Finally, a story about a millionaire getting his comeuppance after taking advantage of the little people — casino owners.
Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Anyway, poker champion Phil Ivey and a companion have been ordered to repay $10.1 million to the Borgata, an Atlantic City casino. A judge ruled that Ivey and Cheng Yin Sun took advantage of a defect in the casino’s cards to win at baccarat and subsequently craps over four trips to the casino in 2012. This is like Ocean’s Eleven if it was very tedious and instead of Andy Garcia tracking down the assailants a judge was like, “Give the Borgata its money back.”
Although, as the story from NBC Philadelphia shows this judge probably knew his decision would be quote in a lot of publications. Look at this flowery nonsense:
“This case involves the whims of Lady Luck, who casts uncertainty on every hand, despite the house odds,” Hillman wrote in his opinion. “Indeed, Lady Luck is like nectar to gamblers, because no one would otherwise play a game he knows he will always lose.”
OK there, Judge Shakespeare. But really, it’s not a simple case of cut and dry cheating. This isn’t a story about the New England Patriots.
Ivey and Cheng noticed there were irregularities on the baccarat cards that allowed them to know what was underneath and so they bet accordingly with this knowledge. And it’s not as though they were bending corners or wearing special high-tech glasses to pull this off. It was right there in front of everyone’s faces.
The Borgata claimed the pair exploited a defect in cards that enabled them to sort and arrange good cards. The casino says the technique violates state casino gambling regulations. But Ivey asserts his win was simply the result of skill and good observation.
The Borgata claimed the cards used in the games were defective in that the pattern on the back was not uniform. The cards have rows of small white circles designed to look like the tops of cut diamonds, but the Borgata said some of them were only half-diamonds or quarters. Ivey has said he simply noticed things that anyone playing the game could have observed and bet accordingly.
That seems like fair game to me, but a judge ruled on his own — with no influence from the casino at all, I am sure — that Ivey needs to pay back that money. This could affect a lawsuit Ivey filed against another casino for not paying him $12 million for winning at baccarat in the exact same way.
When reached for comment, Uproxx Heist Expert Brian C. Grubb confirmed that what Ivey pulled off in Atlantic City constitutes a heist. “I have thought about this for a long time (90 seconds) and I have decided that this counts as a heist.”
There you have it. Phil Ivey is Danny Ocean. Look out for the sequel where the Borgata makes Ivey steal from another casino and some dudes does a weird dance through lasers.
