Recently on X (Twitter), an old story about Phil Ivey went viral again. I’ve already written a little about it, but I want to add a few more thoughts.
Ivey vs. the casinos
More than ten years ago, Ivey and his partner, Kelly Sun, won tens of millions playing baccarat at casinos in New Jersey and London. But then came the court cases. They lost and ended up without the money.
In short, here is what happened. Ivey arranged with the casinos to play baccarat for high stakes, with specific cards. And he asked for some of them to be rotated. He explained this as superstition. Tiny defects on the card backs let him see whether the next card was high or not, and he played with positive expected value.
He won an obscene amount of money, on both sides of the Atlantic, and the casinos, naturally, didn’t like it. In London they froze the money and started looking into it. When it all came out, the lawsuits began.
Advantage player — pro or cheat?
Earlier this year, two men from Connecticut made around $3 million through bonus hunting at online casinos and sportsbooks. Unfortunately, I could not exactly cheer for my fellow grinders, because to pull it off, they had to buy personal data for about 3,000 people on the dark web. Accounts were registered in those people's names without their knowledge…
In New Jersey he lost because state law prohibits playing with marked cards. The New Jersey Casino Control Act says so directly (N.J.S.A. 5:12-115(b)): “It shall be unlawful knowingly to use or possess any marked cards, loaded dice, plugged or tampered with machines or devices.” The court said there was no fraud, but in the judge’s view, Ivey and Sun marked the cards themselves, just with the dealer’s hands.
In London it was a bit more complicated. There was no such rule there. So the court had to decide where the line is, and the case became a precedent. Ivey lost because he took active steps to play in a way that benefited him. If he had simply noticed a defect on the cards and used it, or seen the cards because the dealer was dealing badly, it would have been fine from a legal point of view. But here, as the judge said, he made it work himself, and those are different things:
It may be that it would not be cheating if a player spotted that some cards had a detectably different back from others, and took advantage of that observation, but Mr Ivey did much more than observe; he took positive steps to fix the deck.
Many people blamed the ruling on bureaucracy, corruption, and courts protecting the interests of the industry, not the players.
People took sides. Some were on Ivey’s side and tore into the casinos. The main argument: if the casino agreed to play, it should pay. Others considered Ivey a cheat. The argument: you can’t play when you can see the cards.
By the way, I caught a fair amount of hate just for quoting the judge in this case. Obviously, as an advantage player, I wanted Ivey to win the money. I wouldn’t even have minded much if he had won it Ocean’s Eleven style.
What surprises me more is something else: how the casinos ever agreed to play with him. If I were them, I would immediately rope off any table Phil Ivey sat down at. Even if it were roulette.
But what I really wanted to highlight is one more important point that many people forget.
The players nobody writes about
Thousands of less famous players run into far more predatory practices and lose their money without so much as a hearing. Here are just a few examples I have run into personally.
A guy I know once decided to try playing at a casino. He deposited $20 and got another $20 on top as a bonus.
What happened next was like something out of a movie. He started with bets of 40-50 cents. He won $100, then $200. He raised his bet to a dollar and won another $400, then $500. He raised it to $5 and ran his balance up to almost $10,000.
Then he started betting $10, and the losses came. When his balance fell to $5,000, he decided to withdraw. They blocked the account and didn’t pay out. The reason: with an active bonus, the maximum bet is $5.
The irony is in why the maximum bet is limited at all. Not to stop people from winning big. But to make bonuses with high wagering harder to clear. If the maximum bet is not limited, the profitable strategy is obvious: bet bigger, hoping to win right away and clear the wagering for certain. Instead of grinding it out for hours on small bets. I’ve written about this more than once.
And he won nothing on the big bets. Everything he won, he won at $5, as the rules allowed. At $10 he only lost. But the mere fact that he made those bets was enough for then to take everything from him, including his deposit.
Another guy I know had his winnings confiscated because of a clause hardly anyone has ever heard of. The rules said you could not play a high-volatility game first and then switch to a low-volatility one.
He won on big bets and then lowered his bet to finish the wagering safely. That’s why they confiscated it. He tried to appeal the decision, but the ADR1 took the casino’s side, saying the player had broken the rules himself.
Or here is a story I learned about recently, and this is done often. A player bet €1 at odds of 690,000 and won... Only instead of €690,000 he was paid €1,000. Because the rules say the maximum payout is capped at odds of 1,000. Very convenient: accept any odds, pay out 1000x at most.
So they take the whole bet. You lost, all good. You won, the payout gets cut. Same as with the maximum bet:
You lost, no problem. You won, we confiscate.
And there are thousands of stories like this on the forums. Even my own stories would be enough for at least one long read.
One Day in the Life of an Advantage Player
An unusual story happened to me at one “trustworthy” offshore crypto casino. In my ten years of practice, I’ve seen a lot from various casinos, but this case deserves a special spot on my list of absurd stories.
My case
I’ll start by sharing one. A six-figure sum was confiscated from me on a far-fetched pretext. Over several years, there was no way to resolve the problem. Going to court cost me €20,000. And that is not counting the money spent on finding lawyers and on endless consultations, including paid ones, just to find the right lawyer. I’m not counting my personal time here, though it is probably worth more than zero too :)
In my case, these expenses are justified: the win is an order of magnitude larger. But would I or anyone else bother with this if the win were $10,000? Or $5,000? Or $2,000? Obviously not. It’s pointless.
And there are thousands of examples like this. But people rarely talk about them, they often get no publicity and don’t go viral. Even though it is just as important.
I’ll tell you about my own court case in as much detail as I can when it is over. And if you have interesting stories you would like to share, send them in.
ADR (alternative dispute resolution) is an out-of-court service that handles complaints between consumers and businesses.