
Sorting Out the Law Behind Phil Ivey's Edge Sorting Debacle at Borgata - andrewljohnson
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2014/04/sorting-out-the-law-behind-phil-ivey-s-edge-sorting-debacle-18054.htm
======
Terr_
So if I understand this correctly, the casino alleges:

1\. The casino was using cards which, when viewed edge-on, were not
rotationally symmetrical. (A separate complaint against the card supplier.)

2\. Over multiple rounds of play, as players handled the cards, they rotated
them to encode a high/low value before returning them to the dealer.

3\. The players requested an automatic shuffler so that the cards rotations
were not randomized by the shuffling process.

4\. Players observed the edges of the "shuffled" card stack to determine
whether incoming cards were high/low, using this information to improve their
odds.

~~~
downandout
Players were not allowed to handle the cards. In this case, they were playing
mini-Baccarat. In traditional Baccarat, players are allowed to touch the cards
and even bend and turn them all they want, but all 8 decks are thrown out
after every shoe (i.e. touched cards are never played again). In mini-
Baccarat, players do not touch the cards, and the cards are reshuffled instead
of thrown away. This type of scheme only works in mini-Baccarat (and Punto
Banco - a mini-Baccarat variation), and the casino would only comply with the
unusual requests that made this scheme possible for very big players. Casinos
are very tolerant of high rollers - Caesars Palace was fined $250,000 a few
years ago for allowing a man to jump up on a Baccarat table and dance before
placing his bets.

In this case, Ivey had an Asian woman with him, and she told the dealer that
she was superstitious and asked that the dealer turn cards of certain values a
different direction. That she was Asian was important because the casinos are
claiming that Ivey requested that his dealers speak Mandarin Chinese, and that
the instructions to turn the cards were given by the woman in Mandarin so that
supervisors wouldn't hear and immediately object to the request. In any event,
the dealers complied. This incredibly simple strategy apparently worked at
Borgata and Crockfords in London, to the tune of over $20 million in combined
winnings. Because the casino could have simply said "no," I find it extremely
unlikely that the Borgata will prevail here.

This was much more of a social engineering hack than anything else.
Interestingly, because of this issue, casinos (at least in Las Vegas) have
purchased cards with a new type of background that looks like pixelated noise
- much harder to do this with.

~~~
dfc
Do you have any links to the pixelated cards?

This dancing story is nuts:

    
    
      > A complaint filed  by the board against Caesars Palace  says a customer was
      > playing baccarat in the high-limit baccarat room on Oct. 10, 2009. On three
      > separate occasions, the man climbed onto the baccarat table from his chair,
      > walked on the table and made a  bet before returning to stand on his chair,
      > eventually sitting down, according to the complaint.
      >
      > On the  second occasion, the player  performed a dance on  the table before
      > returning to  his chair, the  control board said. The three  incidents took
      > place over a 45-minute period, according to the complaint.
    
    

(I think this is what you are referring to. But it is from 4 years ago.)

Link to complaint:
[http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=30...](http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=3062)

~~~
downandout
Yes, that is the incident I was referring to...I guess I just read about it
last year. Here is the new card back:
[http://prntscr.com/3cjo5v](http://prntscr.com/3cjo5v) (here's a closeup:
[http://prntscr.com/3cjlqk](http://prntscr.com/3cjlqk)). This is much
different than the diamond design they used until recently that enabled this
scheme - [http://prntscr.com/3cjnne](http://prntscr.com/3cjnne)

~~~
dfc
They do not punch a hole/heart out of the middle of these decks anymore? When
I was younger my grandfather would always bring me decks of cards and they all
had holes punched out of the middle.

~~~
downandout
No, these days on the cards they sell in the gift shops they shave 2 of the
edges off. They still stick out if put in with other, non-shaved cards in live
play at the tables, but are more useful than cards with holes in them :).

------
jcampbell1
I think the writer deserves a ton of credit. This article was informed,
technical, and funny.

What I don't understand is how much information the players got. Did they have
to learn each half of the deck? That seems absurdly hard. I get the feeling
Phil Ivey was just along for the ride. My guess is the chinese guy could watch
how the cards were sweeped, adjust in his head which cards were in what half,
and recompute odds based on the backs. That is a bat shit crazy talent.

~~~
dfc
Deserves a ton of credit for record length sentences. A lot of those
paragraphs are two 50+ word sentences.

~~~
knodi123
They no longer award credit for that, after a high profile incident involving
a couple of poets out of jersey who were caught gaming the system with single-
sentence sagas.

~~~
willis77
I remember that case. Semicolon and Sons sued Sammy "Sentence" Splice, saying
his single-sentence sagas seemed somewhat salaciously un-salubrious.

------
ChuckMcM
Hah, there was a similar case in Vegas where the face cards had a darker back
than the non-face cards[1] and some players noticed it, and started exploiting
it. Of course no suits were filed, they just told the players not to come
back.

[1] The mechanism was root caused to printing the front of the card first,
then the backs, the card company did this to save money (fronts were all the
same but the backs were different) but all of the face cards were on one side
of the sheet so as the sheet went through the rollers the face cards (which
have more ink on them) slowed the cards down slightly giving a _slightly_
darker back (I couldn't tell the difference but folks said they could)

~~~
gojomo
I have to wonder in such cases as what you describe, and the lawsuits against
Gemaco: who owns the card company? Or who might have compromised the company's
manufacturing and quality-control?

(There was another lawsuit against Gemaco, for not providing decks that were
pre-shuffled as required: [http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/atlantic-city-casino-
loses-law...](http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/atlantic-city-casino-loses-
lawsuit-against-players-22454/) )

------
dfc

      > baccarat players  have a  long and  tawdry history  of introducing  some truly
      > bizarre superstitions  into gaming  parlors. Gently blowing on  the dice  at a
      > craps table is downright sensible behavior compared to some of what goes on in
      > baccarat pits on a daily basis,
    
    

Can anyone provide some examples of these tawdry and bizarre superstitions?

~~~
PeterisP
See the comment above
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7631481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7631481)
about casino allowing dancing on the table - it's a few levels above blowing
on the dice.

~~~
dfc
How helpful is linking to a comment that I wrote? I take it that you are less
familiar with baccarat than I am, otherwise you would surely be able to
provide an example that I did not write. Do you think the table dancing is a
common occurrence? If you read the official complaint that I included in the
comment that you linked to one gets the impression that the table dancing is
not a common occurrence at baccarat tables.

------
dsl
The core problem here is management at the Borgata is being pressured to
increase Atlantic City revenues, despite competition from regional casinos and
an overall downturn in gambling.

To try and boost numbers they will accommodate strange requests for changes to
games without fully understanding the reasoning behind the changes. This is
the same method Don Johnson used to win $5m from them at Blackjack.

------
polemic
This has some similarities to recent high-profile "hacking" cases:

 _" Other claims are interrelated, which is to say that certain claims depend
on the success of others to survive. And, at core, most of these lose all
oxygen if a court finds, as I suspect it will, that 1) there is no contract
between a player and a casino; 2) a casino deviates from its own well-oiled
protocols at its own risk; and 3) exploiting house vulnerabilities is not a
form of “swindling and cheating” any more than an automatic shuffler is a
“cheating device” (please cast aside memories of one particularly memorable
scene in Ocean’s Thirteen, and appreciate that no one is alleging Ivey or Sun
to have planted a corrupt shuffler in the Borgata)."_

So what if we compare this case with, say, accessing a website (e.g. the Weev
or Aaron Swartz cases)? Do you have an implied contract with sites you access
over the internet, are online resources published "at your own risk" and is
'exploiting house vulnerabilities' (e.g. disclosing information publicly that
you _intended_ to be private) a swindle?

On all three counts, it seems clear that the same principles apply.

------
ksaville
If anyone is interested in the advantage Phil Ivey had in the Baccarat game,
it can be found here (disclosure it's my site):
[http://www.uspoker.com/blog/putting-iveys-baccarat-
session-m...](http://www.uspoker.com/blog/putting-iveys-baccarat-session-
mathematical-perspective/7871/)

~~~
bgsacho
Thanks, this was a fairly informative number crunch!

------
nwhitehead
If you're interested in the mathematics behind this kind of stuff you should
check out Eliot Jacobson's blog [1]. He does mathematical analysis of edge
sorting, hole carding, card counting, loss rebates, etc.

[1]: [http://apheat.net/](http://apheat.net/)

------
ebiester
Now, what I don't understand is that Phil Ivey is one of the top 5 poker
players in the world. He depends on action in many of these casinos, some of
whom will no longer even allow him on the premises.

He's endangering his own livelyhood. Is he so far in debt that it's necessary?
Did he blow his bankroll and then some? What's the backstory that he's willing
to risk this much?

Now, Binion's is going to allow him in the WSOP, but how much action will he
lose?

~~~
downandout
Most of his action these days is in Macau. Also, a significant portion of
Ivey-level action in Las Vegas takes place in the Ivey room at Aria. I
seriously doubt they will bar him from playing in the room that literally
bears his name. He wasn't cheating, and I don't think this will seriously
impact his playing opportunities.

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andrewljohnson
It occurred to me that the main analogy to card counting is poor, regardless
of the law, but I found the article interesting.

In card counting, you never have precise knowledge of what cards will come...
it's always statistical, and you don't manipulate the cards with your hands to
create the signal.

It sounds like with this method, you literally know the next card to come and
base your bet on that knowledge. That sounds more like marking cards... like
if they were playing poker, and they were denting the Aces with their
fingernails.

~~~
aslewofmice
It can't be considered marking cards because they are not physically altering
them.

~~~
dsl
It is considered "edge sorting" because that is exactly what it is. This isn't
new, and if you mention the term to any gaming regulator or supervisor they
know exactly what you are talking about.

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easy_rider
lol donkaments

~~~
easy_rider
nice downvote. Lots of donks here DIAGF.

