By
Jerry Smith
Staff Writer Updated: 08/29/2019
Jerry’s greatest advantage is his extensive experience on the casino floor. His time as a casino manager taught him everything about what makes a player tick. Besides being a skilled poker player, he has deep knowledge of all live table games and gambling regulations in the US.
Borgata Casino seizes Phil Ivey’s $50k 2019 PPC haul, Photo by Phil Ivey Facebook
At the World Series of Poker (WSOP), professional poker player, Phil Ivey, cashed in four times to win a total of $133,398. The amount included $124,410, which he secured when he placed eighth out of a total of 74 competitors in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship in June.
At the time, he wasn’t aware that he was playing for the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. According to reports, Ivy never got to keep the six-figure cash winnings as the US Marshals Service had confiscated the sum because Ivey owes the gambling venue over $10 million.
Attorneys representing the MGM Resorts casino informed WSOP officials that they were legally authorized to take possession of Ivey’s Nevada-based assets. The US Marshals Service then took custody of the winnings, which later went to Borgata’s coffers.
In 2012, the Borgata Casino claims that the 10-time bracelet winner, along with his partner ‘Kelly’ Cheung Yin Sun, milked Borgata for $9.6 million in a high-stakes baccarat game. Forward two years later, the gambling venue realized that the pair had employed a method referred to as ‘edge sorting.’
New Jersey’s most profitable casino responded by filing a lawsuit against Ivey for a total of $15.5 million, which included several hundred thousand in compensation plus what they were expected to secure using the run of the mill house advantage.
Sources reported that though Ivey admitted to edge sorting at other gambling venues, including the Crockfords, Mayfair, London, he hasn’t apologized for using the strategy. He allegedly said that the casino should be blamed for employing faulty cards.
However, the U.S. courts didn’t accept Ivey’s viewpoint. In February, Judge Noel Hillman, U.S. District Judge for New Jersey, ruled that Ivey must reimburse Borgata a total of $10.1 million, which included a sum of $504,000 he and his partner had secured at the craps table later on that night with their baccarat winnings.
Judge Hillman had this to say in his ruling –
By using cards they caused to be maneuvered in order to identify their value only to them, Ivey and Sun adjusted the odds of baccarat in their favor. This is in complete contravention of the fundamental purpose of legalized gambling.
As a type of advantage play, the technique either involves competitors discerning or causing minuscule asymmetries in the patterns on the back of playing cards. As a result, this can then be employed to their benefit during regular gameplay.
While Ivey and Sun did not tamper with the cards during their play, they did request the dealer to rotate certain cards in the deck 180 degrees, which they explained as being a superstitious idiosyncrasy.
Borgata discovered that the New Jersey-born and bred Ivey had only one Wells Fargo account in his name, and it didn’t have any funds in it. Borgata’s legal counsel claimed that the professional poker player had transferred the sum to an account in Mexico.
Then in October last year, after the casino requested the court to track down Ivey‘s assets outside the state, a federal judge permitted Borgata to secure Ivey’s assets in Nevada. However, before the 2019 WOSP, the casino’s attorneys had failed to secure any of the money owed.
After WSOP handed over the cheque last week, it’s highly unlikely that Ivey will take part in another poker tournament on the U.S. soil any time in the near future. He would need to hand over approximately $10 million before he starts adding to his own assets again.
As New Jersey’s richest poker player, Ivey places 14th on the all-time money list, with estimated cash earnings of over $26.3 million to date.
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