dave_j

I came across this article this morning:Poker player Phil Ivey loses £7.7m punto banco casino case - BBC News

Apparently Mr Ivey was playing at a private club where he won a considerable (7.7M sterling) amount of money. He reportedly used a technique known as "edge sorting" where a player identifies minute differences in patterns on the backs of cards. He didn't create the differences, merely identified them and associated them with card values.

He admits this but argued that he did nothing illegal merely exploited the club's failure to protect themselves from individuals like him.

The supreme court sided with the club emphasising that the game should be a "game of pure chance with neither the casino nor the player being able to beat the randomness of the cards that were dealt".

I'm not sure I agree with this verdict. The cards were the property of the club in the club under control of the club and surely the player used his skill to the best of his ability to increase his chances of winning, what's wrong with that?

What do you think?

dbd33

I think he won and they should have paid him.

Zoe Bell

it is like card counting. I never understood how that was "illegal". If you have the skills to keep track then why wouldn't you use them in order to increase your chances?

chawkins99

I remember this story from 2012 and thought the casino was pulling a fast one then.

I still believe he should get his money. He wasn't doing anything illegal.

Shard

Casinos aren't charities, perhaps?

scrubbedexpat134

But by the same token the Casino could also have been using the same method to cut down the odds of players winning, but came up against a player smarter they were.

caretaker

If they were too cheap to break out a fresh deck in a high stakes game, they should pay up.

Zoe Bell

Sorry , don't understand your point at all.

In BlackJack, for example, whats the difference between using your math skills to work out that taking another card on a twenty hand is a risky idea and using your math skills to work out that the cards in the shoe are currently in your favour?

Paul_Shepherd

I agree, he did nothing wrong, he should have been paid what he was due. Thats very unfair to him. Casinos are like Insurance companies....love to take your money, but will come up for all sorts of excuses to avoid paying out.

scrubbedexpat134

You decide on this one
National lottery players claim fix during £4.5m live draw | Daily Mail Online

Oakvillian

This. I thought one of the primary reasons for refreshing the deck frequently in any game (all the more so where a known high-roller is getting into it) is to stop just this kind of edge counting thing going on. The club's procedures failed it; they were presumably at liberty to exclude Mr Ivey, being a private club, but considered him a worthwhile punter to draw other patrons to the club on the back of his private high-stakes game.

Phil Ivey is very widely known in the gambling world, by all accounts. There is no way the club could have been unaware of his reputation. Maybe they were played; that, surely, is the nature of their business and they ought to have been better prepared for that.

BristolUK

BE World Exclusive
I can reveal one of the cards actually used in that game.

Oink

Why didn't he just keep his mouth shut and just put it down to a run of luck?