Phil Ivey Borgata case

[LVBear584]

I first discovered edge sorting in 2002 entirely by chance by looking at an Edgewater Casino deck. I showed the asymmetry to LV Bear with a small demonstration before we were going out for a 1CP session. We decided we had enough tools to have fun in other ways so I never developed it. But, we agreed on the spot that its potential was huge.

Good times! Ah, to be able to turn back time...

[bjarg]

Good times! Ah, to be able to turn back time...

In 2015 (I think) some random guy posted in this very same forum saying he had an "opportunity" and wanted to discuss it privately with someone interested in exploiting it. I guess nobody answered (I believe it was his first and only post) so he sent me a private message saying he saw some of the posts I made about shuffle tracking and sequencing (I was posting regularly back then) and told me he had an edge sorting opportunity in a double deck hand dealt blackjack. Max bet was $500 euros per spot.

I agreed to look into it so he mailed me the cards from that casino. At first glance (and second, and third, and fourth...) I couldnt see where the flaw was, so I called him. He explained to me what to look for and I was blown away by it. At first I thought it would be impossible to detect that flaw fast and in a real casino environment, but it turns out its unbelievable what the eyes and brain are capable of doing after you train them and teach them what to look for. It only took a couple of days of training to be able to effortlessly detect the flaw at first glimpse.

After confirming that the ASM that the casino used didnt include a "turn" (not 100% confirmed but had it from a pretty good source) I talked with 3 fellow APs and we put together a team of 6. It was the 4 of us + 2 girlfriends, one of them a former casino dealer who helped us training. The plan was of course to take all 6 seats. We assigned roles and tasks. The most challenging one was the responsability of signaling the whole team what "position" we were playing each new shuffle. There were two positions: 1 and 2. Although we sorted the cards in a predefinied way, there was a lot of movement from table to the discard tray, from the discard tray to the shuffler, and from the shuffler to the hands of the dealer. And each dealer did this differently. So although we sorted in position 1, the next shuffle the cards could come out either way, depending on how the dealer handled the cards. This guy had to follow those movements to tell us if the decks in the dealers hands where in position 1 or 2 for all of us to know how to read the cards. That was a tough job. This guy was a small asian guy and I still remember at one point of our first session turning my head to check on him and laughing my ass of (inside) after seeing how much he was sweating. Poor guy had smoke coming out of his brain haha.

There where two guys in charge of signaling what card was coming next from the deck and I was in the last seat in charge of signaling the general strategy for each hand. We used chips positions and chip shuffling for signaling our every move and strat. It was a thing of beauty. 90% of the time we could read what the dealers hole card was and what the next card to be dealt would be. It worked like a swiss clock.

Although we trained (maybe not as much as we should have) at first we were not coordinating anything right. At one hand one of the girls that at the moment was sitting in the last seat stood with 11 because she had a signal that the dealer was busting. We were raising all kinds of alarms, but even making all sort of mistakes we cleared a good win in just a couple of hours.

After we got comfortable and got in rythm it was a massacre. No idea what was the edge we were playing with but it was definitely huge. After 3 days we were banned from playing blackjack.

Even though the strategy worked and we had a really good win, Ive always regreted not preparing a better cover. In retrospect the wise thing to do would have been to make all sort of cover plays in other games, joining a poker tournament, and all that sort of stuff. That might have helped us to play a little bit longer and get away with an even bigger win. We also made the stupid mistake of winning at their 6 deck game counting and spreading, all because of a Toronto NBA playoff game, against Miami if my memory serves me right, that took two players away from us one night. We always remember Toronto. To this day I still suspect that it was that six deck play that finally got us banned rather than the double deck wins.

The best thing is that as of november 2019 that game still exists, with the exact same cards and the exact same flaw (even easier to spot).

Good memories from old playing days.

[BJPloppy]

The best thing is that as of november 2019 that game still exists, with the exact same cards and the exact same flaw (even easier to spot).

I attempted to send you a private message, but it would not go through.

[Eliot]

The best thing is that as of november 2019 that game still exists, with the exact same cards and the exact same flaw (even easier to spot).

Good memories from old playing days.

Congratulations. Sounds like a lot of fun & profit.

In my days working for the industry, I became aware of a number of instances where sorts were used on baccarat, 3CP, Caribbean Stud & blackjack. I heard about a team that attempted to use sorts against MS, but I am not sure if they found any success.