Phil Ivey, a nine-time Poker World Series winner is considered to be one of the best poker players in the world, naturally. Yet, despite Phil’s seemingly huge poker playing talent an American Casino in New Jersey has opened a lawsuit up against him – for cheating.
Phil-ing up the coffers
The casino in Atlantic City believes Phil used a tactic called edge sorting to help him guess the probable value of the face-down cards, a tactic obviously frowned upon by the poker playing community. To back up their claims, the casino states that it is adamant that he studied the back of each card for individual imperfections to gain that all important edge over the competition.
This sounds like a very difficult skill to master and yet the casino continues to state that the nine-time winner created a situation where he took advantage of a defect in the playing cards and manipulated that advantage or disadvantage from which ever view point you look at it for his own gains.
The interesting issue for us here at Fortune Frenzy is this. If the casino dealt cards which had a
defect, why use them? If a player then identifies that defect and uses it to their advantage, surely it’s fair game? After all, in football, if an opposing manager identifies the opposition left-back to be a weak link within the team, he will target that area, expose it and take advantage of the match and hopefully the result. And can anyone say the stakes are any less in football than poker?
Casino Quality Control
Strangely, nothing has been mentioned about the casino’s own quality control procedures. For instance, why didn’t the casino’s dealer spot the defect? Why wasn’t the game monitored to the usual rigorous standards and why weren’t the cards changed at regular intervals? This case has opened more questions than answers.
Yet, the casino goes on to say Phil brought an accomplice with him to give directions to the dealer to flip the cards in a certain order. So the dealer is involved in too? If so, the casino has been sketchy on this information thus far. Apparently the casino have also gone for the card manufacturer Gemaco for failing to produce quality cards free from manufacturing flaws.
Nevertheless, no matter the details of the accusation the fact remains that the casino is roughly about $10m (£6m) down so it’s little wonder they want their money back from a man which, you guessed it, has previously been accused of the same cheating tactic during a poker tournament in London a few years back. Yes, Phil has had the finger pointed at him before for cheating with the London casino which actually withheld just over $12m in winnings from Phil.
There is, as they say, no smoke without fire, so having a previous record of supposed cheating does raise alarms in the first instance. Obviously the casino in Atlanta must have known about the previous accusations Phil had, if not, it should have, and tighter controls should have been put in place.
The story is continually unfolding, so we will carry on monitoring its progress and bring you exciting updates. In the mean time, we’d love to hear your views on this case.
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