Players were not allowed to handle the cards. In this case, they were playing mini-Baccarat. In traditional Baccarat, players are allowed to touch the cards and even bend and turn them all they want, but all 8 decks are thrown out after every shoe (i.e. touched cards are never played again). In mini-Baccarat, players do not touch the cards, and the cards are reshuffled instead of thrown away. This type of scheme only works in mini-Baccarat (and Punto Banco - a mini-Baccarat variation), and the casino would only comply with the unusual requests that made this scheme possible for very big players. Casinos are very tolerant of high rollers - Caesars Palace was fined $250,000 a few years ago for allowing a man to jump up on a Baccarat table and dance before placing his bets.

In this case, Ivey had an Asian woman with him, and she told the dealer that she was superstitious and asked that the dealer turn cards of certain values a different direction. That she was Asian was important because the casinos are claiming that Ivey requested that his dealers speak Mandarin Chinese, and that the instructions to turn the cards were given by the woman in Mandarin so that supervisors wouldn't hear and immediately object to the request. In any event, the dealers complied. This incredibly simple strategy apparently worked at Borgata and Crockfords in London, to the tune of over $20 million in combined winnings. Because the casino could have simply said "no," I find it extremely unlikely that the Borgata will prevail here.

This was much more of a social engineering hack than anything else. Interestingly, because of this issue, casinos (at least in Las Vegas) have purchased cards with a new type of background that looks like pixelated noise - much harder to do this with.