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How A Professional Poker Player Conned a Casino Out of $9.6 Million (washingtonpost.com)
Phil Ivey is a professional poker player who's won ten World Series of Poker bracelets -- but he's also got a new game. An anonymous reader write:
In 2012, Ivey requested that the Borgata casino let him play baccarat with an assistant named Cheng Yin Sun while using a specific brand of playing cards -- purple Gemaco Borgata playing cards -- and an automatic shuffler. He then proceeded to win $9.6 million over four visits. The pair would rotate certain cards 180 degrees, which allowed them to recognize those cards the next time they passed through the deck. (They were exploiting a minute lack of a symmetry in the pattern on the backs of the cards...)
But last month a U.S. district judge ruled that Ivey and his partner had a "mutual obligation" to the casino, in which their "primary obligation" was to not use cards whose values would be known to them -- and ordered them to return the $9.6 million [PDF]. "What this ruling says is a player is prohibited from combining his skill and intellect and visual acuity to beat the casino at its own game," Ivey's attorney told the AP, adding that the judge's ruling will be appealed.
The judge also ruled Ivey had to return the money he later won playing craps with his winnings from the baccarat game -- though the judge denied the casino's request for restitution over the additional $250,000 worth of goods and services they'd "comped" Ivey during his stay.
But last month a U.S. district judge ruled that Ivey and his partner had a "mutual obligation" to the casino, in which their "primary obligation" was to not use cards whose values would be known to them -- and ordered them to return the $9.6 million [PDF]. "What this ruling says is a player is prohibited from combining his skill and intellect and visual acuity to beat the casino at its own game," Ivey's attorney told the AP, adding that the judge's ruling will be appealed.
The judge also ruled Ivey had to return the money he later won playing craps with his winnings from the baccarat game -- though the judge denied the casino's request for restitution over the additional $250,000 worth of goods and services they'd "comped" Ivey during his stay.
When you play baccarat, you are playing against other customers, never the Casino's money.
Did the casino return the money to the other PLAYERS he cheated?
Yes, yes they did. Did you not read the article?
Guess not. What a goose...
I don't know why you say you enjoy Las Vegas. The hotels I've seen are not luxurious, nor are they cheap. The food in the buffet is inedible - I wouldn't feed it to hogs.I did not find the shows enjoyable, and as a former wagering services IT guy, I don't waste money on wagering. I know the odds. Sometimes I was programming them.
As for the person doing the wagering - yeah, security folks have a saying - "JDLR" - just doesn't look right. Alarm bells should have been sounding at the oddly specific requests made, and gently refused.
I won't defend their business model because I agree with you, the game is rigged against you. If you can win, and you won't break even, why play?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
"Money is fungible, he made those bets and won." It isn't always that simple. If he didn't have the money in advance, then he wouldn't have been able to use it to play for scraps and hence couldn't have won that money, making his winnings proceeds of crime.
In fact, in many jurisdictions it's possible, and common, to have criminals hand over not just the direct proceeds of crime, but indirect proceeds like the returns on investment of stolen money as well. This is done precisely because if you cannot force criminals to hand that in, in many cases there's no substantial deterrent to crime.
Many financial crimes are civil in nature and if you can hand the money back and don't need your law-abiding reputation, there's essentially no punishment. And if the money is big enough, it tends to attract more money, especially if you're not the kind of guy who abides by the rules. Return on investment can be big enough to make a ten year jail sentence seem a sweet deal if you don't have to hand that money over.
So in order to aid crime prevention, and to prevent criminals from leaving jail / court with the financial power to be even nastier than before, and to deglamourise crime, many jurisdictions have laws on the books that allow the state confiscate any money or property even tangentially related to crime. And I think that's a good thing.
What I'd like to know is how did his partner get sent to jail for an MGM gambling debt? Anyone know? While looking for the answer, I did come across this interesting article about advantage players, that there are many, that the casinos know of them and don't call them cheaters because what they are doing is legal.
The games are mathematically in the house's favor...is that what you consider rigged? The odds are known for anyone who cares to look.
A casino wouldn't dare rig a table to make sure they win, if they got caught they would lose their gambling license. And, considering the amount of underpaid workers that roll through casinos, one of them would inevitably rat them out.
Personally I think Ivey should keep the money here, but he was an idiot about it. Had he done it just once he would have gotten away with it, but he dug too deep like the dwarves of Moria.
Everybody knows the deal going in.
Sort of. Some people think they're "lucky", or have a gambling addiction. Casinos know this and actively try to exploit this (very real) weakness in humans. The casino is using its intelligence to maximize the profits, and exploit a property it's noticed about players. They'll go as far as call up people (often problem gamblers) to encourage them to come to the casino through comps, etc. This isn't a secret, and it genuinely ruins peoples lives. Real harm is done here. What if your bartender called an alcoholic patron he hadn't seen in a while and asked them to come on down to the bar for free drinks on him?
When a person does the same thing and exploits a weakness in its system (that was NOT ruled to be illegal) it's considered wrong? Turnabout is fair play.
No different than getting casino to use dice you provide that pass the casino's checks for loaded dice but you otherwise know something special about that increase your odds playing craps.
If one learns that blowing on the dice for luck changes the outcome (say the breath causes that side of the die to be stickier), then the player, without touching the dice asks the dealer to let someone, anyone, blow on them, and you note the side that's blown on, and change your bet accordingly, you've not changed the long-term odds of the game, but have increased your knowledge of the next outcome of the roll.
The problem with these laws is that they confuse the short-term odds, the long-term odds, the odds of winning, and the odds of pulling a random card. Card counting is explicitly legal. Using skill to "change the odds" is explicitly legal. These people used a skill to change the odds. They didn't didn't change any element of chance. They didn't stack the deck. They just used x-ray vision to look at the cards, when the house still thought them unknown. The house played the wrong odds with them, but they did nothing that altered the fundamental element of chance. They could have lost money with this trick. Each hand was random. The house had just mis-calculated the odds with these skilled players. That doesn't sound like cheating to me. It sounds like using skill to gain an advantage in a game of chance, much like counting cards in blackjack.
Learn to love Alaska
Nope. It's actually rigged. Watch the slots.
Modern slot machines don't use the mechanics of the spinning wheels to decide if you win or lose. When you pull the lever (or push the button) the computer generates a random number and decides immediately if you are going to win or lose. The spinning wheels are just a display or a user interface to indicate the result to you. Where the wheels are going to stop is decided by the computer before they even start spinning. Yes, when the computer has decided that you are going to lose, it will spin the wheels and stop them so it looks like you were going win - it's part of the psychology of the game. Is it psychologically rigged, yes. Is it mathematically rigged, no.
but it's amazing the number of times they cheat people out of big jackpots by declaring that the machine had malfunctioned...
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Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.