Ivey Loses, Spin & Go Spins, and Johnny Carson’s Poker Game

Hello, weekend (almost). Looking back on the week in poker, there were three items I wish I’d had more time to explore with blog posts, but did not. Gonna just catalogue them here to invite comment, and perhaps next week if inspired I’ll get back into issues raised by one or two of them.

One was Phil Ivey losing his case against Crockfords Casino in Britain’s High Court. The case started on Monday, then two days later Judge John Mitting decided Ivey was not entitled to the £7.7 million he’d won playing Punto Banco and that Crockfords had withheld from paying out.

In Mitting’s view, the “edge sorting” technique Ivey employed “gave himself an advantage which the game precludes.” “This is in my view cheating,” he concluded, ruling in favor of Crockfords.

Last week I was mentioning Ivey’s appearance on the 60 Minutes Sports program (which was on Showtime this week, which I don’t get) where he defended himself against accusations of being a cheater. I also mentioned there how out in the non-poker world the stories of Ivey’s suit against Crockfords and more particularly the Borgata’s still-pending one against Ivey have suggested that “cheater” label for him in the minds of some.

The Two Plus Two thread about the case indicates most in the poker world were surprised by the ruling and disagreed with it, and that’s the general tenor of response over Twitter, too. Jeff Ma, a member of the MIT blackjack team back in the mid-1990s, has written an op-ed for ESPN’s poker page defending Ivey’s play as not unethical (while expressly forgoing talking about its legality as interpreted by the High Court).

A second item popping up here at week’s end concerns those new Spin & Go games on PokerStars which I was trying out over on the play money side when they were first introduced. The new format has proven especially popular, so much so that some sit-n-go regs are not happy about the way they have affected traffic in other games. In fact, a petition “to demand a removal of these games” has been started by one disgruntled grinder -- an extreme-seeming response, to be sure.

The petition isn’t really that interesting to me, but some of the discussion that it has provoked both about the Spin & Go format and online poker in general has provided some worthwhile observations. One of the most thought-provoking came from Daniel Negreanu in a contribution to a 2+2 thread about the petition in which he points out that the full-timers (including the Supernovas and Supernova Elites) who are complaining about the way the format attracts recreational players and thus draws the “fish” away from their games are in fact themselves the greatest danger to the online poker’s survival.

“Do you know what kills games and destroys the poker ecosystem above and beyond all the things mentioned? Winning players,” explains Negreanu, who goes on to say how if the Spin & Go format does in fact deter pros from playing, that would be a positive as far as the survival of the “ecosystem” is concerned. Negreanu also says that if he were in charge of VIP systems he’d reward the losing players, not the winning ones. It’s an interesting read -- check it out.

Incidentally, with regard to “ecosystems” Darrel Plant authored an interesting article this week for PokerNews called “Circle of Life, Circle of Death: Depletion and Replenishment in Multi-Table Tournaments” that provides a nifty, math-based explanation of why poker needs new players (or at least new money). There’s also a very cool simulator embedded in the article which allows readers to input their own numbers to crunch to see how depletion and replenishment works in MTTs.

Finally, Martin Short was on Conan O’Brien’s late night talk show this week talking about a poker game he once played with Johnny Carson. Also part of the game were Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin, along with some big-time agents and others. Short had actually never met Carson beforehand, and so was understandably intimidated when participating in the game.

As it turns out, there isn’t too much poker talk in the story, but it’s still contains a couple of grins -- you can watch the clip here. It does make me curious, though, to dig a little deeper into Carson’s poker-playing. Indeed, his having had Amarillo Slim Preston as a guest a dozen times in the early 1970s suggests Carson had more than just a passing interest in poker.

Like I say, I might get back one or two of these items next week, and if you have thoughts to share about any of them, fire away. Meanwhile, enjoy the weekend, everyone!

His Side on the Edge Sorting: Ivey To Appear on 60 Minutes Sports

Saw that Phil Ivey is going to be on 60 Minutes Sports a week from today on Tuesday, October 7 (on Showtime). Here is a little teaser for the segment you can watch the CBS site (as they make it impossible to embed their slow-loading vids) -- a compelling, even fun three minutes of viewing.

Ivey is going to be on the show talking about his two “edge sorting” lawsuits which I’ve mentioned here before -- the one in which he’s suing Crockford’s Casino in London and the other in which the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa is suing him.

Interesting that Ivey is talking at all about the lawsuits, never mind doing so in such a mainstream public forum. Of course, I’m certain his prime motive is to clear suspicions among the non-poker playing public (and perhaps among some poker folks, too) that he’s not a cheater.

I wrote a post here back in May sharing a story of meeting someone who upon finding out what I did for a living said to me without prompting “I can’t believe Phil Ivey cheated!” That anecdote perhaps suggests a need for Ivey to want to acquit himself in the court of public opinion.

That was about a month after the news of the Borgata lawsuit had hit, their complaint having to do with Ivey employing edge sorting at their high-stakes baccarat tables. The Crockford’s lawsuit has Ivey suing the casino for his winnings at Punto Banco which they’ve withheld because of the edge sorting.

Speaking of Ivey, I did finally watch the first WSOP Main Event shows (as I was talking about last week). While they weren’t terribly exciting, it was interesting to see Ivey being almost gregarious at the feature table with his table talk. He was also almost jovial-seeming in his short interview with Kara Scott, which was fun to see.

Ivey is similarly engaging in the 60 Minutes clip. Go ahead -- see if you can watch it without grinning ear-to-ear.

Sort of an interesting hand Ivey has chosen to play. Will be interesting to see how he fares from it. Something tells me that just by playing it Ivey knows he has an edge going in.

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.

Looking at Ivey Through Kaleidoscope

Among the poker headlines coming through the reader yesterday was a Punto Banco story. That’s right, another interesting chapter in that situation involving Phil Ivey and the Crockfords Casino in London.

Recall how we heard Ivey had visited the Mayfair casino last August, transferring a cool £1 million into the casino’s bank account while accompanied by a mysterious Chinese woman (styled “a beautiful Oriental female” in most of the U.K. reports where the adjective isn’t considered non-PC the way it is in the States). Then over a couple of evenings Ivey proceeded to play high-stakes Punto Banco, a variant of baccarat, for about seven hours altogether.

On the first night Ivey started out betting £50,000 per hand, then was allowed to increase the stakes to £150,000. After initially finding himself down nearly £500,000, the momentum swung back Ivey’s way and he ended the evening £2.3 million up. He then came back the next night and his streak continued, enabling him to leave £7.8 million ahead -- i.e., a win of almost $12 million or the equivalent of Jamie Gold’s 2006 WSOP Main Event first prize (the largest ever for the ME).

Ivey’s session immediately made headlines in the Daily Mail, with the initial reports also noting how Crockfords had not paid Ivey his winnings right away. Then came word of the casino’s plan to investigate casino footage, interview staff, and inspect the cards and dealing shoe used during the two sessions before paying Ivey. Another item of potential interest was the fact that the woman accompanying Ivey had been banned from another London casino previously.

Soon it became apparent that Crockfords might not be willing to pay Ivey his winnings at all.

Crockfords did allow Ivey to withdraw the £1 million with which he’d started, but otherwise they were resisting paying Ivey the rest. By the time the situation had dragged on into the fall, it was apparent the case may end up in the High Court, and indeed last week news came that Ivey was suing Crockfords in an effort to claim his winnings in what will surely be a huge, sensational legal story.

Then yesterday the Daily Mail reported that in response to Ivey’s lawsuit, Crockfords is now alleging that rather than having enjoyed a streak of good fortune in the chance-based game, Ivey “exploited tiny flaws in the card design” as he played, and thus was able to bet accordingly. According to the article, “the cards were flawed because of a mistake during the cutting process at an overseas manufacturing plant.”

Thus the allegation is that Ivey somehow knew about or discovered the flaw, with his request to the dealer that the cards (while face down) be turned in such a way that would enable him to spot the distinctive characteristics more easily and thus know what cards had (or hadn’t) been dealt.

From the outside, the casino’s case sounds sketchy, given that Ivey obviously had nothing to do with the cards being used in the game. Anyhow, it’s all very eyebrow-raising in an “international-man-of-mystery” kind of way, and the Mail and other outlets have routinely brought up by way of comparison James Bond and his game of baccarat in the original Casino Royale to help their stories more readily catch the reader’s eye.

Another film frequently mentioned in these articles is the 1966 Bond-like comic caper Kaleidoscope starring Warren Beatty and Susannah York. Coincidentally it was last August -- around the time Ivey visited Crockfords -- when I wrote up a “Pop Poker” column for PokerListings about the film, which often gets mentioned in those “best poker movies” lists one sees popping up from time to time around the web.

Those comparisons are being made because the plot of Kaleidoscope involves Beatty’s character, Barney Lincoln, pursuing an elaborate scheme whereby he doctors the plates from which the Kaleidoscope brand playing cards are printed. The cards are used in casinos all over Europe, and thus we see Lincoln spend the first half of the film enjoying win after win as he plays Chemin de Fer (another baccarat variant), wearing a conspicuous pair of thick-framed eyeglasses as he does to help him see the markings.

Lincoln is eventually found out in the film, and the plot takes a turn as he gets recruited by Scotland Yard to help them capture a villainous crime lord, Harry Dominion, played in over-the-top fashion by Eric Porter. The latter half of the film features a high-stakes game of five-card stud involving Lincoln and Dominion, and does include a few interesting moments -- particularly after a deck change introduces non-Kaleidoscope cards into the game.

If you’re curious about the film, check out my discussion over on PokerListings. There you’ll see I was kind of lukewarm on it, not really being that entertained although I can see some fans of Bond and/or Bond parodies perhaps getting into it. It’s also cool for those who enjoy swinging ’60s fashion, U.K. style.

It’s sort of funny to compare Kaleidoscope to the Ivey-versus-Crockfords situation, since doing so invites us to imagine Ivey as some kind of supervillain-cat-burglar type breaking into card manufacturing plants and manipulating the printing process in order to set up his big score later on. Obviously that’s not what is being alleged, but still, it’s a funny image, perhaps even easier to entertain for those of us who have gotten to know Ivey as a larger-than-life figure.

More pertinently, those of us who know Ivey and his high-roller ways also find his enjoying a winning streak of 40-50 bets’ worth at a chance-based game to be much less remarkable than is the case for Crockfords’ owners. Then again, as we’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few days with regard to the revival of the UB cheating scandal, being able to know all of the cards that have been dealt is a sure way to increase one’s chance of winning.

Here is the groovy title sequence for Kaleidoscope:

Travel Report: APPT Macau, ACOP Main Event, Day 2

After a short Day 1 on Wednesday, yesterday’s Day 2 of the Asia Championship of Poker Main Event was a long one, starting and ending late. Just 56 players survived the day, and the plan is for them to return today and play down to the bursting of cash bubble at 22.

The start time was pushed back to 5 p.m. yesterday to allow players and staff to sleep a little later following the late night party at the D2 Club in Macau. I said last post I’d link to some video of ElkY dancing to PSY’s “Gangnam Style.” Here’s a post I did yesterday with some pics (including one of ElkY) and a PokerNews video at the end which doesn’t show the dancing but gives a sense of the scene nonetheless.

Having a little bit of time on my hands yesterday, I took a cab to the Venetian Macao Casino located not too far from the Grand Waldo here on the Taipa Island of Macau. Really had no particular plan in mind other than to go see for myself what the world’s largest casino looked like.

After a short cab ride over, I took the main entrance and didn’t have to walk for very long before arriving at the casino that appears to occupy most of the street-level floor. It’s a massive building -- 40 stories high, the largest hotel in Asia, and apparently the sixth largest building, period, in the entire world.

Once you pass the guards and enter the gaming area, the casino extends on as far as you can see. Apparently there are 800 tables and 3,400 slot machines, and I’d spend probably an hour or more just walking around watching.

There were blackjack, craps, and roulette and other “money wheel”-type games. But the most popular games going were baccarat and Sic Bo, the latter being kind of version a roulette with dice. And those tables were packed, especially the baccarat ones, with all seats often occupied plus 10-20 people encircling the players, either sweating the action or placing bets themselves.

Baccarat is a drawing game involving the “player” and “banker” which allows players to bet on either to win (or on a tie), and for which the cards’ numerical value is all that matters (i.e., suits aren’t involved). If you’re curious, you can read the rules here and then visit this site where you can play a free flash version of baccarat to get a better idea of how the game is played.

It took me a while to appreciate the fact that many of the tables I watched had minimum bets of 800 or 1,000 Hong Kong dollars, and in a lot of cases the minimum was higher than that. (I didn’t wander into any of the “high stakes” areas.) In other words, the minimum bet was the equivalent of about $100 USD, although players usually were betting a lot more than that.

Afterwards Remko was quoting a statistic to me about the average wager in Macau being several times that placed Vegas, and searching online I’m seeing various references to that being the case.

I didn’t hang out at any one table for very long, usually just standing behind the crowd and watching a single hand before moving on. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but afterwards wondered if maybe I’d have been considered bad luck had I gotten too close or was too conspicuous with my railing. I suppose I was drawing on these years of learning how to be discreet while watching poker hands being played. Also helped that at six feet I’m taller than most here and thus could easily watch from a distance, standing behind the crowds.

Two players would be designated the “player” and “banker” each hand and thus were allowed to squeeze the cards, which they’d routinely mangle and crease to the point of destroying them, the dealers dropping the no-longer-usable cards in a plastic box for discarding later. All hands featured multiple players betting, and it seemed like most of the time everyone would bet the same way, thus eliciting a collective response one way or the other when the hand completed.

Like I say, baccarat and Sic Bo were really the main games getting most of the action. I did see in one corner some poker happening. I can’t tell you how many tables were reserved for poker, but it looked like only a couple were active. I believe the limits were $50/$100 (HKD).

I’m reading online about how the Venetian casino has different themed areas -- Golden Fish, Imperial House, Red Dragon and Phoenix -- but to be honest I didn’t really appreciate any distinctions between one area and another as I walked around. That is to say, there was a kind of coherence to the design all over the sprawling room, and I felt at times the place resembled a small city with neighborhoods of citizens all focused on their games.

There was smoking, and indeed afterwards I could feel in my lungs having been exposed to cigarette smoke more than usual, but it didn’t seem overly bothersome while I was there. In fact, the casino seemed especially clean with air freshener being pumped through to giving a more mall-like ambience.

I left and explored the shops upstairs for a while, which very much resembled what you find at other hotel-casinos in Vegas. There was the same canal and trompe d’oeil ceiling like you find at the Venetian in Vegas, too. An imitation of an imitation, I guess.

Am glad I looked in on the place, even if only as an observer. I kind of felt like I was in reporter mode as I walked about, even pulling out my notebook to jot down things from time to time. I suppose whenever visiting a foreign country where one doesn’t speak the language one will inevitably feel detached to some degree, but at the Venetian I felt doubly so whenever I considered the amounts being so casually bet all around me.

Back to the tournament today. I’ll probably try to sneak out at least once more either Saturday or Sunday morning to explore some more before I begin the journey home on Monday.