Borgata, Phil Ivy Remain Mum Over Cheating Allegations, Lawsuit

Neither the Borgata Casino or poker pro Phil Ivey have commented on a lawsuit filed by the property last week accusing Ivey of cheating at their baccarat table.

And the Borgata won’t be commenting any time soon.

Liza Costandino, head of Public Relations for the casino, told Gambling911.com’s own Thomas Somach that the Borgata “does not comment on pending litigation”.

Despite having an active Twitter account, Ivey has yet to mention the suit either.

The suit alleges that the some of the baccarat cards made by Gemaco turned out to not have a perfectly symmetrical design on the back of the card. Ivey, the suit claims, was able to figure out what the first card to be dealt was based on said imperfections and this, in turn, gave him a significant advantage over the “house,” or casino.

Ivy, who arranged to play a series of baccarat games accompanied by a female companion also named in the suit, amassed more than $12 million in winnings.

Gemaco is currently fighting a lawsuit from another Atlantic City casino, the Golden Nugget, claiming the firm provided unshuffled cards that led to gamblers beating the casino for $1.5 million.

In a Gambling911.com world exclusive, famed gambling attorney Nelson Rose said what Ivey did was not cheating.

Nelson has extensive experience in the area of “edge sorting”, which involves noticing subtle differences in the designs on the backs of playing cards and using that information to recall values of cards and bet accordingly.

"Edge sorting has been around for decades," Rose told Gambling911.com. "I was called in as an expert witness in a marked card case and one of the first things I did was look to see if there was a pattern to the design on the back of the cards. 

"Cheats can easily create a deck of cards they can read by buying many decks of cards with a simple pattern, like diamond shapes, and then creating a single deck where, say, only the ten-count cards have full diamonds in the corners."
But in a casino, he said, it is the responsibility of the casino to make sure everything in a game is ship-shape, not the player.

"It is up to the casino to make sure that there are no readable markings on the backs of cards," Rose said. "I remember touring the Sands Casino in Macau the month it opened and looking into the room where employees destroyed cards after a single use.

"Ivey used information available to all players," he said. "By definition that was not cheating."

- Ace King, Gambling911.com