The 2,170-Player Chop

Spent a short while today finally taking some time to read about the resolution of the Borgata brouhaha from January. As you’ll recall, the first event of the 2014 Borgata Winter Open was canceled with 27 players remaining thanks to allegations of cheating committed by one player, Christian Lusardi, by means of introducing counterfeit chips into the event.

Have to use that word “resolution” tentatively, I suppose, as it seems like there will be more to come from this one, namely potential lawsuits filed by unsatisified players. In any event, about 10 days ago the New Jersey Department of Gaming Enforcement released its “Final Order” directing the Borgata how to distribute both the $1,433,145 in prize money that had yet to be won in the tournament (i.e., the total of the prizes scheduled to go to the top 27 finishers) as well as $288,720 more in revenue the Borgata had collected from entrants.

That adds up to $1,721,805 total. Somewhat surprisingly, the DGE decided not just to award money to the final 27, but also to refund $560 entry fees to 2,143 other players “who may have been impaced by the alleged criminal conduct who were eliminated from the event” without cashing.

The refunds to eliminated players total just over $1.2 million, leaving about $521K for the final 27. The DGE directed the Borgata to distribute that money “in equal amounts of approximately $19,323 to each of the 27 entrants” who still were alive in the event at the moment it was canceled. The Borgata also issued a statement reiterating the DGE’s directive and making known its intention to comply.

Many have been critical of such a “resolution,” in particular pointing out how the final 27 players, otherwise due to play for over $1.43 million, together came away with just over a third of that total.

Today I listened to respected Tournament Director Matt Savage (not the TD at the Borgata) on the latest Two Plus Two Pokercast explaining why he found the resolution unsatisfactory and also troubling in terms of how it might affect tournament poker going forward. Savage’s point was that given such a resolution, players aware of cheating in future tournaments may well become reluctant to make their awareness known to tournament officials out of fear that they may themselves lose potential winnings should the tournament be canceled.

I said back in January that there didn’t seem to me any wholly satisfactory way to resolve the situation that would prove satisfying to all concerned, but it does seem as though there were several different ways it might have been resolved that would have been preferable to the one chosen. And as Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz pointed out on the Pokercast, of all the possible scenarios imagined by both players and observers prior to the DGE’s order, few (none?) ever considered the possibility that nearly two-thirds of the unawarded prize money would not only not go to the players still alive in the event (and due to divide it up), but would go to eliminated players instead.

Anyhow, for more on the “Final Order” and what it lacks, check out Savage on the Two Plus Two Pokercast (he appears during the first hour) as well as Haley Hintze’s discussion over on Flushdraw.

Ivey on the Edge

The breaking story this afternoon in poker revolves around this new lawsuit brought by the Borgata versus Phil Ivey. Says PokerNews, the casino is suing Ivey for a whopping $9.6 million -- that is, more than the WSOP Main Event winners have been taking down over the last several years (although not this year with the new $10 million guarantee for first) -- an amount representing money won by Ivey at baccarat.

“The Borgata lawsuit alleges that Ivey exploited manufacturing flaws in playing cards during four sessions” of the gambling game that took place back in 2012. The claim is that Ivey used a method called “edge sorting” to exploit flaws in the cards used in the game.

Thus the Borgata is suing him, his “partner” who accompanied him during the sessions (Cheng Yin Sun), and the card manufacturers, too, with the charges including racketeering, fraud, breach of contract, civil conspiracy, and something called unjust enrichment.

If it all sounds familiar, that’s because we all already learned about “edge sorting” thanks to a similar dispute involving Ivey and the Crockfords Casino in London involving some sessions of Punto Banco (another baccarat variant) also taking place in 2012. Only there it is Ivey suing the casino who decided to withhold £7.8 million of his winnings after they suspected him of something similar. (Of note, Ivey admitted to “edge sorting” there, but still wants his winnings.)

I wrote about that situation here last spring, talking a little about this funny little 1966 Bond-ripoff called Kaleidoscope starring Warren Beatty with which the story seemed to evoke some parallels.

The immediate reaction to the Borgata lawsuit is very similar to how many were responding to the earlier story regarding Ivey’s suing Crockfords, namely, folks pointing out how it seems the casino’s responsibility to protect themselves against something like “edge sorting” by ensuring the integrity of their games.

Of course, the pattern suggested here is intriguing as well. What had seemed like a unique situation happening at Crockfords involving some poorly manufactured cards reads a little differently now that it appears the same sort of problem happened elsewhere. I suppose there’s another pattern lurking as well suggested by another “cheating” incident (this one alleged) involving the materials with which games at the Borgata are played (the earlier one involving chips, of course).

The Crockfords case has yet to be decided, and this one assuredly will take some time in the “sorting” too (pun intended). Will be curious to see where both end up, as well as whether or not Ivey comes out ahead in both of these legal games.

West No Longer Best for WPT World Championship

Last month I was making reference to all of the new tours getting cranked up once again, with the World Poker Tour -- now in its 12th season -- among them. Only the first half of this year’s WPT schedule (which will ultimately run from August 2012 through May 2013) has been announced as yet, although I imagine the second half is more or less fully in place already.

Already announced for the final months of 2013 are events in Paris, South Africa, South Korea, Prague, and a few in the U.S. including in Jacksonville and Las Vegas. The WPT will be going back to the Playground Poker club in Kahnawake, Quebec, too, in a few months, one of the Canadian poker sites that has now found its way into the regular tourney tour schedule along with other tours’ stops.

There was some news yesterday, though, regarding the season-ending WPT World Championship which has traditionally taken place at the Bellagio ever since the tour debuted. This year that event will instead take place at the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, which is where the WPT not coincidentally happens to be at the moment for the WPT Borgata Open.

The move made me think of a post I wrote last May about the WPT World Championship, “The Shifting Place of the WPT World Championship,” the title of which today sounds like it has a different meaning than the one I had intended.

I was speaking figuratively, of course, referring to how the once prestigious tournament had receded in significance over recent years. In that post I noted in particular how the turnouts had declined dramatically since peaking in 2007 with 639 entries. Last year there were just 146 entries in the event, with 26 of those coming from players re-entering, thus meaning there were only 120 players involved. Meanwhile, the fields for many other big buy-in events have been growing over that same period.

Those shrinking numbers were no doubt a big part of the reason for the WPT making this move. In the announcement yesterday, WPT President Adam Pliska referred to the Borgata having been “home to four of the five biggest tournaments in WPT history,” and indeed it does seem relatively certain the event will have a better chance of thriving in its new location.

Initial response to the decision to move the season-ending eastward was met with what sounded like a lot of positive buzz from players over Twitter. Part of that positivity being expressed the Borgata was inspired by criticisms of the Bellagio, which has certainly fallen from favor over the last several years as a destination for both tourney types and cash game players.

Thinking beyond the relative merits of particular casinos and poker rooms, though, I wonder if the WPT moving its championship might prove a significant moment in the larger Nevada-versus-New Jersey discussion already ongoing thanks to online poker legislation and the concomitant launching of casino-affiliated sites. In other words, will there be more “shifting” to talk about occurring in the poker landscape, perhaps sooner than later?