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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.
Only the casinos are allowed to cheat you out of your money!
Smart people know that the media is almost 99% fake news. Smart people know that.
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?
Or did they simply keep the ill-gotten gains?
Also, he deserved to keep the money he won in other games. That was bull. Money is fungible, he made those bets and won.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Ok, I get this particular instance, it is sort of "cheating", but I still cannot get over how you are somehow not allowed to USE YOUR BRAIN to count cards in order to win in a casino. Yes, I know it is not illegal to count cards (I mean how would someone go around proving it beyond reasonable doubt), but casinos (except in NJ) are allowed to ban players who can win, which is mostly the same thing. ;)
Anyway, I try not to think about it too much (to avoid having my brain explode), and I just enjoy going to Las Vegas, with the inexpensive luxurious hotels, nice buffets, shows etc and before I leave I try to do my part sustaining the system by dropping a quarter in a slot machine
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Did you play baccarat in Europe. There are three major varieties of baccarat. In North American casinos, Punto Banco is common. I understand in Punto Banco all players are playing against the house, similar to blackjack.
The term "fake news" has been thrown about -- and misapplied -- far too freely of late.
Fake news is a deliberate fiction on the part of the writer, with an intent to deceive.
It is not the same as a news story reported in good faith, but with errors.
And BTW, it doesn't matter that it was the dealer who was rotating the cards, not the players. The players tricked the dealer into rotating them so as to change the odds of the game. You can't do that.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Con: ... is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence, used in the classical sense of trust.
Persuade (someone) to do or believe something by lying to them.
A confidence trick
I don't see where he lied, so I think the word is misapplied. The second definition comes a little bit closer, but casinos are very much aware that gamblers are adversaries, not allies.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Opening Arguments made a podcast about this case, give it a listen if you want to have the case entertainingly explained from a legal point of view: http://openargs.com/oa32-phil-...
I wonder if this judge also believes that casinos have a "mutual obligation" to problem gamblers to make sure that they're not gambling money intended for other purposes? Because the way I always notice the headlines, it's usually "Man embezzles funds, gambles it all away at the casino." No one ever seems to ask the casino for that money back.
This is just another way of the innate bias in the legal system - where corporations, no matter how sleazy their business practices, get different rules.
Remember kids! Only the casinos are allowed to cheat you out of your money!
Its not cheating you out of anything when you ignore the fact that the statistical probabilities are against you. As my statistics 101 professor explained (literally, he used casino games examples all the time) you are either:
(1) Paying the "I didn't pay attention in math class" tax.
or
(2) Paying someone else to play cards with you.
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.
Essentially they were playing with marked cards, because Sun had memorized subtle flaws on the back of the cards. That's generally regarded as cheating in any card game.
When you play Baccarat in AC or in Europe, you play against the casino. Other players only bank games in places like non-Indian casinos in California.
Also, he did not cheat.
The casino has a duty to protect the game. They agreed to all his requests. This is the equivalent of the dealer accidentally flipping over the hole card at Blackjack and you taking advantage of it. The judge made a very boneheaded ruling and I hope that Ive appeals.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Smart people know that Faux News is almost 99% fake news. Smart people know that.
FTFY
Slashdot has had gambling stories (especially around people trying to beat the casino through math) at least since the book Bringing Down the House was published.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Electronic shufflers are USB devices connected the the casino's backroom servers. The hack here was that the cards were marked by uneven backside designs, so the random result was revealed too early to the player.
Everything at a casino is now RFID/Camera/Magnetic tracked... there's computers recording video of your every move. This is a case of a hack to defeat the casino's randomness.
Forced error... they shouldn't have let Ivey select a deck that gave him the down cards' identity.
No, Baccarat is a game where the player selects to bet on "Player" or "House" where "House" has a slight advantage... a player who bets on "House" too often is likely to be given an offer to invest in the casino.
It's a money-losing party for the casino, but a chance to meet people associated with a potential investor. Ivey cheated with his selection of the cards, giving him more of a win ratio than the house would have paid in a fair game.
Nice anti-gambling speech, but this is about baccarat where if you bet on "House" you have an advantage. This is why this game is only offered to potential new investors and not the general public.
I don't understand exactly how they violated any 'mutual obligation'. Ivey and Cheng made certain requests of the casino about how they would like to play. The casino agreed to their terms. Granted, Ivey and Cheng had some knowledge that the casino was not privy to, specifically the asymmetrical pattern on the cards. But this was something that the casino should have known (casinos provide the cards). Ivey and Cheng made no attempt to conceal anything from the casino.
If I engaged in some game with an opponent and I had a better understanding of the mechanics and probabilities than they did, would I be cheating? Would I be under some obligation to explain a playing or betting system that I had developed to my competition?
Have gnu, will travel.
You're missing something here blackjack commenters. Baccarat's decision is to bet on "Player" or "House" to win the hand... so you can steal the house's advantage and turn this into a player advantage game. Play as "House" too much and you're offered an investment into the casino and the game is over. This is really a reason to invite a rich guy into the office space and take his money as either a loser or an investor.
Other player advantage games such as "Beat the Deck" are played to reward people who have done something to make the casino better. This one is limited by the amount in the dealer's tray, and designed to create large (five-figure and taxable) rewards that are uneven based on luck. It's a way of making friends uneven.
I get how edge sorting (the name of the technique used) works. It's been a known advantage play move for decades and explanation of this exploit has been in print both in advantage play (Abram's casino tactics book) and casino game protection literature(Steve Forte's book). Shame on paid casino managers/executives for not being aware of it.
It's not illegal to use marked cards if neither you nor a compatriot marked the cards. Look up the case law if you don't believe me. If someone accidentally bends a corner of a card, you don't have to pretend not to notice; you can legally use that info as long as you didn't do it yourself and the guy didn't do it for your benefit.
I've made the point in other posts, but it's the casino's responsibility to protect their games. The casino provided the cards, the casino trained dealer rotated the cards thus allowing edge sorting to be used, the pit personnel and surveillance observed this, and had no problems with it. Ivy and his partner never touched the cards and didn't alter the cards in any way. This was a social engineering attack on a casino's greed and incompetence, but it was not cheating.
This was a horrible decision by the judge.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
The Casino agreed to the cards, so this forms part of the rules. This agreement was also up front, a choice both sides were free to agree or not and the Casino agreed it.
Reversing this decision is cheating for the Casino.
But he knowingly used marked cards and it could be assumed that he knew the other players were unaware of this. He could not possibly believe that the other players knowingly consented to playing against him with cards that only he knew were marked. The implicit understanding in the game is that the cards are not marked. Isn't that some form of fraud?
Not exactly. Those cards do not meet the definition of "marked" cards because they had not been altered in any way and in fact met the casino's specifications even after being used. Ivey did not mark them, nor did anyone else, neither a player nor a conspiring dealer. Wasn't this mini-baccarat, where players never touch the cards? This was simply "advantage" play, which is not illegal. Exploiting a flaw in the game is not illegal, though of course the house can give you the boot for any reason, if they so desire. The shocking part is that a court would side with the casino despite them knowingly allowing a flaw into play and allowing players to rack up substantial winnings without cutting them off.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
If Ivey and his associate hadn't won SO MUCH in such a short time, and instead had a strategy of losing back some of the winnings (or not using their tactic to win quite as much), they might have actually gotten away with this. It's always suspicious when someone goes on a hot run, especially when it is over multiple visits. I've met Ivey (from my poker days), he's clearly a really talented guy - but he's also a degenerate gambler, and his greed did him in.
Makes sense. :)
Typo - change that sig - it should read "you were molested as a foal"
Poor Trigger, he ended up being Rogered on TV for years.
The slots are rigged. They appear "random". They are not. They are programmed to show a near-jackpot for every loss.
They are at least quasi-random, they are not programmed to give specified outcomes (you can look up how they work).
It is the game design (i.e. the inherent probabilities) which make it appear as if there are near-jackpots so often. The situation is comparable to the error people make when they think that 5 heads in a row is less likely than H-H-T-H-T. That is it is humans ascribing meaning to equally probable random outcomes (from the PoV of probability, HHHHH is no more significant than HHTHT). The idea of a "near-jackpot" is a matter interpretation, what players are witnessing as a "near" is a kind of probabilistic pareidolia.
That is not to say the machines are not carefully designed to hook people and compromise their rational free will, they clearly are! The lights, colors the general fit are arranged to induce a trance-like state. BUT the probability of hitting some "near win" combination is already so very high it's simply not necessary to program in certain combinations. (The same applies to bad beats in Poker btw). Showing the random outcomes tricks people with great efficacy. Ditto for payout ratios, which is why the idea of the well-played machine, "I've been playing this one so long it has to pay out eventually" is just another form of gambler's fallacy.
It's rigged with maths as effectively as if it were rigged to show certain combinations at certain times. Yet the marketing seems to suggest that gamblers have a real chance of striking it rich: Never have I seen marketing highlighting the fact that "each coin you put in the machine cements your losses" or "the longer you play the greater the certainty of your losing" That's not that too distant from fraud.
Only losers quit ... but, of course, "gamble responsibly!"
Typo - change that sig - it should read "you were molested as a foal" :)
Poor Trigger, he ended up being Rogered on TV for years.
Well played, LOL :-D
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"Nevada casinos post fifth straight fiscal year net loss" -- http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/nevada-casinos-post-fifth-straight-fiscal-year-net-loss
"Las Vegas casinos are losing big in China" -- http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/02/investing/las-vegas-casinos-struggle-in-macau/index.html
"Pay No Attention to Money-Losing Casinos. Let’s Build More Casinos" -- http://business.time.com/2014/01/31/pay-no-attention-to-money-losing-casinos-lets-build-more-casinos/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"'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."
In other words, this lawyer is blatantly fleecing is client by pressing a case he knows to be unwinnable. Precisely this statement is a long established legal standard regarding casino gambling. What this guy did would actually be considered cheating (or bad enough manners to justify banning from a tournament at the very least, meaning his WSOP wins are now in question) in any normal game of cards, but card counting is very much not. Despite this, the latter has always been completely disallowed in blackjack, with this restriction being given the force of law several times in areas where gambling is a significant source of tax revenue. This is precisely the reason that professional poker players play poker; you play solely against other players rather than the house, so the house has little or no interest in corrupting the fairness of the game. As a professional gambler, he would definitely be aware of this, so even attempting to get away with it, regardless of whether his actions were ethically defensible, is profoundly stupid.
Any casino that agrees to use someone else's cards has accepted the dare and does not deserve to chicken out.
But this is the year of the chicken.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I'm kind of having a hard time seeing how this story is either "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters". Sure some nerds like to gamble and might even be interested in the story but there is nothing particularly nerdy about this from what I can see. And it certainly isn't something that matters.
Fake news is a deliberate fiction on the part of the writer, with an intent to deceive. It is not the same as a news story reported in good faith, but with errors.
If the publisher or journalist do not demand adequate fact checking and confirmation then it is a distinction without a difference. If a news organization publishes some "fact" they come across without bothering to confirm its veracity properly then they are not reporting in good faith. They are simply chasing advertising dollars. Now ever quality journalists can be fooled from time to time but there is WAY too much in the way of "news" that is just a reposting of something from Twitter or Facebook that lazy journalists couldn't be bothered to do the hard work to confirm.
ntr
I side with the players, Ivey and Sun, not the casino.
The issue is whether edge sorting is a legitimate technique or is it cheating.
The rules are established before the game is played. If a player uses his skills, vision or intellect, after that point, it is legitimate. When the casino bet that its cards were impervious to edge sorting (a known technique), the casino lost. It lost because it was arrogant in believing in its own design.
Besides, Sun making the request to rotate the sixes through nines should have been enough to clue-in the casino. But it agreed to the request.
(||) Nehmo (||)
There's definitely more to this story than the main article talks about. I have some questions I'd love to know the answers to.
1) Why did they ask for a judge to rule rather than a jury? That may have been a tactical error on the part of Ivey's legal team.
2) Is Cheng Yin Sun a US citizen? If not, why was she still allowed in the USA after going to jail? Is this more favoritism to the rich? Typically you're deported from the US if you're not a citizen and you do something that gets you thrown in jail.
3) Why did it apparently take years for the casino to figure out what happened? And how did they find out? Did someone connected to Ivey rat them out? Was that person or those people paid for finking on him?
It depends on your definition of "winning".
The only definition of winning that matters is leaving with more money than you brought to the table. Any other definition is nothing more than an attempt to rationalize losing.
Except that the judge ruled that they DID meet the legal definition of marked cards.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
60 minutes did a story on this. Ivey did not cheat. He didn't mark the cards and he didn't manipulate his bet after it was made. He did request specific type of cards that he had trained himself to recognize by spotting inconsistencies in the card markings. The casino agreed and provided the cards. The cards were not manipulated in any way by Ivey.
I get the entertainment aspect. I personally follow a similar behavior.
Regarding the state lotteries. They are far worse than any casino. A greater con, but its the government so they get be more "evil" than even casinos. In my state a portion of the lottery is marketed as going to the "schools". What the government did was reduce the educational budget proportionally to the revenue generated by the lottery.
As I post there are 373 comments, so I apologise if I missed anyone else pointing out the remarkably impressive feat of Ivey's "assistant" Cheng Yin Sun spending hundreds of (possibly up to a thousand) hours training herself over four years to recognise minute variations on the backs of cards which she could detect when the cards were rotated.
...
Sun had spent, according to the New York Times magazine, hundreds of hours memorizing tiny flaws in purple Gemaco Borgata playing cards. ... She purchased souvenir playing cards from the Borgata, identical to the ones used on the casino floor save for holes punched in the center. She discovered that patterns on card backs, designed to be symmetrical, were not perfectly so. Sun trained herself to identify aberrations along the left or right margins of the card backs, no wider than 1/32 of an inch, the Times reported. ("Sun's mental acumen in distinguishing the minute differences in the patterns on the back of the playing cards is remarkable," Hillman noted.) So prepared, she helped Ivey on his way to millions.
...
... Sun visited several Las Vegas casino gift shops and bough
If that isn't news for nerds, I don't know what would qualify!
It also means that while she's nowhere near as famous as Ivey, in this enterprise she wasn't a mere "assistant", much more something like an equal partner: despite at least one comment above referring to Ivey having trained himself to recognize by spotting inconsistencies in the card markings, on the facts as reported (I read both the Washington Post article and the judgment linked to in the summary (fwiw I entirely agree with the judge and his reasons for making the judgment he did), *and* I read a New York Times magazine article linked to by the Washington Post article), the only person who could recognise the differences when cards had been rotated was Cheng Yin Sun.
In fact, if the New York Times magazine article is accurate, Sun (the NYT article calls her Cheung Yin Sun, but Cheng Yin Sun as in the judgment seems more likely to be correct) first did this with other people at several casinos, and then *she* recruited Phil Ivey:
"Over the coming week, Sun and her highly organized group used the same strategy to beat more Las Vegas casinos, including Treasure Island and Caesars Palace. They made a trip to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn. Eventually Sun recruited the celebrity poker pro Phil Ivey, who is also known as a high-stakes gambler at craps and baccarat."
Washington Post
The technique Ivey and Sun used was called edge-sorting. Sun was allowed to peek at the card before the dealer flipped it over. In Mandarin, she would ask the dealer to rotate the most valuable cards in the baccarat deck -- the sixes through nines -- 180 degrees as they were flipped. The automatic shuffler could randomize the cards, but would not alter their rotation. "Baccarat is a casino game well known for unique and superstitious rituals," Hillman noted in an October opinion. "Thus, Sun telling the dealer to turn a card in a certain way did not raise any red flags for Borgata." With the deck sorted, it was possible for Sun to identify which cards had been rotated. The pair therefore knew the values of the cards while they were being dealt, before completing bets. Ivey adjusted his bets, and once the pair edge-sorted the entire deck, he increased his bids to the maximum allowed.
New York Times magazine