More Details On Poker Pro Phil Ivey's Alleged Cheating While Playing Baccarat At The Borgata

Poker pro Phil Ivey is facing a lawsuit from an Atlantic City casino for allegedly cheating the house out of $9.6 million during a series of trips in 2012.

Ivey has been accused of spotting manufacturing defects in the cards while playing baccarat at The Borgata Hotel Casino. The suit also named the manufacturer of the cards, Gemaco Inc. of Blue Springs, MO. In addition, Ivey’s alleged accomplice, Cheng Yin Sun, was named in the complaint. Sun allegedly accompanied Ivey and gave instructions to the dealers.

In April 2012, Ivey first contacted Borgata about a visit to play baccarat for high stakes. “Because of his notoriety as a high-stakes gambler, and the amount of money he intended to gamble, Ivey was able to negotiate special arrangements," the 58-page complaint said.

The casino said that Ivey requested a private pit, a dealer who spoke Mandarin Chinese, one eight-deck shoe of purple Gemaco Borgata playing cards to be used for the entirety of each session, as well as an automatic card shuffling device to be used to shuffle the cards after each shoe was dealt. According to the complaint, Ivey said it was because he’s superstitious.

“Ivey misrepresented his motive, intention and purpose and did not communicate the true reason for his requests to Borgata at any relevant time,” the casino alleged. “Ivey’s true motive, intention, and purpose in negotiating these playing arrangements was to create a situation in which he could surreptitiously manipulate what he knew to be a defect in the playing cards.”

The technique Ivey was accused of using to gain an advantage over Borgata, called “edge sorting,” is the same one he was accused of using against Crockfords Casino in the United Kingdom in August 2012. Crockfords decided to withhold $12.1 million of Ivey’s winnings. The poker pro eventually decided to sue Crockfords, later admitting that he did notice defects in the cards, but that it wasn’t actually cheating. That case is still pending over in London.

The technique “exploits manufacturing defects in playing cards in order to ‘mark’ cards without the player actually touching, defacing, or placing a physical mark on the cards,” the Borgata lawsuit said. “During play, Ivey and Sun used the accommodations they requested from Borgata to ‘turn’ strategically important cards so that they could be [distinguishable].”

Borgata said that the edge sorting “changed the overall odds of the game from an approximate 1.06 percent house advantage to an approximately 6.765 percent advantage for Ivey.”

Borgata is also seeking a judgment against Gemaco for “breach of contract”, among other allegations, for “delivering defective and asymmetrical cards that were unsuitable for baccarat.”

The federal lawsuit was filed April 9, and as of April 16 the 38-year-old Ivey had not issued a public statement in response to the alleged cheating in Atlantic City, the town in which he got his first taste of casino gambling during the mid-1990s.

Ivey’s official Twitter account did retweet a link to an article with the headline, “Top-10 reasons Phil Ivey’s baccarat play shouldn’t be called cheating.”

No criminal charges have been filed against Ivey.

Ivey, winner of nine World Series of Poker bracelets, has earned more than $30 million from playing poker—live and online—during his storied career.

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