Hacker News Reader

Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com