Home / Poker News October 2014 / Lo and Behold: Ivey Loses London Casino Case
Lo and Behold: Ivey Loses London Casino Case
Posted by: Jo Martin - Thu, 2014-10-09 07:19
On Wednesday, the London High Court handed down a landmark decision in Phil Ivey’s case against the Crockfords Casino, a decision which turned out to be a rather controversial one. Despite the fact that to everyone who was following this lawsuit, Ivey seemed to have a watertight case, the High Court ruled in favor of the casino, raising more questions than answering in the process.
Ivey had played at the establishment over two days in August 2012, and he amassed winnings of more than $12 million at the Punto Banco tables. Crockfords then decided that because he was using a technique known as edge-sorting, they weren’t going to pay out the
poker pro.
The technique Ivey used, edge sorting, is one based on “reading” the patterns on the backs of the cards to be able to tell which card is which. As he pointed out, Ivey only used information available to everyone to secure his edge.
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Ivey never actually denied having used a special approach to turn the tables on the house. He repeatedly said he thought edge-sorting was legitimate strategy on his part and that he did nothing more than to exploit a chink in the casino’s armor, after the latter failed to take the appropriate steps to protect itself against a gambler of his caliber.
The casino has returned Ivey’s stake money, which amounted to about £ million, but it never sent him his winnings.
Representatives of Crockfords were indeed happy with the decision, declaring after the ruling that their company attached great importance to professional conduct and to its good reputation.
The statement seemed ironical at best, because it was exactly their reputation that suffered as a result of the ruling, leaving their “professionalism” out in the cold as the bitter target of the appalled gambling community.
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