Ya, what an ******* I am for shaking opinions up a bit. Sheesh, you should probably just ban me for not agreeing with you.

To go a little deeper, is it not the casinos responsibility to find natural flaws in its games and mitigate them? Responsible casinos do this all the time of course.

Similar situations where there would be a natural flaw are blackjack, where the inherent structure of the game allows the player to win (way more than 6.5% edge) if the deck is single, and gain a 1-3% edge from counting multiple deck shoes, or roulette where there can be an imbalanced table, or craps that have poorly balanced dice/perfectly smooth table edges, etc. The casinos mitigate these natural flaws in whatever way they can (performing balance calibrations, randomizing table edges, using 6-7 deck shoes, cutting shoes with shallow penetration). In the case of mitigating edge sorting (which can be done in blackjack as well), using a shuffler with a rotation included in the shuffle and/or edgeless cards.

Conversely, it is the advantage players motivation to find, expose, and exploit the natural flaws in the games to garner an edge. Before anyone on the courts side comments, I know that the court said such a thing does not apply to punto banco, and I really couldn't care less about the legal justification they used. Logically, punto banco shouldn't be any different than blackjack in this regard.

Ivey didn't create an edge. He didn't mark the cards himself. He didn't touch the cards. The edge he gained was a natural flaw in the game that the casino allowed to be exposed by granting his requests.

Whether or not they knew about edge sorting is irrelevant. Their due diligence as a casino precludes that they should have known about it and should have eliminated it to the best of their ability.

Obviously it's not possible to have every flaw covered or know about every flaw possible; it's just the nature of reality. However, when they do lose because of a natural flaw, they historically have taken it on the chin and learned from it, mitigating it in the future. Now apparently they can get judges to rule for them not only ignorantly allowing but consenting to natural flaws being exposed and exploited as cheating, and not pay at all. IMO, this is wrong, which is why I'm here talking about it.

I'd agree with most of this, in particular that Punto Banco (Baccarat) shouldn't be treated any differently to Blackjack. They are both essentially toss of a coin games.

The casino(s) got very lucky with the judgement(s) IMO.

Hindsight is 20/20, but had Ivey's defense (US) / claim (UK) taken some more subtle lines, I feel it would have much more exposed that the battling for an edge between players and the house is a normal component of the casino business.

Instead the line they appear to have taken likely gave the courts no other choice than to say he "cheated".

Responding to the section you added a few minutes later......

Yes he has done them a big favour by saving them potential fortunes in the future.

If the casinos want to eradicate all advantage playing and every morsel of possible playing skill then they should make everything digital, which obviously would result in almost no customers and an end to their business.

This is why a 100% ruling by the courts in favour of the house is irrational.

Ya sorry I kind of write and edit as I go. Agree with you and that's the way it's going. Unfortunately after they do their only targets will be the naive and the problem gamblers---of course what they'll be doing is ethical, because it's legal or something.

1. This case originated more than five years ago.

2. People in the gambling community have been vigorously discussing this case for more than five years.

3. People on 2+2 have been vigorously discussing this case for more than five years. All of the issues pertaining to this case have been given full voice over those years.

4. There are many people on both "sides" of this case. Some believe that Ivey's edge-sorting scheme did not amount to cheating and he should have been paid the money. Others believe that Ivey's edge-sorting scheme was tantamount to cheating and he should not have been paid the money.

5. We live in a society in which we resolve these types of differences by relying on the judgments of courts of law.

6. Obviously, not everyone is going to agree with every judgment of every court of law (most especially those parties which the courts rule against).

7. You seem to want to engage in a vigorous debate of this case as if you have fresh, new views that have not been expressed innumerable times in this thread's previous five years worth of thousands of posts. (Perhaps, the recent announcement of the UK supreme court ruling has rekindled your vigor surrounding this case.)

8. Most of the energy for debating this case has greatly dissipated over the years and most people are willing to move on with their lives.

9. At this point both the UK lower court and UK supreme court have ruled against Ivey.

10. The "pro-Ivey" folks are encouraged to chalk it up to another bad ruling by a court of law. There have been many "bad" court rulings over the years and I am sure that there will be many more "bad" court rulings to come.

11. Notwithstanding anything written above, you are encouraged to post as many posts as you like in this thread. 2+2 can use the traffic and page-views. Perhaps, alas, there will come a time where nobody replies to your posts which may or may not reduce their frequency.

I do not believe a "natural flaw" in blackjack, which i presume you mean a high count because of the previously dealt cards, is equivalent to knowing the card value because of devious edge sorting in baccarat.

He was only able to edge sort because a man made, manufacturing defect, not a natural one.

One is more extreme than the other granted, but unless an RNG (digital/virtual deck) is used or a humungous number of decks are in the shoe, and loads of cutting of the decks then Blackjack will always a have a certain natural flaw that enables players so motivated, to influence the expected RNG based probabilities.

You don't 'know' the card value after edge-sorting a shoe. Only some of the cards are perceptible, and never the precise rank but merely whether they are high or low (in punto banco). It doesn't guarantee your bet will win because you could pick out a high card in dealers hand, bet on player and still lose. Hence, the 5-6% edge. When Ivey played punto banco vs. Crockfords he ran significantly above expectation. A lot of his 7.7m win was luck.

Similarly, you don't 'know' the precise true count when counting a shoe in blackjack. You estimate it. Also in blackjack, simply because the shoe is loaded with high cards does not mean that you are going to win any given bet. You have slight edge that wins in the long term. Both situations are what is called advantage play.

No, he was only able to garner an edge because the casino agreed to use edge-sortable decks and non-rotating shufflers, and then at his request sorted the cards for him. That said, it's not a 'defect.' It's a tiny, almost imperceptible inconsistency between certain rank cards during the cutting process. The deck is still perfectly legal. Most reputable casinos use cards with white borders around the edge and/or cards that are way harder to identify the inconsistencies on.

The natural flaw is inherent to any shoe-dealt game. It can be mitigated (and most often is) by the above mentioned steps.

I'm curious: how does the betting work in punto banco? Do you bet before the cards come out, while they are coming out or after?

I haven't read all 133 pages for similar views to mine, but I am not in either camp that you mentioned, I am neither strongly pro Ivey nor strongly against Ivey in terms of the court rulings.

My very first post ITT said that I thought Crockford's should have to pay the full £7.3M to Gamcare and all of Ivey's costs and I have since adjusted my viewpoint to being a partial (~25%) award to him plus his costs. So fairly similar in the sense that my view is that Crockfords were partly culpable and partly negligent.

If a person didn't know you posted so much in this thread about edge-sorting in punto banco, reading the above post they might question whether you know (1) how edge-sorting works and (2) how to play punto banco.

I am not trying to be a jerk here (maybe it comes naturally). These are actually very good questions. But they have been asked and answered several times in this thread over its long lifetime and answers are readily available via the internet.

Also, I imagine, just guessing here, that these questions might have been asked and answered in the court rulings linked in the thread above.

He hasn't the slightest clue how Ivey's edge sorting worked. He claims to have read the judgement but still posts drivel like this:


The most amusing part being where he says reputable casinos use cards with white borders round the edge!

The Ivey defenders continue to amaze. If it had been some old pensioner he'd conned out of their life savings with his 'advantage play' you'd all be saying he should be locked up. The fact that he conned a casino makes no difference.

He's a grifter, a cheat and a dishonest douchebag who deserves your contempt, not your sympathy.

Yah, he conned a casino that sent an airplane to get him knowing full well that he's a pro gambler w/ a solid rep as being one of the best supposing that he just decided one day to play at their casino for no particular reason. Unless he was a reg there, anyone know if he was?

Stop posting.

Here's a video explaining it in detail, and the various types of cards used by casinos to mitigate it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6rFH_XOBbg

The reason why I asked about betting is because I never saw anything in the literature regarding when the bets were made or if there were requests for alteration to the betting. If you can only bet pre-deal, then you only get to see the edge of the first card in the shoe. If you can bet post-deal, you can see 4 cards.

Lol. Why don't you tell me what you think it is, and how my conception differs from yours?

Strangers on a Train was a great debut novel by Patricia Highsmith. It is so tense, it is hard to read.

Whew....I think I feel all better. Bye now!

Yes, there could be something in this.

The distinction between a random wandering in and advantage playing ("cheating"), and Phil Ivey whom they agreed in advance to duke it out with.

On a side note, I would like to know their official policy if a player wants to hit on 18+ in Blackjack or split 4s with the dealer showing a 10. If they allow this, aren't they "illegally" increasing their own edge?

This also should, if it wasn't, have been put to the court, because it demonstrates the human influence on expected probabilities/house edges. (If allowed, the casino "cheating")

it certainly makes a difference. the casino tried to 'advantage play' ivey first with a game where the odds were stacked against him and ivey asked for aspects of their game to be changed and the better advantage player won.

the old pensioner is not trying to take your money with an unfair game so its wrong to trick him out of his money. if the old pensioner was trying to take you money by running a casino then its fine to beat him at his own game.

if someone tries to rob you then its fine to rob them. if someone tries to murder you then its fine to murder them. that is only fair.

White bordered cards are obviously susceptible to edge sorting if they are cut asymmetrically ie the patterned portion is slightly closer to the edge on one side. Your video shows cards with the pattern fading away, into a white border which presumably makes it difficult to assess the border width or pattern discrepancies.


That is nonsense. As stated above Ivey could have sorted the deck to identify all of one rank with a high degree of accuracy. He actually sorted 7 8 9.

As has been widely remarked, Ivey is known to casinos as a whale. That is why the people behind Sun recruited him.

The house edge is a reasonable charge for the services they provide and is advertised within the casino, at least in the UK. Your participation (or not) in their games voluntarily.

To conflate this with robbery is laughable.

The rules of Blackjack (in the UK) allow the player to make decisions but the house has to follow a set of rules as to taking a card or not. That is inherent in the game. So any strategies that are bad for the player are also inherent in the game. Punto Banco does not allow any decisions, the random cards simply move the money about, like a green baize slot machine.

Except it does allow a crucial decision, what to bet on. So much complete drivel in this thread it should probably be locked now.