Earlier this year, poker legend Phil Ivey sued the exclusive London casino Crockfordsfor refusing to pay him £7.8 million he won playing Punto Banco in August 2012. The casino claimed he cheated and eventually returned only his original £1 million stake. Now, according to a court submission revealed by the UK’s Daily Mail, Ivey (pictured) has admitted to being an “advantage player,” but still vehemently denies cheating.

To review, in the Daily Mail’s original story, Crockford’s accused Ivey and a female accomplice of taking advantage of a defect in the way some of the casino’s decks were cut. Whereas decks should be cut so that the pattern on the card backs (in this case, a diamond pattern) is symmetrical, Ivey found that some were cut asymmetrically. As such, when a key card was revealed, Ivey and his friend asked the dealer to rotate the card, claiming he was superstitious.

The result was that cards Ivey wanted to identify ahead of time were easy to spot because of the different pattern on the edge, allowing the poker pro to adjust his bets accordingly. Ivey also allegedly requested that the casino “hold the shoe,” or keep the same deck overnight, so that it would be used during the second day of his two-day stay.

Crockford’s parent company, Genting, sent its own investigator to the casino to look into the matter. That investigator interviewed staff, looked at the cards, and reviewed security footage, but found nothing wrong.

In the claim, Ivey said that it was well known in gambling circles that some decks were miscut, so “advantage players,” those who used legal methods to give themselves an edge over the casino, were always on the lookout for them. Ivey’s companion, a Chinese woman named Kelly, was very good at spotting flaws in the cards. The claim states that during his second day at Crockfords, Ivey frequently asked the dealer to change out the deck until Kelly saw one with an asymmetrical pattern.

They would then begin to “edge sort.” “Kelly would ask the dealer to reveal each card in turn by lifting the edge furthest from the dealer so that Kelly could identify whether the card was a seven, eight, or nine – the key cards in Punto Banco,” the claim reads.

“The first time that Kelly identified a key card, she told the dealer that it was a ‘good’ card which she wanted the dealer to rotate in the opposite direction to all of the other cards and the dealer complied with the request.”

After a while, all of the “good” cards were readily identifiable, upon which time Ivey asked the casino to raise the betting limit from £50,000 to £150,000.

Thus, while Ivey admitted to taking advantage of the flaws in the decks, he claimed that the casino knew exactly what was going on and that his requests were complied with because he is a high roller and the casino wanted to keep his business. He never manipulated the cards himself and never did anything that was not permitted by casino management.

Considering that he was also given a receipt for his winnings, Ivey feels Crockfords owes him the entirety of the £7.8 million. What do you think? Leave a comment here and let us know.

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