Is it cheating or just giving yourself a small edge if understand how to do things like count cards at blackjack? It all depends who you ask, it appears, and whose money is active in the matter. World renowned poker pro Phil Ivey says a £7.8 million ($12, 420,72) winnings though he admits he used a technique that gave him a slight advantage over the average player, and certainly over the house as well that he never got paid for from London’s toniest Mayfair club was not cheating.

Edge Sorting for the Win

But Phil Ivey says his technique is legitimate and called ‘edge sorting.’ Apparently, it allows the player to determine cards at punto banco, a sub-genre of baccarat involving nothing but luck. Often.

The venerable Mayfair club Crockfords Britain’s oldest casino sees things just a little differently, to no one’s surprise. The club maintains that Ivey ‘operated a scam’ and that he ‘acted to beat the casino-bonus-free-money.com primary premise of the game’; and also this, they say, is reason enough to allow them to not pay him his massive win.

So, who has might and right on their side in this battle for the gambling behemoths? It’s no matter that is small Ivey has now sued Crockfords in Britain’s High Court plus the case promises become extremely high-profile, given who’s involved and the money at stake.

Ivey, 37 who’s considered one of, if perhaps not the, top player in poker today does not deny being what’s called an ‘advantage player,’ meaning making appropriate use of higher level mathematics skills to gain a slight advantage over your house; and he admitted as much in his present court submission. Ivey says while playing punto banco at Crockfords in August 2012, he made use of their incredibly discerning eyes by making note of tiny flaws in the cards’ deck imprints ( the people that would appear identical to most of us). These flaws are inevitable and miniscule flaws that occur during manufacturing.

Casino’s Duty?

Ivey says he’s not initial to utilize this exceptional skill, and says it therefore lays on any offered casino to check their card decks very carefully before placing them into usage; something Crockfords clearly failed to do. That’s their story and he’s sticking to it.

Except there’s really much more to it. The tale becomes a bit ‘Rainman’ish once we continue steadily to follow its trail. Because it turns out that Ivey actually had an accomplice well, he calls her an ‘associate’ who was included with him to Crockfords to spot the specific decks of cards with these design flaws. Ivey then (based on his own court claim) made ongoing needs for card deck modifications until his ‘associate’ Kelly spotted one by having an effectively asymmetrical enough pattern to operate this ‘edge sorting’ system on.

It went something similar to this, Ivey’s claim asserts: ‘Kelly would ask the dealer to reveal each card in turn by lifting the edge furthest from the dealer making sure that Kelly could identify whether or not the card was a seven, eight, or nine the key cards in punto banco. The very first time that Kelly identified an integral card, she told the dealer that it was a ‘good’ card which she wanted the dealer to rotate within the opposite direction to all the other cards and the dealer complied with the request. This way, the long edges of the key card became distinguishable from those for the other cards.’

Tends that after a point, Kelly had managed to manipulate the deck so the ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ cards were facing directions that are opposite. Heck, we’re thinking some body in eye-in-the-sky should have seen this trick before and spotted it, no?

Obviously, however, Crockfords didn’t do that, and Ivey made usage of their cap ability to recognize key cards with their bets that are own. Even though the casino initially was set to give Ivey his complete winnings, to date, it’s only returned the £1million stake he bought in with.

Per day late and $12 million quick, Crockfords’ parent company, Genting, now has investigators security that is reviewing and questioning employees whom are there that night.

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