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Comment by mwill | Hacker News Reader

Around the same time the casino say this happened, Crockfords Casino in London were withholding winnings from Ivey, claiming he used the same method, edge sorting, to win around $10M playing a variant of Baccarat. Last year, he admitted to noticing a flaw in the cards and exploiting it, but asserted it wasn't cheating and the Casino should have noticed it.

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You know what, I agree with him. Considering nearly everything at a casino is set such that your average person will consistently lose, I've got no problems with someone finding a flaw in their cards (which, considering how seriously casinos take that sort of thing, they should have caught) and taking advantage of it like Ivey allegedly has. The law shouldn't be "Casinos win even when they fuck up", in my opinion.

What if there happened to be a flaw which resulted in people losing?

You act as if gambling is rigged, throw some dice a few hundred times then blame the dice for cheating you.

He's not saying dice or other activities like that are rigged, he's saying the odds in casinos are manufactured such that the house wins most of the time.

I always wondered how one of the best professional poker players in the world would be so big degen that he would routinely throw away hundreds of thousands in card games where he could not win.

This and the Crockfords Casino incident make his behavior more understandable. It seems that he did not really cheat, , he just exploited flaws.

To be fair, Ivey is supposedly a total degen outside of Poker, plays craps, makes prop bets, bets on sports etc. There's stories floating around the web of him betting on coin tosses, for example.

It wouldn't surprise me if he was simply playing Baccarat genuinely, noticed the possibility for edge sorting, and went for it, then looked for other casinos that had the same problem.

degen?

http://www.floattheturn.com/dictionary.php?word=d&page=3

"Degenerate, often simply 'degen,' is a well-known appelation for players who behave in a self-destructive manner away from the poker table."

A friend of his has claimed privately that he takes advantage of specific lossback deals that certain casinos give certain high rollers, and this gives him a positive expectation at craps at least some of the time.

However, it's hard to know how much truth there is to that.

This is likely true considering how low the house edge is on both Baccarat (1.06% on the banker) and basic craps (don't) pass/come with full 3-4-5 odds (around 0.37%) [1]

Any small positive edge in lossback, card or dice placement will lead to advantage. Some of them can't do math as well as others, apparently. This is how Don Johnson (not the actor) broke a few casinos several years back, including - surprise! - Borgata. [2]

[1] http://wizardofodds.com/gambling/house-edge/ [2] http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/the-man-wh...

Most of the best poker players are degenerates. I used to see many of them (and definitely Ivey) playing craps outside of the poker room non stop.

Degenerates come in all IQ ranges. They just crave action. Even the smartest ones will take bad action when they can't find good, and at poker there isn't always a game with stakes a really high roller would find interesting, but there is always a craps table.

Phill Ivey would be one of the first people to tell you that he's a degenerate gambler. I'll have to look for it, but I watched an interview where he talked about his days before he made it big. He would cash his McDonald's paycheck, go lose it playing poker, and then end up spending a few weeks sleeping on the streets.

Also, I remember one time a WSOP bracelet showed up on ebay. Apparently, its owner had made about $10 million in career earnings in poker, but he was so broke from betting on horses that he was selling his beloved bracelet for gambling money.

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