John Brennan

Staff Writer, @BergenBrennan

Ivey won $2.4 million in a 16-hour session, then won another $1.6 million in another visit.

As a teenager, Ivey has said he used a fake ID to get into Atlantic City casinos

Is it cheating if you win at baccarat because you notice an imperfection in the pattern on the backs of playing cards that you then use to your advantage?

How about if the game is played at Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City – and you win more than $10 million that way?

That has been the legal issue at stake for the past 2½ years in Borgata's effort to get a refund on the jackpot won by world-renowned poker player Phil Ivey, who grew up in Roselle and lives in Las Vegas, in four visits to the casino in 2012.

Late last week, a federal judge told Ivey that he had to pay the Atlantic City casino $10,130,000.

On Monday, Ivey's attorney, Louis Barbone, said in a statement that he would "look forward to our absolute right of appeal" while also noting that the ruling was made "without argument or hearing" beyond court filings. A spokesman for Borgata was not immediately available for comment.

HIS METHODS: How to beat the house at baccarat, Phil Ivey-style

BIG BETS: How Phil Ivey won $10M at Borgata in 107 hours

BLOG: Phil Ivey isn't the only gambler who beat the house – but not the courts

IT'S A GAMBLE: How to play baccarat

(NEW: More details on the saga here)

Ivey, 39, had claimed in a court filing last year that what he did to gain a betting advantage was no different than Borgata trying to outmaneuver him with "free alcohol served by only the most curvaceous and voluptuous females in the industry." He added that he and his playing partner never touched the cards – and that Borgata officials conceded that point.

Ivey makes special requests

State officials have never pressed criminal charges against Ivey for his actions, and in October the same U.S. district court judge, Noel Hillman, concluded that Ivey's strategy did not constitute fraud. But the same judge also affirmed Borgata's claim of breach of contract because of numerous requests by Ivey and a playing partner to various dealers to adjust the orientation of the cards, giving Ivey a significant advantage over the house in some hands.

According to court filings, Ivey contacted Borgata in April 2012 and asked for a private area to play mini-baccarat (played with a smaller table than baccarat, and with the feature that the players don't touch the cards) while offering to wire $1 million to the casino in exchange for an agreement that he could play for as much as $50,000 a hand. Ivey – who has won 10 World Series of Poker national championships in becoming a fixture on cable TV poker programs – also asked to be supplied with card dealers who spoke Mandarin Chinese; for only purple Gemaco Inc. playing cards to be used; and for an automatic card-shuffling device.

Ivey won $2.4 million in a 16-hour session, then won another $1.6 million over 56 hours in another visit the following month. In July 2012, Borgata agreed to allow Ivey to increase his maximum bet to $100,000 per hand, and he then won $4.8 million in 17 hours.

During a final visit by Ivey in October 2012, Borgata executives learned of a media report that a London casino was withholding 7.3 million pounds (then worth about $12 million) from Ivey – and that the New Jersey native had made the same demands for play there. Ivey dismissed the story to Borgata executives, according to court documents, and then won a more modest $800,000 in 18 hours there before departing with his final payout that – like the others – was wired to a bank in Mexico.

Card patterns

Ivey's playing partner, Cheng Yin Sun, had figured out that the geometrical pattern on Gemaco baccarat cards was not quite perfectly symmetrical. Sun, speaking in Chinese, would sometimes tell the dealer that some cards were "good" or "bad" and then ask the dealer to arrange the cards accordingly – a process known in the gaming industry as "edge sorting."

That allowed Ivey and Sun, once enough hands had been played to require an automatic card shuffle, to often have "first card knowledge" of each hand as to whether their first card was a favorable one (a 6, 7, 8 or 9).

Ivey, according to court documents, would make modest bets until the cards were shuffled – then make the maximum bet whenever it appeared to Sun that the first card would be favorable to a certain type of bet.

Hillman ruled that Ivey and Sun violated their obligation under the state Casino Control Act to provide the casino with a fair "gaming experience."

The ruling came down to whether Ivey and Sun had "marked the cards" – a phrase that typically refers to using a writing device or slightly defacing a card to make it possible to know the identity of the unturned card. Ivey and Sun persuaded the dealers to, in effect, do the "marking" for them.

Hillman wrote in his Oct. 21 opinion that "Ivey and Sun's view of what constitutes a 'marked card' is too narrow. Such an interpretation would undermine in a fundamental way the purpose behind the regulatory ban on marked cards ... a physical act is not necessary to alert a player surreptitiously of a card's value.

'Broke the rules'

“Ivey and Sun, and perhaps others, view their actions to be akin to cunning, but not rule-breaking, maneuvers performed in many games,” Hillman added. "Even though Ivey and Sun’s cunning and skill did not break the rules of baccarat, what sets Ivey and Sun’s actions apart from deceitful maneuvers in other games is that those maneuvers broke the rules of gambling as defined in this state."



Hillman, however, was unsympathetic to Borgata's claim that Ivey and Sun had violated their trust when they claimed that superstition was the reason for the request to place the cards in a certain way.

"Borgata casts itself as an innocent victim who altruistically provided Ivey with his five requests, including allowing Sun to play with him, because it trusted Ivey," Hillman wrote. "Borgata and Ivey had the same goal when they entered into their arrangement – to profit at the other’s expense.”

After ruling in Borgata's favor, Hillman asked the casino's attorneys to make a specific request for damages. Borgata asked for a refund of $9.6 million – or, if the court so ruled, for $15.2 million to account for "expectation damages."

The latter included $5.6 million that the casino estimated it would have won from Ivey if he played those same thousands of hands with no advantage (although it is unlikely Ivey would have been willing to play for such high stakes without his edge-sorting advantage). Hillman last week made no reference to Borgata's larger request in ruling that Ivey had to repay the $10.1 million.

Borgata cites previous case

The core of Borgata's argument is that the case is identical to a 2012 incident in which several baccarat players at Golden Nugget in Atlantic City eventually had to repay $1.5 million in winnings after the players noticed the playing cards were unshuffled – leading to their winning more than 40 consecutive hands. (The twists and turns in THAT saga produced another gambling melodrama that I summarize here. Also, here is a link to my Meadowlands Matters blog that has all sorts of other related posts.)

Ivey said the cases were not similar because unlike in the Golden Nugget case, the Superior Court judge did not rule that Ivey's actions constituted an "unauthorized game."

Ivey's attorney wrote that Borgata's own records showed that Ivey won 864 hands, lost 822, and tied 164 times in the four sessions – meaning the edge sorting did not ensure he would win hand after hand as in the Golden Nugget case.

Edge sorting, Ivey's attorney asserted, was "for betting purposes only" – and he added that a finding of breach of contract "does not automatically result in any quantifiable loss" by Borgata.



Ivey, who is divorced, said in his deposition that flirtatious female servers at casinos "distract you from your playing."

"Anything they can do to give themselves an advantage," Ivey added. "Everyone knows that alcohol impairs your judgment, and they offer that, and they have the pretty cocktail waitresses and they're all very flirty.''

A prominent poker player

The 10 World Series of Poker "bracelets" won by Ivey for prevailing in a variety of high-stakes poker tournaments such as Omaha and 7-Card Stud ranks second all-time. In 2006, Ivey reportedly won $16 million in just three days of head-to-head competition against Texas billionaire Andy Beal while representing "The Corporation" – a group of poker pros who helped bankroll Ivey for the showdown.

As a teenager, Ivey has said, he used a fake ID to get into Atlantic City casinos when he wasn't working at his telemarketing job in New Brunswick. Ivey won his first WSOP bracelet in 2000 at age 23.



Many professional gamblers and gaming industry experts have sided with Ivey. Prominent poker player Daniel Negreanu took to Twitter after Borgata first filed its lawsuit in 2014, writing, "No one in the world has empathy for Borgata in this. Stop playing victim because your hustle wasn't as good as Ivey's."



Ivey last month lost his appeal of a 2014 ruling in England that the London casino Crockfords did not have to pay Ivey his 7.7 million pounds of winnings (unlike in the Borgata case, Ivey never received the money from the British casino).

"It's not in my nature to cheat – and I would never do anything to risk my reputation," Ivey said in a statement after that ruling. "What we did was a legitimate strategy – we did nothing more than exploit Crockfords' failures to take proper steps to protect themselves against a player of my ability.''