A gambler who is suing Britain’s oldest casino for withholding his £7.8 million payout has admitted he did win the cash by ‘reading’ the cards. Phil Ivey, dubbed the Tiger Woods of poker, says he used a legitimate technique called ‘edge sorting’ to identify cards during a game of punto banco, a type of baccarat based purely on luck. But he vehemently denies cheating. However, Mayfair club Crockfords believes he ‘operated a scam’ and claims he ‘acted to defeat the essential premise of the game’ – and is refusing to hand over his winnings. Mr Ivey – a professional American poker player – is suing the casino in the High Court and the case, the biggest legal battle in casino history, is due to be heard later this year.
In May, The Mail on Sunday reported details of Mr Ivey’s win – and revealed that the casino had not paid out because it believed he had been reading the cards. In his court submission – seen by The Mail on Sunday – multi-millionaire Mr Ivey, 37 admits to being an ‘advantage player’ – someone who uses legal ways to gain a mathematical advantage over the casino. Playing punto banco over two nights in August last year, Mr Ivey says he was able to exploit tiny flaws in the design of the cards – asymmetrical pattern differences on the rear that are the result of mistakes made during the manufacturing process. It was well known in the industry around this time, according to Mr Ivey’s claim, that players might be able to use imperfectly cut cards to their advantage.
Because of this, the claim adds, the casino should have thoroughly checked them before use. On his visit to Crockfords, Mr Ivey was accompanied by a Chinese associate known as Kelly, who was adept at ‘identifying the design flaws’. Mr Ivey’s claim says: ‘During the second session on August 20 [Mr Ivey] made various requests for decks of cards to be changed at the end of hands with which [Crockfords] chose to comply. This continued until Kelly identified a deck or decks of cards where the pattern on the reverse side of the cards was asymmetrical (in that one “long’’ side was different from the opposite side).’ Outlining how the pair managed to ‘edge sort’ the deck, the claim says: ‘Kelly would ask the dealer to reveal each card in turn by lifting the edge furthest from the dealer so that Kelly could identify whether the card was a seven, eight, or nine – the key cards in punto banco.
The first time that Kelly identified a key card, she told the dealer that it was a 'good' card which she wanted the dealer to rotate in the opposite direction to all the other cards and the dealer complied with the request. ‘In this way, the long edges of the key card became distinguishable from those of the other cards.’ Over the course of time, ‘the cards in the deck were increasingly orientated so that “good” and “bad” cards faced in the opposite direction’. This meant that Mr Ivey was later able to recognise the key cards and bet accordingly.
Initially, he was betting £50,000 a hand but, having edge sorted the cards, he asked the casino’s permission to raise the maximum stake to £150,000. Mr Ivey maintains in his claim that Crockfords’ owners were well aware how edge sorting worked and only have themselves to blame. He says that casinos frequently accede to advantage players’ special requests because they do not want to deter them from playing. Crockfords, the oldest private gaming club in the world, initially agreed to transfer Mr Ivey’s winnings to his bank account, but has returned only his £1million stake. The casino is owned by Genting, a Malaysian gaming corporation, which sent investigators to London to question employees and scrutinise hours of CCTV footage.
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Originally Posted by Dan Druff
