Poker Pro Loses Appeal Over £7.7m Baccarat Winnings
Posted by Harry Kane on Thursday, November 10, 2016
Phil Ivey, an American professional poker player has lost his appeal against a London casino who withheld his £7.7 million winnings. Ivey made the money playing the baccarat variant Punto Banco at Crockfords Club in Mayfair in 2012. Last week, the Court of Appeal Judges said that his use of “edge sorting” amounted to cheating, and therefore dismissed his appeal.
Ivey openly admitted using the strategy along with his friend, another professional card player, Cheng Yin Sun. Edge sorting is a technique used by players to exploit tiny irregularities in the design on the backs of playing cards, to improve their odds and try to overcome the house edge. The two players asked for a specific brand of playing cards to be used, and during the games, asked the dealer to turn certain cards in a particular manner which enabled them to exploit the manufacturing defects to their advantage.
Initially, the casino did not dispute the winnings and confirmed that they would be sent by bank wire. However, the casino only returned the £1 million stake that had been spent at the casino. They refused to pay the winnings, stating that the use of the edge sorting technique was not a legitimate strategy, eliminating the casino’s liability to the player. Ivey strongly argued that he had done nothing wrong in using the strategy and took legal action against the casino and their owners, Genting Casinos UK in May 2013. This was the start of the most expensive legal battle to be seen at the time in the UK casino industry.
The court case was lost in 2014, when the judge ruled that the player’s behaviour amounted to cheating. Ivey was given the right to appeal the decision, which was taken. The appeal case started in April 2016, but it was only last week that the decision was given. Three judges considered the case in the Court of Appeal and concurred with the original High Court ruling that the player’s use of edge sorting constituted cheating, and as such, violated the UK Gambling Act 2005. The appeal judges did, however, state that Ivy and Sun had not been dishonest, with one judge stating that a player can cheat “without dishonesty or intention to deceive.”
Ivey again defended his actions in the wake of the decision to dismiss his appeal, maintaining that he merely exploited the casino’s failure to take adequate steps to protect themselves against such a highly skilled card player as himself. He also expressed his dismay at the reasoning behind the decision, stating “The trial judge said that I was not dishonest and the three appeal judges agreed, but somehow the decision has gone against me. Can someone tell me how you can have honest cheating?” Ivey has indicated he will seek to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
Adversely, Genting Casinos UK welcomed the ruling. The president and chief operating officer of the company said “Crockfords has acted fairly and honestly at all times and we are therefore pleased that the Court of Appeal has held that the decision not to pay out to Mr. Ivey was the correct one.”
The decision will come as another blow to Ivey, who has recently lost a similar court case against the Atlantic City based Borgata Casino. Using the same edge sorting techniques, Ivey and Sun won almost $10 million playing baccarat, which the casino paid out. However, after realising that the players had used the strategy to improve their odds against the casino, Borgata filed legal proceedings against the players to retrieve the money.