Phil Ivey — Crockfords Punto Banco edge-sorting, UK Supreme Court

Summary

Professional poker player Phil Ivey and associate Cheung Yin Sun won approximately GBP 7.7 million playing Punto Banco at Crockfords Club in London over two days in August 2012. The casino, owned by Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd, refused to pay the winnings after discovering the pair had used a technique called edge-sorting to gain an advantage. Ivey sued for payment. The UK Supreme Court unanimously dismissed his appeal on 25 October 2017, holding that edge-sorting constituted cheating under the Gambling Act 2005 and under the implied term of the gaming contract. The court also used the case to overrule the second limb of the Ghosh test for dishonesty in English law, replacing it with a purely objective standard.

1. 20–21 August 2012

   Ivey and Sun play Punto Banco at Crockfords Club, winning approximately GBP 7.7 million.

2. 30 August 2012

   Crockfords informs Ivey it will not pay his winnings, suspecting the game was compromised.

3. 31 August 2012

   Crockfords refunds Ivey's GBP 1 million stake but withholds winnings.

4. 14 October 2014

   High Court (Mitting J) rules against Ivey, finding edge-sorting was cheating; accepts Ivey did not believe he was cheating but holds cheating does not require dishonesty.

5. 3 November 2016

   Court of Appeal (Arden LJ and Tomlinson LJ, Sharp LJ dissenting) dismisses Ivey's appeal.

6. 13 July 2017

   UK Supreme Court hears appeal.

7. 25 October 2017

   UK Supreme Court (Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Kerr, Lord Hughes, Lord Thomas) unanimously dismisses appeal; holds edge-sorting was cheating and overrules R v Ghosh [1982] QB 1053 second limb on dishonesty.

• Ivey and Sun played Punto Banco at Crockfords using Angel playing cards that had a sub-millimetric asymmetry in the back pattern, making one long edge marginally different from the other.
• Sun, speaking Cantonese, persuaded the croupier (Kathy Yau) to rotate 'good' (high-value) cards end-to-end and 'not good' cards side-to-side under the pretence of changing luck; the croupier was found to be 'wholly ignorant' of the significance.
• Ivey requested the same shoe of cards be reused and that cards be shuffled by machine (which does not rotate card orientation), ensuring the sorted orientation was preserved.
• On the reshuffled shoe and subsequent shoes, Ivey's betting accuracy on player/banker improved dramatically, with stakes reaching GBP 150,000 per coup.
• The Supreme Court held that Ivey 'staged a carefully planned and executed sting,' taking 'positive steps to fix the deck,' which in a game of pure chance amounted to cheating regardless of whether he subjectively believed it was legitimate.

Primary sources

1. Ivey (Appellant) v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords (Respondent) [2017] UKSC 67 — UK Supreme Court, 2017-10-25 [link]
2. UK Supreme Court case summary page UKSC/2016/0213 — UK Supreme Court [link]
3. Phil Ivey Loses £7.7M Supreme Court Appeal in London Edge Sorting Case — PokerNews, 2017-10-25 [link]

Lessons (observation, not prescription)

• Cheating in UK gambling law is structural, not subjective.
• Game-protection failures do not determine outcomes — operators retain the right to refuse payment under cheating.
• Surveillance and table games must align in real time on advantage-play identification, not after disputed payouts.