Phil Ivey learns Cheating is Not a Great Baccarat Strategy

They say ‘winners never cheat, and cheaters never win‘. I suppose that depends on your definition of cheating. The casinos in Atlantic City – as well as the US District Court system – seem to have a different definition than that of American poker pro Phil Ivey, who thought he had a great baccarat strategy when he took the Borgata for over $10 million back in 2012.

Ivey has spent the last few years fighting a legal battle over the incident. According to The Borgata, the American poker pro and his associate / accomplice, Cheng Yin Sun, used deceptive – nay, illegal – means, cheating the casino’s baccarat tables out of millions. According to Ivey, they simply used skill and acute intelligence to invoke a great baccarat strategy.

That legal battle is now over, or at least this latest segment of it. US District Court Judge Noel Hillman has issued his official ruling in the case, siding with the Atlantic City casino. Judge Hillman ordered Ivey and Sun to pay back the $10.1 million (AU$14mm) they won through duplicitous game play.

Great Baccarat Strategy vs Cheating the Casinos

Phil Ivey is considered by many to be the best poker player in the world. As it turns out, he’s pretty darn good at baccarat, too, when the scene is set just right.

In 2012, he teamed up with, Cheng Yin Sun, also an avid poker player, to hit the baccarat tables at the Borgata. But while Ivey grew up learning to count cards and calculate complicated variables in the blink of an eye, Sun grew up teaching herself a nifty little card trick known as “edge sorting”.

Edge sorting is the ability to observe the tiniest little differences and design flaws on the back of the cards – and being able to memorize which is which. It’s not an easy task, and requires a perfect photographic memory, but where such talents exist, one can effectively gain knowledge of the next card to be played.

By combining Sun’s impeccable skill of edge sorting with Ivey’s prestigious name and limitless bankroll, they were able to spend hours at the baccarat tables, winning millions of dollars along the way.

Fellow Poker Pros Side with Ivey, Sun

Unfortunately, while the vast majority of professional gamblers support Ivey’s claims of using a great baccarat strategy, finding nothing wrong with using a sagaciously perceptive skill to gain an advantage over the casino, the courts opinion was that the two were cheating the casinos.

Zach Elwood, who runs a poker training website that specializes in reading poker tells, told Huffington Post Australia why he disagrees with the judgment.

“The casinos make extremely large amounts of money offering games that are not beatable long-term. If someone is smart enough to beat the casino in a way that does not violate the rules, I believe the casino should just accept the loss and learn from their mistakes,” said Elwood.

“Ivey did not bring in a new deck, he did not mark the deck,” Elwood went on, describing deceptive tactics that would and should be considered cheating at casinos.

But that’s not what Ivey did. “He just used the casino’s own instruments against it. They even had plenty of time to figure out that something might be wrong, and they didn’t correct the situation,” he concluded.