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Oh, so that's even more clear than what I thought. I didn't see that citation, my apologies. In that case, I agree even more with the judge's decision: a member of the public would not expect the meaning of the cards to be able to be "divined" by another player at the table in such a manner and the casino, had it known of the flaw, would not have used the cards, and Ivey undoubtedly used the mechanism to alter the result of the game and affect his actions based on the "random" selection.

I disagree with the people in this thread who say that the judge expects Ivey to be a patsy.

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2) is about operating or exposing a game with marked cards. So it forbids the house to use those cards, I don't read it as a criminal act for the player to play against a house which uses such cards.

Also I think b. is about the house: it is about owning or using such cards. The cards where not Iphy's, the casino was the owner and the one that was using them.

But apart from that, just imagine what the implications are if this verdict is correct. Imagine that you walk into a casino and play a card game, and you see that the dealer is consequently making a mistake so that the result of the game is not random anymore. The verdict is saying that you are still allowed to play, but only if you choose a losing strategy. If you would choose to turn this knowledge of the dealer's mistake in your advantage, you would commit a crime .. ?

>The verdict is saying that you are still allowed to play, but only if you choose a losing strategy.

This is not my reading of the decision. Rather, my reading of the opinion is that, regardless of if you take advantage of it or not, the game is no longer authorized under the Casino Control Act, and therefore is void.

Note, it is not clear to be that any "crime" was commited in this case. Rather, the ruling was that the game was invalid and therefore the appropriate solution was to return the parties to the state where they were in prior to playing the game. The precise wording (quoted from Golden Nugget) is:

"“Since the rescission of a contract essentially voids the contract, it follows that the remedy used in situations of rescission should be used in situations of voidance. Thus, since the contracts entered into here are void, returning the parties to their position prior to the formation of the contracts is the appropriate remedy.”"

Interestingly, in the Golden Nugget case, it was clearly the casino who made a mistake (failing to use a shuffled deck).

"The CCA isn't fault based, according to the judge, who explained that it's irrelevant whether the casino or the players are to blame for the mishap. It only matters whether the mini-baccarat game was authorized under the CCA, which it wasn't, the judge said." [0]

[0] http://www.law360.com/articles/621651/casino-doesn-t-owe-1-5...

> my reading of the opinion is that, regardless of if you take advantage of it or not, the game is no longer authorized under the Casino Control Act, and therefore is void.

If this is true, it means that any game ever played with those 'marked' cards is void. Since Baccarat is a winning game for the casino, it would mean that this verdict could cost the casino many times more than what it has won against Phil Ivy.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't believe that anyone who will now start a court case to claim his money back from a game with these cards has even the slightest chance to win. Surely the judge will find a way to interpret the law text in another way so that it again favors the casino.

The "marking" in this case is not inherent in the cards; but is rather a combination of an assymetry in the cards, and the dealer rotating a non-random subset of the cards (thereby turning the assymetry into a "marking").

Further, in order for a marking to count, it has to "tends to deceive the public or tends to alter the normal random selection of characteristics or the normal chance of the game which could determine or alter the result of the game." If the only mistake that the dealer makes is some form of an information leak, and no one modifies their behavior based on the information being leaked, then this condition would not be met.

If, instead, the dealers mistake changed the odds of the game regardless of if the player acted on it, the this clause would be invoked. Indeed, this is likely the intended case of this clause, as the alternative is that the house can cheat.

Do you really think that a losing gambler would be able to bring a suit against a casino because a dealer placed cards in a slightly uneven way that seemed suggestive to the gambler and caused him to make sub-optimal bets? Even if it could be shown that the dealer had studied the psychology of cards for that very purpose?

The problem is that the jugde is trying to read the case two ways at the same time. Golden Nuggets argument was that a non shuffled deck removes the chance element, therefore the game wasn't governed by CCA at all. If you're pointing at a section of CCA and telling somebody they breached it, then by definition you're saying the game falls under the conditions of that act, and the remedy must therefore also be the one defined in that act (CCA 5:12-115(c) specifies for a $50,000 fine for an individual).

There was no criminal ruling in this case. The ruling is that the implicit contract of the game was voided, according to the Casino Control Act. Returning the funds is just unwinding the executed contract.

You'll note that there are not even any punitive penalties being applied. Only the money earned during the game is to be returned.

> Only the money earned during the game is to be returned.

And proceeds that were gained using the winnings.

Does that also mean that lost money would need to be returned? Would the casino be obligated to notify past players of this and return their losses?

Sure. After they show that the casino knowingly used marked cards to gain advantage against them, as the casino did vs Ivey. Which I'm not even sure is possible in Baccarat, since my understanding is that it's a purely mechanical game from the house perspective, like Blackjack. As in, any choices made by the house are dependent only on information that is witnessed by all players.

> Only the money earned during the game is to be returned.

Part of the ruling was that Phil Ivy had to pay back $500,000 which he won in a craps game as well.

If I steal $100,000 dollars from you, then use some of that money to buy your car, would you expect to have your car returned to you?

In that case anyone who lost a game of baccarat (or any card game) played with those type of cards at anytime in NJ has a case against the casino and could sue to get the money back because the contract was illegal. I wonder if those are standard cards used at the casino ... they do offer them as souvenirs so it seems like they might be. If they are used by the casino or other casinos for games, that's probably thousands of games and potential court cases. Sounds like a class action lawsuit actually.

if you can prove, casino knows[1] that the cards are not symmetrical, yes.

"knowingly to use or possess any marked cards"

Isn't the ruling above saying just that? Otherwise they're having their cake and eating it too. So which is it?

My reading of that is that at least one party has to knowingly use the marked cards. If neither party is aware that the cards are not symmetrical, there is no unfair advantage and the game is fair.

They know it now; they did not know it previously.

Right, but it's not dependent on intent. The other casino didn't intend to leave the deck unshuffled, this casino didn't intend to buy marked cards.

But, they did. So the games played with those cards(/unshuffled decks) shouldn't count.

If the law doesn't function in both directions it isn't law, it's codified graft.

> Right, but it's not dependent on intent.

But it does appear to be dependent on knowledge, as per the law quoted in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227445

Ivey and Sun knew how to read the marked cards.

If I was caught carrying marked cards nobody would believe I didn't know. The casino has an entire anti-fraud department which exists to catch this sort of thing and we're supposed to believe they didn't notice this for years...

But that's only half the post you linked to... Importantly, the precedent involving the unshuffled deck didn't involve knowledge. Despite everyone's intentions the game was not setup correctly so it didn't count.

If so, then these games (all games with these decks) were also not setup correctly. Either all games with these cards are improper or none are.

And importantly, nothing other than penalizing the casino will change anything. This ruling incentivizes them to leave marks in their cards, dice, etc, and call them out in the future to invalidate any unpleasant results.

Considering that the imperfections were on the order of 1/32 of an inch, or 0.8 millimeters... Yes, I can absolutely believe that they were missed on visual inspection.

Well it's irrelevant in this instance since the exploit used by the gambler and the woman required the dealer to rotate and leak information about the cards. The cards themselves did not seem to be enough for the gambler Ivey to exploit the system, they needed to be rotated.

Now if any other player performed such a task, sure, they're probably able to make a case too. But not every baccarat player met the criteria in this case.

But seeing as the cards then are identical to other cards they're using, can they still be considered marked? That's what I mean, they're either marked or not.

Consider a deck of cards that has a triangle printed on the back. This triangle is printed exactly the same on every card, such that they are all indistinguishable from each other.

Now rotate some of the cards 180°. Those rotated cards are now distinguishable from the other cards, because the card print is not rotational-symmetric. This rotation is what caused the cards to be marked, even though the printed pattern was exactly the same.

Typically card backs are rotational-symmetric in order to avoid this. However, it seems like this particular pattern had imperfections -- within 1/32 of an inch -- which a trained eye could recognize. (The judge even admitted this as quite a feat.)

I understand technically how it worked, I'm merely arguing that their interpretation of "marked", and also their interpretation of the party doing so is quite liberal, at least for a courtroom.

The player (Ivey) did not bring, substitute, touch nor coerce the casino into doing anything with the cards. His assistant asked the dealer to flip some cards and he abided willingly, supposedly on behest of the casino to accomodate a whale. They did nothing under the table.

Like most people on here IANAL, but this ruling doesn't seem right, where "right" is the letter of the law.

I think the wording of the law is very broad, and "marked cards" is only one of the conditionals listed. Since you seem to be taking a very strict definition of "marked cards", other conditionals of the law were also met:

> Knowingly to deal, conduct, carry on, operate or expose for play any game or games played with cards, dice or any mechanical device, or any combination of games or devices, which have in any manner been marked or tampered with, or placed in a condition, or operated in a manner, the result of which tends to deceive the public or tends to alter the normal random selection of characteristics or the normal chance of the game which could determine or alter the result of the game.

Specifically, it seems like the cards were "placed in a condition" and "operated in a manner" which "alter[ed] the normal chance of the game" for Ivey and Sun.

> they're either marked or not

They were marked when Ivy's assistant asked to turn the 9s around 180 degrees.

The design on all the cards was identical; it's not as though face cards had a different pattern on the back. The design just happened to be very slightly asymmetric so that turning the 9 cards served to mark them.

If you were not able to turn the cards, the asymmetric back would provide no information.

But that segment of the law is not MEANT to be an injunction against the players, but a regulation on the casinos. On appeal, the correct decision would be for the appeal judge to not require Ivey to pay back any restitution, and instead fine the casino for playing with marked cards (whether or not they knew they were marked).

In Baccarat, the only variable is the stake - neither player nor dealer can influence the cards which are drawn, so the result is unchanged. Even if it hadn't been a private table, no other players could possibly have been impacted by Ivey's play. The result can't be determined or changed by seeing a single card, although the odds certainly were.

I've made a longer post explaining why I don't believe this judgment was correct, but suffice to say, you can't choose half a sentence of a law and decide that because that bit fits, your case is made.

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