Gifted with eyesight? Cheng Yin Sun, Ivey’s edge-sorting baccarat partner, is foxwoods that are suing millions. (Image: Neil Stoddart/PokerStars)
Phil Ivey edge-sorting pal Cheng Yin Sun is one of three gamblers Foxwoods that is suing Casino for over $3 million in withheld winnings. Although Ivey is circuitously associated with the Foxwoods case, Sun and Ivey are both currently the main topic of a court case brought by the Borgata in Atlantic City, which is wanting to recover $9.6 million it paid out to the pair adhering to a stint during the mini-baccarat tables in 2012.
Both instances involve the employment of edge-sorting, as well as the debate over its legality, or absence thereof; issue that is fifty shades of grey, as far as regulations is concerned. The Borgata claims the practice is cheating and is unlawful under state video gaming law; Sun and Ivey say it is not.
Edge-sorting is a method in which the gambler is able to look for the value of the card by observing delicate manufacturing flaws and asymmetries within the pattern on the rear, and the skilled edge-sorter can turn the odds in their or her benefit to your tune of six or seven percent.
Could it be cheating? Well, there is the rub, and we’re more likely to find out soon, once the theories of both parties are tested in courts on both sides of the Atlantic. The gamblers declare that they have been making use of pure ability to caress the chances inside their favor (and edge-sorting is no mean feat, needing freakish abilities of observance), while the casinos are claiming it is fraudulence, pure and simple.
$1.6 Million in Stakes Held Back
Since well because the Foxwoods and Borgata cases, Ivey can also be suing London’s Crockford’s Casino, which has withheld $12.1 million Ivey that is following and’s visit there, additionally in 2012. The case that is latest makes no reference to Ivey, however, and is brought by Sun and two associates, Long Mei Fan and Zong Yang Li. The trio claims that the money owed to them by Foxwoods comprises $1.1 million in winnings and their $1.6 million in stakes.
‘Basically, edge-sorting is possible because some brands of playing cards aren’t cut symmetrically across their backs plus some players are gifted with eyesight keen sufficient to tell the distinction,’ says the suit. ‘If Foxwoods and Foxwoods management knew that plaintiffs were edge-sorting and let them practice their type of advantage play anyway, intending to keep their losses should they won, this would be intentional fraud. if they lost although not honor their winnings’
Unprecedented
The situations are fascinating because they are entirely without precedent, as expert in gaming law Maurice VerStandig underlined recently.
‘Edge sorting falls somewhere between card counting and weighted eyes that are snake and regulations is yet to figure out just where,’ he stated. ‘There is not any precedent that is real cases like this, and when the judicial system cannot find precedent, it goes in search of analogy, something that does not much help here, either, because edge sorting is perhaps not certainly analogous to anything…’
A lawyer representing the Foxwoods plaintiffs, has confirmed they are one and the same while Sun’s name differs on the court documents from the Foxwoods case to those of the Borgata, here spelled Cheung Yin Sun instead of Cheng Yin Sun, Marvin Vining.
‘I am able to confirm that Cheung Yin Sun was additionally Phil Ivey’s playing partner in mini-baccarat sessions that gave rise to the Borgata lawsuit in nj-new jersey and the Crockfords lawsuit in London,’ said Vining. ‘She enjoyed different playing partners at Foxwoods, and the circumstances of all three legal actions are slightly different. However the Foxwoods plaintiffs did employ essentially the type that is same of strategy as taking part in the other two legal actions.’