The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic city is suing big time poker player Paul Ivey after claiming that he cheated to win a total of $9.6 million in baccarat. The Casino filed their charges against Ivey in federal court this past Tuesday and made headlines as Ivey is easily one of the most well known poker players in the world right now. According to the lawsuit, Ivey and a friend used a defect in the cards to their advantage so that they could arrange and sort the cards that were on the table while playing baccarat. This gave him the opportunity to cheat on four separate occasions that occurred between April and October of 2012 according to the casino.
The cards came from a Kansas City manufacturer, Gemaco Inc, and the cheating tactic supposedly employed by Ivey is called edge sorting which is a clearly illegal according to casino gambling regulations in New Jersey. Joe Lupo, the senior vice president for the Borgata Casino refused to comment on the ongoing legal matter and a lawyer for Ivey also would not comment on the lawsuit. Apparently the pattern on the back of the cards is not uniform therefore the defective cards can be sorted.
The cards each have small white circles in rows across the back that are supposed to be the top of diamonds cut off, but according to the Borgata Casino some of the cards only have a quarter of a diamond showing on them and others only have half a diamond on them. Therefore, players can sort out the possibilities of which cards might be which by simply paying attention to the diamonds. As a result the casino is also suing Gemaco Inc for manufacturing the defective cards. This is not the only lawsuit that Gemaco is facing right now as the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City is also suing the company.
According to the lawsuit issued against Ivey, Ivey and his friend would tell the dealer to flip the cards over in different manners depending on whether they thought the card was going to be a good card or a bad card. By keeping the good and bad cards separate Ivey was able to see after a few hands which of the cards had which designs on the back of them. He then was able to spot which cards were coming out of the dealer chute at will. Ivey also was smart enough to insist the cards be shuffled via an automatic shuffling machine because this does not change the alignment of the card so that he would still be able to see the defective edges of the cards.
This is not the first lawsuit against Ivey for cheating at baccarat. He also is facing a lawsuit in the High Court of Britain from Genting Group which claims he cheated them out of $12 million in a similar manner. Ivey has denied cheating in both cases. The star studded poker player has nine World Series of Poker bracelets and often calls himself the Tiger Woods of poker.