There’s a reasonable video of the technique here. Yeah, I can’t see this hurting Ivey’s reputation with gamblers, just casinos. If anything, it makes him a bit of a folk hero.
Yeah, the whole thing seems to boil down to a pair of casinos saying, “we screwed up, but you don’t have a right to profit off those screwups.”
But I can understand why they believe they can say that. Essentially, they believe they have a right to a “heads I win, tails you lose” business. The odds almost always favor the house, but if someone finds a situation where the odds don’t, they have been able to make it the players’ problem rather than theirs.
The classic instance is card counting in blackjack, where they simply run successful card counters out of casinos. If they can say, “hey, there’s a flaw in our game where some situations don’t favor the house, but if anyone succeeds in taking major advantage of it, we can ban them from the premises,” then the next step is to say that they can get their money back as well.
I don’t think they have a leg to stand on here, but I can see how they got here.
Because of the slight inconsistencies of the print process, I think you’d basically need a solid colored background to completely eradicate edge sorting. Now why they don’t already do that, I don’t know. Those patterns most cards have are perfect for exploits such as these and for inconspicuous marking.
You could also make edge sorting, if not completely impossible, at least much harder by giving the cards a wide, solid border, with the printing just a small area in the middle (say, two copies of the casino logo, one inverted).
I’ve idly wondered in the past whether Magic: the Gathering tournaments require that decks have the cards all sorted the same way. Those have a definite asymmetry in the backs, and it could be very useful to know, for instance, whether your next card is going to be a land or not.
I think your solution is perfect. A solid back. Or Chronos’ suggestion of a solid border with some pattern inside the border if they feel that they must have a pattern on the back.
I don’t know why they don’t do this already, but I suspect that a solid back/border card may be easily marked by chance, and once a card gets a scratch on the solid portion of the back, that card is marked forever. I am pretty sure with today’s technologies and plastic coating techniques, scratching a card back isn’t easy to do accidentally, but I don’t know. Maybe the action of pulling a card out of a shoe causes damage that a card with a diamond pattern won’t show.
I am guessing it boils down to money. The decks that Ivey exploited have backs which would hide the stray scratch without much trouble, but the same mark would ruin a solid-designed back. Maybe someone knows the inner workings of a casino and can help. That’s the only reason I can think of to keep solid backs from being used now.
A greasy thumb/fingerprint would also show up well(reflected light) on a solid back.
An unorganized ramble from an old retired casino guy touching on a few of the points mentioned. This stuff is more complicated than casual observers realize.
Cards get dirty quickly; a dark, kinda waxy gunk builds up on them. Solid color backs would soon have distinguishable spots. Also, without a casino logo people could bring their own cards and switch them in. Used decks sold by casinos always have a hole drilled in them or a corner cut off to prevent prevent people switching them into games.
Some places have used a white back with dual logos – Golden Nugget, for one. Big white spaces get dirty fast and the casino has to be willing to spend the money to replace cards more often.
The finish on cards is a big consideration when it comes to ease and speed of dealing. Card companies occasionally try something new but they don’t often go over well. I recall getting a shipment of cards that were so slippery the blackjack dealers couldn’t stack them and hold them to get the cards into the shoe – back to the old brand.
Getting into the card making business is difficult if you want to sell to Nevada casinos. All manufacturers of gambling equipment who sell in Nevada must be licensed and everything they sell anywhere in the world must adhere to the Nevada regulations – so upstart young innovators have a tough time going against tradition.
The bigger the solid color area on card backs, the easier it is to spot tiny flaws. Part of the reason for the eye-dazzling traditional patterns is to help disguise those tiny scratches and dirt spots that cards pick up in use; that means the cards can be used longer, saving the casino money. Plastic cards last longer but aren’t often used by experienced, knowledgeable casino management because once plastic cards become marked, they stay marked … and they stay in the game. Paper cards may become marked but they will be replaced within a few hours. Plastic cards are common in poker rooms because there is no house money at stake.
To further complicate things, the traditional eye-dazzling backs came about not only to help hide the unintentional marks and scratches cards pick up during use, they were also designed with the intention of helping to hide small maneuvers skilled dealers might make with the deck, for example, cards without white borders make dealing seconds harder to detect. Remember, the game operators (not the players) are the customers of the card manufacturers, and the manufacturers gave their customers what they wanted.
The border solution is one that I have seen somewhere, but you still have to be pretty careful with placement. The larger the border, though, the more difficult it is to spot the inconsistencies that would facilitate edge sorting, I would think (although, as Turble mentions, they may bring along with them another set of markings.) There’s an interesting cite here that goes through a whole mess of card exploits, including edge sorting. Fascinating read. The “juice decks” are particularly interesting.
Actually the most surprising part of this story to me: how can a hot Asian woman be an expert in playing card designs?
Maybe thats what they are doing here?
Previously, the story was that Phil Ivey won millions playing Baccarat at a casino, exactly what you would expect a legend like Phil Ivey to be doing so no real relevance to the average punter.
But now the story is that he beat the casino by exploiting a loophole, and the average punter loves hearing about those loopholes!
I was a judge at a tournament over the weekend; straightening new players’ decks was the single most common call I had to make.
Every time I made the call, I sorted the cards going each way an looked for patterns. Fortunately, there were none and all the misaligned cards were done accidentally. But if there had been any recognizable patterns, I would have given out a game loss at a minimum, if not a DQ.
Ah, good to know. One of my friends always has his cards every which way, and I know that it’s just because he’s sloppy about how he gathers them up and shuffles them, but it still drives me silently batty.
Lots of possibilities. The whole thing may have been her doing or Ivy may have thought it up himself. Quite likely the woman was mainly just a charmer meant to keep the men in suits distracted, but her role may have been bigger.
If I were to speculate, I would say the scam was probably thought up by one of several groups of Asian scammers who approach known high-rollers who have lost large amounts of money to casinos and offer them a chance to get even. Those groups often operate in baccarat or PaiGow rooms where high-rollers are common.
The article doesn’t state whether there were other players at the table. Generally, when marked cards are put into a game the group will either fill the table with their own people or they will ask for it to be made a private table so outsiders can’t get in and spoil the setup. I’m guessing there was at least one other person at the table who was the eagle-eye; someone with exceptional vision who had trained and practiced reading the card backs. He or she (possibly the hottie, but maybe somebody else) would then signal the high-roller how to bet.
There would also likely be some lookouts / accountants watching for approaching trouble and keeping track of the money so the organizers were sure to get their correct cut. There may also be a couple of people ready to create a noisy distraction to allow certain group members to quietly slip away if things go bad.
And there is the possibility at least one the dealers and/or casino floor supervisors was in on it to the extent that they spoke in favor of allowing the unusual card handling to take place, knowing that once you allow a high-roller to do something, you don’t want to piss him off by changing your mind after he has a lot of winnings stacked in front of him.
Pure speculation on my part, but my experience as both a player and as a casino insider tells me this was a group effort … and a very well done one, since that fact does not seem to be part of the story.
No more surprising than a hot Asian woman being a master of billiards to me.
And one of those casinos was…the Borgata. Again.
<sad trombone>
Well, that’s a recognized profession. Why would finding patterns in playing card designs attract attractive people? What would you even study for that?
It wouldn’t necessarily, just like billiards doesn’t necessarily attract attractive people. I don’t know what you’re asking here. She happens to have a knack for recognizing playing card designs (and edge sorting doesn’t seem to be all that difficult to learn), and she’s attractive, which probably works to her advantage.
If you were worried about it, you could just twist half your opponents deck 180 degrees when you cut it.
Bumping this thread to say that a British Court has ruled against Ivey for the tune of $12.4 Million US in a related incident.
There is an update on the Borgata lawsuit.
Some time around 1996 I was at a M:TG tournament where a player got busted for cheating this way. He had his cards in protectors with a small holographic logo on one side. Some cards were placed in top first, some bottom first, some with the logo on front, some with the logo on back. He could know which of 4 categories the next card would be in.
Yeah, braaaains.