I appreciate this, but seriously, if Daniel Negreanu or David Williams came into my casino and sat down at the baccarat table, I’d invite them for some free champagne and say, “So what’s the scam here, because there’s no fucking way you came in here to just hand me your money.”
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The house is using the cards to run a game. The players are participating in a game run by the house. The players are not using the cards, the house is.
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He didn’t choose them. He asked to play poker and the house used the house cards.
In the end, his actions exposed the fact that the house used marked cards, and he pays the price?
Oh, New Jersey. Like I would expect better from that loose conglomeration of mobsters and their enablers.
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No, he did ask to use the specific brand and the casino accommodated him because they’re used to eccentric requests from high-stakes baccarat players.
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And because they know that even when they lose through their own idiocy and incompetence, they can always rely on the courts to give them their money back.
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Do you mean the Casino brand witht he Casino name on it?
and the casino accommodated
Yes, they did. They did choose to use their own brand of marked card.
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Because Nevada’s courts would have been more sympathetic to the gambler?
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I’d like to think that some court some where would be sufficiently upset that a casino was using marked cards to make them pay out (or, if not, then face legal jeopardy for the crime they’re guilty of, using marked cards) when hoisted by their own petard.
The player played the hand he was given. Everything else in a casino is up to the house.
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I guess that’s a different question - were the casino accidentally using badly cut cards, or have they been doing that intentionally to their own benefit?
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I’d like to think so too, and if it had taken place in nearly any other state the end user might have had a chance. But then, gambling isn’t a legal institution in those states.
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The article states he learned how to read these by purchasing retired cards from the gift shop. They were consistently cut, apparently, to create a slight aberration.
And what has happened here is that when you play the house, with the house cards, and win because you’re observant, they still win. Surely that is fair play. [eta: /s]
If the casino never took advantage of that before, I’d be surprised. But the casino just did exactly that, here, and got away with it.
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I’d think so too, but casinos aren’t interested in fair play.
If I were the judge I’d have told the casino to suck it up. And advised them to train their staff better and buy better gambling supplies.
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[quote=“AcerPlatanoides, post:31, topic:92984”]
the casino… got away with it.
[/quote]This basically sums up why gambling has never been of interest to me.
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I’ve never played Baccarat before, but can the house actually cheat if they knew what the cards were?
In black jack the house has to hit on certain numbers. In poker they have no control over the action, they just deal the cards. In both of those games the house wouldn’t have a direct additional advantage even if they knew which cards were which. Is the mechanics of baccarat different?
Occam’s razor says no one noticed what must be incredibly subtle tells before on what was assumed to be identical backers. In the article Ivey had to request certain cards to be uses, vs the casino always using them, knowing there was an issue with the cards.
Heck one has to wonder if there was an error setting up the plate or something at the press or in preparing the files. As one who has done plating before, off setting something a fraction of an inch is incredibly easy to do.
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whoops, forgot my sarcasm tag on that one line. Will fix now.
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The legal standard is the use by the casino, not benefit in the game by use.
The argument is did the player use the cards, or did the casino. I think it’d hard to say that the player used his own cards, although he may well be a greater expert in those cards than the house, I would doubt that, too.
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Speaking as a professional gambler who’s followed this case…
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It is not inherently suspicious for Ivey to be playing baccarat. Many winning poker players are compulsive gamblers, and Ivey is one of the more notorious examples. He’s lost millions playing craps. If I (lost my soul and) ran a casino, I’d deal to him. He is a profitable customer to have, and his presence is also good for publicity. It sounds like Sun was the brains of this particular operation, and she enlisted Ivey because they’d be more likely to agree to his requests.
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It is hard to overstate just how incompetent the Borgata was here. Edge sorting has been a known advantage play technique for decades. Even if you don’t have a brand of cards that’s routinely asymmetric, imperfections are always possible. Casinos include a half-turn in the shuffle process, or before putting cards into the automatic shuffle, for exactly this reason. Agreeing to rotate cards for the player, and never shuffling properly, is… insane.
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This is not the only recent example of Borgata being dumb and then trying to cheat their way out of trouble. Several years ago they offered a 100% loss rebate promotion. Any losses on slots during the promotional period, up to $100k, would be refunded in the form of free slot play over the next 20 weeks. Naturally, a lot of people showed up for a $100k freeroll, either win big or get your money back. (I was almost one of them, but I decided to hold off a few days, which saved me.) A lot of them were deemed undesirables “exploiting” the promotion rather than profitable players, and were banned from returning. Can’t get your money back if they’ll have you arrested for trespassing if you show up! There were lawsuits, naturally, but I don’t know what happened with them.
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The judge’s opinion is based on the idea that the cards weren’t marked originally, but by asking that they be rotated in a particular way, Ivey and Sun were marking them. This is a major stretch. (You do not mark cards by making a polite request. Marked cards don’t become unmarked if you shuffle them properly.)
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The judge’s backup argument is that any player shifting the odds in their favor is violating the “fundamental purpose” of the Casino Control Act, because the purpose of the CCA is to create tax revenue, and hence is breaching contract. This is utterly ridiculous, and also flies in the face of previous rulings, in New Jersey and elsewhere, that advantage play techniques such as card counting are legal. (Many casinos knowingly offer games at which a few skilled players can play with the odds in their favor, and they’re still generating plenty of tax revenue.)
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It is well established that “hole carding” - seeing the face of a card which is intended to be concealed, and using that information to your advantage - is legal. Given that, the idea that making correct decisions based on the back of a card is inherently wrong is perverse.
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Someone suggested, sarcastically, that Nevada courts would be friendlier to the gambler. Actually, yes, I expect they would. You can find a few outrageous counterexamples, as with any justice system, but for the most part Nevada does an exemplary job of preventing casino conduct which diminishes “public confidence and trust” in Nevada gambling. I’ve contacted Nevada Gaming Control Board twice, for behavior less outrageous than this, and they’ve ruled in my favor both times. In one case they summoned the casino manager out of his bed at home, after midnight, to come to the casino for a chewing out.
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New Jersey’s Casino Control Commission used to be notoriously strict. I’ve heard (but don’t have details or confirmation) that a few years ago their funding was gutted, and since then they’ve been lapdogs for the casinos. In this case, they have expressed no opinion as to the propriety of Ivey and Sun’s actions. That’s unconscionable. In this case, and several others recently, they’ve done an excellent job of diminishing “public confidence and trust” in New Jersey gambling.
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So, i’m guessing the judge is going to order that casinos stop running poker tables and any other games that rely partially on skill.
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Well, it’s impossible to shift the odds against the house at poker. The house collects a fee from the players and the players take each others’ money.
Blackjack is on weird legal ground, though. My (shaky) understanding is that casinos in NJ can only offer it based on the legal fiction that it’s a game of pure chance, which is why NJ casinos don’t kick out card counters (which would be admitting that it has a skill element), they can only change the game conditions for counters in ways that make them unprofitable. (Limit bet sizes, shuffle after every hand, deal very very slowly…) There were lawsuits about this in the 70s or 80s, involving Ken Uston, but I haven’t researched them in any depth.
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I am not sure that answers my question. My question was if the house knowing what the cards were would actually help the house at all.
Assuming it doesn’t then why would they KNOWINGLY use “marked” cards, as some people have suggested.
The law posted above said KNOWINGLY use. If they didn’t know, and it doesn’t appear that they did, for various reasons listed above, then they aren’t afoul of that law. Heck I wonder if they could sue the card maker for selling cards that are supposed to be identical on the backs.
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