Poker player Phil Ivey loses bid to reclaim £7.7m won using 'edge sorting' technique

Phil Ivey was branded a cheat by a Mayfair casino which refused to pay out £7.7 million in winnings

25 October 2017

A professional poker player was rightly branded a cheat by a Mayfair casino which refused to pay out £7.7 million in winnings, top judges ruled today.

Phil Ivey, 40, hit the jackpot in 2012 while playing a version of baccarat called Punto Banco, but the money was never wired to his bank account in Las Vegas.

Genting Casinos UK, which owns Crockfords Club in Mayfair, claimed Mr Ivey had cheated using an technique known as “edge sorting” - using small differences in the pattern on the back of the playing cards to increase his chances of winning.

He did not personally touch any cards while at the table but persuaded the croupier to rotate the most valuable cards by claiming he was superstitious, it argued.

Mr Ivey fought back, saying he had won legitimately and the casino had simply failed to take proper steps to protect itself from a player of his ability.

Mr Ivey, from Las Vegas, received his £1 million stake money back when the casino refused to pay out, but insisted on fighting the case in court

But at the Supreme Court this morning, judges ruled the casino was right to withhold the money, even if Mr Ivey had not been dishonest in his attempts to win.

“The court agrees it was cheating”, said Lord Hughes, delivering the ruling.

“The key point is Mr Ivey did not just watch the cards with a trained eye but rather he took active steps to fix the shoe [deck].”

He said the player would be obviously cheating if he had access to the cards in the shoe himself, but Ivey had “achieved the same result by duping the croupier and that is cheating as well.”

What is edge sorting?

Edge sorting is an advantage gambling technique in which players use subtle differences on the back of certain brands of cards to work out the face value of cards in the deck.

Players can establish whether or not a face-down playing card is high or low by looking for subtle differences in the pattern on the back.

These players then persuade dealers to unwittingly sort the cards into high and low values.

In most packs, all cards have identical backings, but some brands have unintentional irregularities. This means the two long edges of the card are consistently different and the pattern is asymmetrical on a 180-degree rotation.

Players ask dealers to rotate the face-down cards, saying they are superstitious.

Mr Ivey, from Las Vegas, received his £1 million stake money back when the casino refused to pay out, but insisted on fighting the case in court.

He lost his challenge at the High Court in 2014 and saw a 2016 appeal also dismissed.

But he went all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing he had “played an honest game” and wanted to preserve his integrity.

Paul Willcock, President of Genting UK, said after the ruling; “We are delighted that the High Court, the Court of Appeal and now the Supreme Court have all found in Genting's favour, confirming that we acted fairly and properly at all times and that Mr Ivey's conduct did indeed amount to cheating.

“This entirely vindicates Genting’s decision not to pay Mr Ivey, a decision that was not taken lightly.”

Stephen Parkinson, from top law firm Kingsley Napley, said the ruling by the Supreme Court that Mr Ivey had cheated even if he was not acting dishonestly could have major ramifications.

“This is one of the most significant decisions in criminal law in a generation”, he said.

“The concept of dishonesty is central to a whole range of offences, including fraud.

"For 35 years juries have been told that defendants will only be guilty if the conduct complained of was dishonest by the standards of ordinary reasonable and honest people and also that they must have realised that ordinary honest people would regard their behaviour as dishonest.

“The Supreme Court has now said that this second limb of the test does not represent the law and that directions based upon it ought no longer to be given by the courts.”

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