Poker star loses £7.7m pot after ‘cheating’ by looking at back of cards
Court rules against gambler who tracked markings
A GAMBLER’S claim for £7.7million in winnings was rejected by the Supreme Court yesterday.
Phil Ivey, dubbed the ‘Tiger Woods of Poker’, won the money playing a variant of baccarat at the Crockfords casino in London.
But the casino refused to pay – claiming Mr Ivey cheated by using a cardidentification technique called ‘edgesorting’. Edge-sorting is based on taking advantage of the common – but misplaced – belief that the backs of all playing cards in a pack are identical.
In fact, there can be minute differences. The technique involves identifying the small differences in the pattern on the reverse of cards and exploiting that information to boost the chances of winning.
Genting Casinos UK, which owns Crockfords, said Mr Ivey ‘took advantage’ of their ignorance of edge-sorting. The 40year-old American admitted using the technique – but maintained he won games of the baccarat variant punto banco fairly.
But yesterday five judges unanimously upheld an earlier decision by the Court of Appeal which dismissed his case on the basis that dishonesty was not an essential element of cheating.
Mr Ivey did not personally touch any cards, but persuaded the croupier to rotate the most valuable cards he had spotted by intimating that he was superstitious. In the Court of Appeal, Lady Justice Arden said the Gambling Act 2005 said that someone may cheat without dishonesty or intent to deceive. ‘Depending on the circumstances, it may be enough that he simply interferes with the process of the game,’ she said.
Lord Hughes, also sitting in the Court of Appeal, added that it was an ‘essential element’ of punto banco that the game was one of
‘That it was skilful cannot alter the truth’
pure chance. ‘What Mr Ivey did was to stage a carefully planned and executed sting,’ he said.
‘If he had surreptitiously ... rearranged the cards physically himself, no one would begin to doubt that he was cheating.’
He said that Mr Ivey went beyond simple observation, taking ‘positive steps to fix the deck’.
‘That, in a game which depends on random delivery of unknown cards, is inevitably cheating,’ he added. ‘That it was clever and skilful, and must have involved remarkably sharp eyes, cannot alter that truth.’
Mr Ivey said in a statement after the ruling: ‘It makes no sense that the UK Supreme Court has ruled against me, in my view, contrary to the facts and any possible logic involved in our industry.’
He added: ‘At the time I played at Crockfords, I believed that edgesorting was a legitimate ... technique. I believe that more passionately than ever today.’
Paul Willcock, of Genting UK, said: ‘This entirely vindicates Genting’s decision not to pay Mr Ivey, a decision that was not taken lightly.’