full monetary award or full ruling in their favour.

Additionally they allowed the game and staking size to continue well beyond the point where his results were a wide margin outside of known mathematical probabilities, indicative of a possible free rolling the customer mentality.

Furthermore, they were active in procuring a player who a) they perceived to be a whale and b) was known to be at least in part, a skill or advantage seeking professional gambler.

The casino wasn't given any "award" - Ivey sued them for his winnings and lost because he cheated. None of your points has any relevance whatsoever to this case. I posted what the case was about which is simply, the casino didn't pay Ivey because they decided he cheated and Ivey denied cheating and asked the court to order the casino to pay. Whales, freerolling, dumb casinos etc are all good talking points but nothing to do with these legal proceedings. Ivey didn't bring them up. The casino didn't bring them up. They don't matter.

They were effectively given an award because they enforced their own kangaroo court judgement to not pay a gambler his winnings in a game that they sanctioned. This point should have been raised by Ivey's legal team.

You yourself said in a civil case there is flexibility for partial awards, which I think would have been a more just ruling.

Ivey and his legal team should have brought up the other "irrelavant talking points", as you put it. If they didn't then his legal team did an exceptionally poor job and may as well have no showed to the hearing.

Yes they do have relevance, because many of them are mentioned in the judgements, but the court threw them out because, well, they could I suppose. It's obvious whenever someone like you is simply tossing obviously important information like it doesn't matter at all that you're mentally shoring up the dykes, perhaps because they're springing leaks.

Well maybe Ivey will sue his lawyers and keep the show going. You should start a crowdfund page for him.

You are saying this tongue in cheek, but if they did a really poor job of representing him then yes it is not beyond the bounds of possibility or permissible recourse for him to do that.

Captain obvious saves the day again

the thing is your big "IF" is only based on your uninformed opinion that they did a really poor job. of course its possible they may have, but you have absolutely no insight on this. good luck with the crowdfunding page

My uninformed opinion is based on davmcg stating that a few of the factors mentioned ITT did not form part of Phil Ivey's case.

This was such a specialist case that I wonder if he had the right lawyers. Many of these "top" lawyers fit a similar profile: London Inner Temple Chambers, Oxbridge educated, Age 40s to 50s, so the gambling world is a million miles away from their typical life knowledge/experience.

The last legal case I was involved in I didn't hire anyone, I researched the law, did everything myself and won all the legal arguments and the case.

OK so in that case it's a lock. The crowdfunding dollars for the lawsuit should start pouring in

His lawyers should have recognised they couldn't win the case on a pure did he cheat/not cheat binary ruling.

If I were involved in the case I would have sent some customers (detectives) into the casino to observe their business/operational practices. I'd also through the proper legal channels forensically examine their company accounts and do a few other things.

The point of this is to reveal, if present, any malpractices of their casino operation and, if present, any breaches of gaming regulation in order to discredit them and cast doubt on the absence of any culpability by them in events.

The judgement is just that, the judgement. It is true for all purposes of law. You can disagree with it. No problem, but you can't change it. If enough people believe that Ivey's conduct should be legal, then those people should start a referendum to change the law.

Yes there is. The ethics/morality of what Ivey did are not necessarily related to the legality/permissiveness of what he did. For example, it's illegal in many countries to smoke a plant called marijuana, but obviously the moral principle that you have body sovereignty overrides that law in an ethical sense.



Do they? Quoting the judgement: "it would be bad to define cheating (sic)."

There is positively no question Ivey was deceitful; however, is it ok to be deceitful in certain situations in a casino? Is it ok to pretend you aren't card counting, when you are? Is it ok to pretend like you're a beginner poker player, when you're a shark? Deceit is part of the game that people are playing when they go to a casino, whether you play another person or the institution itself.


But the manipulation happened at the sole discretion of the casino. They agreed to it. This is important.


The possibility to lose, absolutely. If you gain an advantage that guarantees you win, then I would say that is cheating. If you gain a 6% edge, I wouldn't necessarily call that cheating.


Ummmm probably the part where Ivey requested changes and the casino agreed. This whole case hinges on the responsibility of the casino, which the court basically threw out completely.



Right, but some laws are unjust. BTW, drugs are illegal on face value because the law says so, but they are illegal in actuality for many many reasons.



I'm not an expert in the law, but I have a pretty sharp conception of justice.


The law changes all the time, so that's kinda false.

Now you get it. The laws do change. WE, the people have the power to change them. If enough people believe that Ivey's conduct should have been legal then those people can get to work on changing the law.
But, I suspect you and anybody else would have a hard time convincing any majority of people that playing a card game with marked cards should somehow be okay, because it is not.

I tried, but I am done with you. You are not worth the effort and this has become tiresome rather quickly. It is difficult to have a battle of wits with an an opponent that is so clearly unarmed.

So, if I mark the aces in a deck of cards, use the marking to determine the opposing player has 2 aces, play the game and lose because he hits a four card flush, i am not cheating? Or he has one ace, which i know because of the marking, but hits a straight with his kicker, I am not cheating? Ludicrous!

Let's say Ivey realizes that a prior player introduced marked cards into the game and could read the marks to obtain his edge and he knows no one else is aware of the markings. He had absolutely nothing to do with the prior player. If he uses the marks to play and win, was he cheating?

I don't agree with all of DoOrDoNot's points, however if advantage playing was presented and explained to the court as a concept it could have carried a lot of weight. BlackJack card counting is an example, whereby the house's edge can be negated or overtaken by an inherent "defect" in the game.

Similarly, skillful watching of a roulette ball's starting position, path and speed can potentially gain the player a small probability advantage.

Educating the judges that house edges are not guaranteed and there was a pre-existing range of advantage playing skills for casino games may have swayed the judgement.

Did not Ivey have to repay his winnings in the USA in a similar case? Or was that a figment of my imajination?