Phil Ivey's Edge-Sorting Lawsuits: Crockfords and Borgata Explained
2012. Phil Ivey played baccarat. He used a technique called edge-sorting. He won 10 million dollars. Then two casinos sued him to get it back.
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Phil Ivey requested something specific from the Crockfords Casino in London: he asked if the baccarat dealer could rotate the cards after each shoe. Rotate them 180 degrees. A normal request, seemingly. Cards get rotated at baccarat tables sometimes because of superstition, because of habit, because players ask.
The rotation mattered for one reason: certain cards at Gemaco (the card manufacturer) have a subtle printing imperfection. The cards are microscopically thicker on one edge due to an excess of ink. When a card rotates 180 degrees, the thick edge goes from bottom to top.
With careful observation, a player can detect which direction a card is oriented. With very careful observation, a player might be able to predict whether a card is a high card or low card based solely on its slight asymmetry.
That is edge-sorting. And it is arguably not cheating.
The Technique
Edge-sorting works like this:
- You request the dealer rotate cards
- You watch the cards as they come out
- You remember the orientation of each card
- You use the orientation as imperfect information about whether the card is high or low
- You adjust your bet sizing and strategy accordingly
The edge-sort technique does not guarantee you know what the card is. It just tilts probabilities. A thick edge does not always mean a high card. But it means it more often than it should.
Over thousands of hands, a tilt in probabilities becomes a consistent edge.
At Crockfords, Ivey played for 19 days. He won GBP 7.7 million. The casino detected the pattern (unusual bet sizing, Ivey's requests for card rotations, the correlation between rotations and win rates) and refused to pay him.
The Legal Argument
Crockfords sued Ivey (and his partner Chew) in civil court. The question: did Ivey cheat, or did he use information that was available to anyone watching.
Ivey's argument: I asked for something that is allowed. The casino could have refused. I observed information that was available. I did not force the dealer to rotate the cards in any particular way. I did not mark the cards. I used my skill to detect an imperfection that the card manufacturer created.
Crockfords' argument: You exploited a flaw in our execution. You knew the cards had manufacturing imperfections. You requested the rotations specifically because you knew what the imperfections would tell you. You cheated the casino out of 7.7 million pounds.
The English courts sided with Crockfords. The reasoning: a player has an obligation not to exploit obvious defects in game execution that you know the casino does not know about. By requesting the rotations specifically to exploit the card imperfections, you breached the duty of honesty that comes with playing in a casino.
Not cheating in the technical sense. But dishonest play. And in civil court, that was enough.
The Borgata Case
Meanwhile, Ivey played at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City using similar edge-sorting technique on baccarat. This time, he played with a partner. One of them wore sunglasses and a hat. The Borgata suspected cheating but could not prove it initially.
Over three baccarat sessions, Ivey won approximately 9.6 million dollars before the casino caught on and stopped him from withdrawing.
The Borgata also sued. The legal reasoning in New Jersey was simpler: edge-sorting is a form of cheating. It requires "knowledge of some fact or circumstance not open to or known by the casino." You cannot win money in a casino through techniques that depend on insider knowledge that the casino does not have.
Under New Jersey law, that is fraud, and the winnings are forfeit.
The Comparison
What is striking about these cases is the legal variation:
- Crockfords (English law): You acted dishonestly by exploiting a known defect. Pay back the winnings.
- Borgata (New Jersey law): You used an unfair technique. Pay back the winnings.
- Ivey's home state reasoning: He identified imperfections in a physical product and used them. That is observation, not cheating.
The American courts sided with Crockfords' reasoning. Ivey appealed multiple times. The Borgata case went to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which ruled against him.
The Practical Implication
Edge-sorting in modern casinos is nearly impossible. Card manufacturers (USPC, Copag, Gemaco) now quality-control for this imperfection. The thick-edge cards are caught before they reach the casino.
Live casino platforms (Evolution, Playtech) use digitized card images, not physical cards, so edge-sorting has no purchase. And if you are playing on a provably fair platform with an RNG, the entire concept is irrelevant.
Ivey's technique was timing-specific. It worked because of a specific manufacturing defect in a specific era. It worked because he had the observation skill to detect the defect.
But it also highlighted a principle that casinos then encoded into law: even observational edge-finding counts as cheating if you are exploiting information asymmetry.
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