Feds bust PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker

What site?

 

Bovada. That's the only thing I could find that takes American players.

 

Nice. I'm giving it a try too ... I would ask for your user name if they actually displayed it.

 

Side note: I *really* miss Pokerstars. Fuck stupid America for its bizarre hodgepodge of Puritanical authoritarianism and corporate liberties.

 

Phil Ivey is up to his old tricks again.
He's being sued by the Borgata in Atlantic City over $9.6 million won playing baccarat, on the grounds that Ivey was using a tactic called "edge sorting." Basically, it's noticing a defective pattern on the cards -- a very, very tiny pattern along the edge of the cards that probably .00001 percent of people on Earth would be able to even spot -- which allows a player to figure out who's got what.
Ivey might seem like a cheat, but the casino was just a bunch of dumbasses when it came to this. Seems like they have no one to blame but themselves for not smelling something fishy -- if anything even was fishy. If someone is smart enough and eagle-eyed enough to pick up on that small defect, I don't see how it's their fault. Even if the various requests Ivey made do seem like he was trying to stack the deck.

This is the second time Ivey has been implicated in a scheme/strategy like this. A couple of years ago he sued a London casino when they accused him of edge sorting and refused to pay $12 million in winnings.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poker-pro-phil-ivey-accused-of-cheating-by-the-borgata-in-atlantic-city/

http://regressing.deadspin.com/how-phil-ivey-beat-or-maybe-cheated-a-casino-for-mill-1562993963

 

This Ivey case sounds just like card counting in blackjack. When you're smart enough to beat the casino's advantage, they call you a cheater.

 

See, I'm with you. Why are either of those cheating? Just because you're smarter than they are?

He didn't bring in his own deck with marked cards -- he just figured out how yours are marked. Don't like it? Don't give him the particular deck he requested.

 

The accounts I read said what he was doing wouldn't have been possible without the dealer's help, because he was requesting that the cards be dealt in a certain way and it would have been a dead giveaway to what he was doing. And if the dealer was working an unusual way, the pit boss saw it. I'm sure they were thinking they had another sucker with a "system" that they were going to take to the cleaners, until they didn't.

Fuck the casino.