The Card Trick Behind Alleged $10M Casino Scam

So Las Vegas is known for trying to attract conferences of all different shapes and sizes. So the story I heard is that there was a physics phd convention that booked a casino, and was asked not to come back, because even though they booked a solid chunk of hotel rooms, and paid to use the conference halls, the math minded physicists just wouldn't gamble. And so they weren't asked back again the next year.

This has little to do with the story, which is that of an inside job (complicit dealer), but casinos are gross. That people are able to take money from them rather than lose money to them doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world.

Phil Ivey did the same edge sorting thing at a casino in London and lost the ensuing court case https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/oct/25/poker-player-phi... . It was a very important case because it found (as I understand it) that he was cheating even though he had not been intentionally dishonest or done anything against the rules of the game.

It's an interesting and bizzare situation. Firstly baccarrat (In my understanding) allows the player to have assistance from others in a way that other card games eg Poker do not. In poker there is an explicit "one player one hand" rule generally (online you are often allowed to "multitable" but you're still playing one hand on each table at a time). Allowing this sort of assistance from others counting the cards etc seems like it opens the door to various sorts of things that would be considered cheating in other games.

Secondly it's weird that the stakes are so high and yet the casinos can't seem to get decks of cards which have precisely the same pattern printed on the back of every card. It sort of blows my mind that that's an issue.

I do wonder what the actual "cheat" is here. Surely he didn't make those markings himself. It just seems like game skill to me.