It was a battle that pitted the world’s greatest poker player against one of the U.K.’s oldest and most prominent casinos.
The house won, but the player is coming back for round two.
Phil Ivey, an American poker pro with a collection of championship bracelets and tens of millions in career winnings, has announced he will appeal a High Court decision denying him millions he won from Crockfords Club casino.
The decision was part of the biggest court battle in U.K. casino history, and it involved a baccarat scandal with overtones of a James Bond thriller.
Much like Bond, Ivey is a fan of baccarat. In 2012, he won millions while playing punto banco, a baccarat variant, at Crockfords. But casino owners felt there was something fishy about Ivey’s hot streak.
The casino claimed Ivey and a companion, expert gambler Cheung Yin Sun, were stacking the odds in their favour by employing a gaming strategy called “edge sorting.” Edge sorting allows players to read cards by identifying imperfections on the back. These flaws give players a significant edge by allowing them to identify strong cards and bet accordingly.
Crockfords alleged Ivey and Sun made a variety of unusual requests in order to gain this advantage. These requests included a dealer who could speak Mandarin, a specific brand of playing cards, cycling through various decks of cards to find a “lucky” deck and asking the dealer to rotate strong cards “for luck.”
Ivey ended the session with more than £7 million in earnings. Crockfords declined to wire him the money, although it did reimburse his stake. Ivey filed a lawsuit in an attempt to recoup the cash. The case was dismissed last month, and now Ivey has formally filed paperwork to appeal the decision. He has argued that there is a fundamental difference between cheating and merely exploiting a casino’s weakness.
Reversing the court’s decision might be a long shot, but as thousands of poker players have discovered, it’s never smart to bet against Phil Ivey.
