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Poker pro Phil Ivey will be unable to collect on his over £7.7m in winnings after losing his appeal in a high profile “edge-sorting” case involving London’s Genting Casino. The tactic allows players to predict whether a card may be high or low – and therefore beneficial to their hand – by finding tiny irregularities in the back of each card.
The Genting-owned Crockfords, London’s oldest casino, withheld the winnings after accusing Ivey of cheating.
The Daily Mail reported at the time:
Punto Banco is the favoured game of high-rollers.
The result is determined as soon as the cards are dealt – it offers marginally better odds than games such as roulette.
At first, Mr Ivey’s losses were heading towards £500,000 but he recovered, and at the end of the first night was £2.3 million up.
His winning form continued on the second night and by the time that he signalled he was ready to quit he had amassed £7.3 million.
Ivey was also said to have had a mysterious female companion, believed to have acted as an accomplice.
Phil Ivey, 39, had challenged a 2014 high court decision to dismiss his case against Genting Casinos UK, which owns Crockfords Club in Mayfair. After successfully playing a version of baccarat known as Punto Banco at the casino two years earlier, Ivey was told his winnings would be wired to him and he left for home in Las Vegas, but it never arrived. Instead, his stake money of £1m was returned to him.
Phil Ivey, who at 40 is the youngest player to hold 10 World Series of Poker Championship bracelets, stated at the time of the filing, "As I said at the time of the London verdict in October 2014, it is not in my nature to cheat which is why I was so bitterly disappointed by the judge's decision, even though he said that I was a truthful witness and that he was sure that I didn’t believe that what I was doing was cheating. This wording from the Court of Appeal, that the grounds of our appeal raise an important question of law and have real prospects of success is quite simply the best news I’ve had since I won the £7.8 million at Crockfords three and a half years ago in August 2012."
