The Greatest Legal Casino Heist in History

January 2012 poker legend Phil Ivy and Advantage player Kelly Sun exploited a trivial flaw in how Casino cards were printed a flaw so small the casinos didn't even suspect a thing they actually helped Ivy and Sun Win money during the production process of cutting Casino cards the cuts of the edges are not identical making it possible for a trained eye to identify certain cars by their Edge Designs over just 9 months of gambling with this Advantage they won over 20 million from some of the world's most prestigious casinos and they pull it off playing bakara

a game that is unbeatable under normal circumstances they found the closest thing to a free money hack that could potentially be milked for Millions over the following months or even years but greed opened the door for casinos to fight back this is the story of the greatest legally executed Casino heist where Millions were won before the casinos could fight [Music] backal how much more are you playing I think Phil Ivy's post here asking Lex how much he has 140 something 130 140 more doesn't want Barry to know he raised him with air I don't believe

it I don't believe it Phil iy just went all in with a five du off suit I don't believe it I thought they were just angry at Barry I am that is one of the great Bluffs in the history of high stakes poker what a move this is Phil Ivy he's probably the best poker player of all time between 19 million in online winnings 10 World Series of Poker bracelets and being 11th all time in poker tournament winnings few other players have a better resume but besides his skill iy has this imposing aura that is

unlike most other poker players he's often compared to sports legends like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods because it seems like he doesn't care if he's playing for 20 cents for $20 million he's just competing he wants to win the profits are an afterthought serving more as a way to keep score than a pursue of profit but Ivy success isn't just about his insane Talent he was also at the right place place at the right time he started playing seriously as a teenager in the '90s using a fake ID to get into Atlantic City casinos and

play seven card Stu he quickly Rose to the ranks and by age 23 he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet winning $195,000 in the $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha event by 2003 he was an established Pro and seen as a rising star yeah it was during the this year at the World Series of Poker Main Event The Ivy would face a defining moment one that would later Ripple through the poker World in ways no one could have [Music] anticipated there's just 10 players left of 839 entrance in the World Series of Poker Main Event

the last player remaining WIS $2.5 million and after the next player is eliminated the last nine head to the final [Music] table Ivy found himself Allin putting his tournament life on the lineing against an unknown amateur player named Chris money maker and yes that's his actual birth name he won his way into this $10,000 buying event by winning an $86 online poker tournament where an entry into this tournament was the first price it's a little confusing but basically this guy put up 86 bucks one an online poker tournament and now is playing for $2.5 million

Chris Money Maker is our chip leader at this point don't expect him to do anything huge but he's looking at Ace Queen so he's going to make some sort of move he bets 60,000 on the ace Queen so I he's in a hand but this guy Chris Money Maker action over to Phil Ivy now and looking at a couple of nines Phil Ivy always loves pocket pairs he'll call it and turns a full house one of the best hands in poker very rarely beaten Jason ler here comes a turn in it's a nine and that

gives Phil Ivy a Full House miracle on Fourth Street for Phil Ivy who now has the Full House and the better hand ivy goes all in and Money Maker calls the bet with three of a kind an inferior hand and Phil Ivy deciding what he's going to do he's obviously going to play and if and when he wins this sizable pot Phil Ivy will put himself in terrific chip position for the final day all in he is all in all in and quickly called called the pots size is 1 million now n full for Phil

I Money Maker is disgusted he he never could have assumed the two NS in the hole for Phil Ivy and now he is going to need an ace a queen or a six on the river to win the hand which would knock out Phil Ivy money makers looking for an ace on the river or another queen here we go we're going to see one more C by this point only an ace queen or six on the river wins money maker the hand Ivy has a 84% chance of winning the hand and he feels great and

now he is going to need an ace a queen or a six on the river to win the hand which would knock out Phil Ivy money makers looking for an ace on the river or another queen here we go we're going to see one more card it's an a an incredible knockout blow for probably the best player left in the tournament [Music] down Ace on the [Music] river this young man the remaining players thrilled to be at the final table but also happy and relieved that the great Phil Ivy will be absent in 2020 Ivy

would describe this as the worst beat of his life but reflect positively on the moment what he didn't know back then after the worst beat of his life is that this loss won him several times that $2.5 million first place finish Money Maker went on to win the entire tournament this could be the last card of the 2003 World Series of Poker [Applause] let's get it let's get it with a full house Chris Money Maker eliminates Sam farhall and the 27y old has stepped out of the virtual poker room and in a very Swift and

unlikely manner is a top the poker world this is beyond fairy tale it's [Applause] inconceivable a complete amateur just beat the world's best professional players took home $2.5 million all from one entry into an $86 online [Music] tournament the world watched at home on ESPN and rushed to online poker websites like poker stars and party poker to make deposits the complete boom began in the poker World drawing a flood of bad players trying to win a big it was like printing money for pros like Ivy and no other Pro took advantage of this boom like

Ivy tens of millions in online poker winnings Millions more acting as an ambassador for Rich poker sites and of course playing in the huge buying tournaments that were full of amateur tourists trying to be the next Chris Money Maker but of course the golden age did not last us prosecutors announcing a Crackdown on one of the internet's dirty little secrets online poker the feds say offshore companies are either tricking or outright bribing Banks to get around laws ban their operation in America in 2011 the US Department of Justice shut down major online poker sites barking

the end of an era the spigot of easy money was closed even worse this closure known as Black Friday in the poker World embroiled Ivy and Scandal he was an ambassador to fil poker a poker site that failed to refund player deposits after it was shut down Fallout was huge and cast Shadow over obvious reputation and along with it the huge paydays he was getting as an ambassador for this poker site so this brings us to the present day January 29th 2012 Ivy wins the Aussie Millions High Roller tournament for a win of $2 million

Australian dollars so we have a winner $2 million richer as if he needed it it is Phil on I it's a huge payday and Ivy is no doubt glad there's a Melancholy to it the poker boom had busted and Ivy now found himself in the crosshairs of the poker Community there's no more easy online poker money and no more huge sponsorship paydays he may have been wondering how long he can keep this up [Music] upon hearing the news of iy's win Advantage player Steven black offers to fly out to Australia and show Ivy his newest

tricks he thinks he can beat the game of craps and his partner thinks she can beat the game of Bak rock with the poker World in flux and his flow of easy money and Jeopardy Ivy was more receptive to Black speculations about beating games most thought to be unbeatable and that's how Ivy met Kelly son bakara machine [Music] Kelly sun is one of the elite few who can consistently beat the casino and overcome the famous house Edge known as an advantage player she uses strategies to rewrite the rules of casino games and turn the odds

back in her favor the most famous form of Advantage play is card counting which involves using math to make profitable bets in blackjack but the strategies that Kelly eventually developed to beat bakara were far more lucrative and unlike card counting these strategies didn't attract the attention of Casino security this is Ted Whiting he's the head of surveillance at the Arya casino in Las Vegas he's the eye in the sky on the lookout for Advantage players cheaters and theft he says that the number of successful Advantage players is probably in the hundreds it's a rare and

difficult line of work and son isn't some math Savon like the kids from the MIT blackjack team that they made the movie 21 about in fact she was an ordinary Gambler until a stint in jail served as the Catalyst to her making millions born during Mao's cultural revolution in China Sun's early life was full of hardship her father once a wealthy businessman disappeared into communist work game camps leaving her mother to fend for the family alone her mother was forced to improvise to provide for the family by growing their own food and creating makeshift shoes

out of cardboard for the children but after Ma's death in 1976 China began to liberalize her father was freed from the Work Camp and struck at Rich once again in the factory business the Newfound wealth allowed sun to attend college in Shanghai and eventually travel the world at her father's expense but along the way she caught the gambling bug she was using fake IDs to get into maau casinos and play poker and bakara and during one of these sessions she had a transformative moment she turned $1,500 into $150,000 playing bakara by pure luck and more

than the money it was the thrill of the win in defiance of the odds after this she was addicted using her father's wealth she quickly became a global High Roller casinos would fly her around in private jets and comp her beautiful Penthouse Suites the casinos would basically give her anything to get her to continue losing Millions at the tables she was having the time of her life until inevitably like any Gambler she ran out of cash starting with Millions she was down to her last few thousand the highs of private jets and Pen houses were

now Distant Memories gambling had been her downfall but it also looked to be her only path to Redemption with little left to lose she was ready to risk it all one more time desperate to turn her thousands into millions I once again she's in the Las Vegas win hunting for a lucky slot machine to put the last of her money in but she sees a man playing a slot machine with an unusual amount of focus and for some reason this stuck out to her and in her mind she decided that he must be a professional

Gambler of some sort she introduced herself to this man hoping he can show her how to multiply her money quickly and the man introduced himself as Steven black she was right he was a professional Gambler and lucky for son black was Smitten by her and agreed to teach her how to gamble [Music] professionally he even went on to hire her as an assistant for 20 bucks an hour while she learned on the job under the mentorship of black son was building her skills and learning how to actually make a living from gambling after millions of

dollars in gambling losses she finally saw a path to Conquering the casinos but one night her life took a drastic [Music] turn it's an ordinary night in Las Vegas Kelly son is at the MGM Grand with her old Hy roll her friends playing high stakes bakara one of her friends has a bad shriek of luck and finds themselves down a million dollar and out of cash in a bind they turned to son asking her to use her High Roller privileges to borrow $100,000 from the casino on her behalf given her status son has access to

lines of credit MGM casinos knowing that her friend could financially cover the loan she agrees and secures the money from the casino for them she just tells your friend to pay back the casino by the end of the night borrowing money from a Vegas casino is known as writing a marker but this isn't an ordinary line of credit like a credit card or business loan def faulting on a marker at a Vegas casino is a criminal offense equivalent to writing a bad check so when son and her friends are done gambling for the night Sun's

friend assures her that they paid back the marker and Son trusts her friend's word so she leaves the country she flies to France to stay in Paris for a few months and it's not until 6 months later when she flies back to America does she get the bad news her friend lied and didn't pay the marker now she's under arrest and thrown in jail for 3 weeks conditions in jail were rough son told the gambling within Edge podcast that she was put in solitary confinement just for requesting clean underwear and the irony of her situation

was not lost on her in a short time she went from gambling for millions of dollars learning under a skilled Advantage player in Black to being locked in solitude totally alone with nothing but her thoughts and a deck of cards she had the mean to easily settle the debt but she didn't know that her friend lied about paying the debt back in her Solitude Sun couldn't stop thinking about the MGM beyond the unpaid marker being a simple misunderstanding it was a mere accounting error compared to the millions that she lost at the MGM Grand to

her it was an insult to be treated like a criminal for a mistake with nothing else to focus on in her solitude she set her Target on getting revenge on the MGM with her lone deck of cards as her weapon she began teaching herself to count cards the passing hours of isolation sharpened her skills she was getting pretty good but it was during one of these endless solitary sessions that sun noticed something peculiar an anomaly in the cards themselves the pattern on the backs of the cards were asymmetrically cut a detail so minor it would

Escape most but the sun it was no Minor Detail it was the key to everything she knew that she could exploit these imperfections to exact her revenge on MGM these asymmetric patterns meant that if she paid close enough attention she could tell which cards were which just by looking at the back of them and this is where the seed was planted to her eventually taking to casinos MGM included for tens of millions of dollars using this [Music] strategy Casino card printing is imperfect here's Casino consultant Bill Zender talking to the jackpot jens's podcast about how

this works all cards all Casino quality cards have this problem when they print the cards they print them in big sheets they hit the machine hit the machine and after let's say ,000 5,000 sheets then the machine when it cuts is off a little bit when we start the cut we start the process of printing the first ones are cut probably perfectly and then when they get towards the end of the Run they're not cut so well and these imperfections make it so that each edge of the card cuts off at a different point if

you look at this card on the screen here you could see that there's a pattern on the back of these Casino cards on the left Edge it's cut off at a half diamond on the right Edge it's cut off at a full diamond the same is true at the top and the bottom to demonstrate how Sun utilized this we're going to create a simple game called find the ace we have three cards an ace a queen and a six our goal is just to pick the ace on a random guess we have a 33% chance

of guessing correctly but if we use Edge sorting that turns 33% into 100% accuracy we have the same types of cards we used in that example half diamonds on one Edge full diamonds on the opposite Edge these are just red all three cards are currently oriented with the half diamonds on the left Edge but if we know which card is the Ace we can simply rotate it 180° and then the full diamonds are on the left edge of only the ace the other two cards have the half diamonds on the left Edge so we can

Shuffle these three cards a 100 times a million times as long as we don't rotate them 180° the edges will still be sorted so after shuffling we lay our three cards out and we just look at the edges as long as these cards weren't rotated during the shuffling process we can simply identify our Race by looking for the card with the full diamonds along the left Edge half diamonds half diamonds full diamonds that's our race [Music] Edge sorting is really cool in theory but it's pretty impractical to use in the casino unless the conditions are

perfect so they needed to pull a ruse on the casinos to allow them to Ed sort the decks right under their noses they needed the casinos to bend the rules just a bit to make this work and the first thing they needed was a high roller reputation casinos don't bend the rules of their games for anyone if you're betting $10 a hand in blackjack a casino will never change the rules of a blackjack game to favor you but they'll go out of their way for a whale so this part was easy for them Phil Ivy

was one of the most notorious gamblers in the world and despite his reputation as a cold calculating poker player was all about the math there was a degenerate Gambler inside of him most people lock up their WIS no I'm going to go right on over to another casino and play some more quarter to 4 you got a 5:00 tournament you got millions of dollars in prop bets so what are you going to do you're going to shoot dice that's right it gets my mind clear eventually I got to go bust it I guess it's it's

just a matter of time I want to make everybody happy they keep saying how could this guy do play crabs and play poker as high as he does and ends up always handing up well either he regularly blew hundreds of thousands of dollars playing crafts and other casino games at casinos around the world and this was the entire reason Sun partnered with Ivy to begin with his gambling reputation provided ample cover for their scheme so using Ivy's High Roller reputation they plan to approach casinos with a set of Demands let us play Bak under these

conditions and in return we'll get guarantee that we'll gamble x amount of dollars and because bakara has a fixed house edge with no way to Advantage play of the game outside of edge sorting most casinos are eager to Grant these requests when they know millions are coming in the door so here's their list of requests their very first request is to allow Ivy to have a guest sit with him while he plays that's vital that's Sun son is the one who mastered the art of edge sorting and the plan cannot work if she's not by

his side telling him how to bet then they requested a mandarin speaking dealer and this is actually the Lynch pin of it all Superstition is the rule in Chinese gambling culture variant of baka played in maau China even allowed the players to handle the cards and often rip them all in the name of luck they were planning to leverage Sun's Chinese Heritage make her appear like a superstitious Gambler and throw the eyes in the sky off the trail using this cover they can make odd requests to the Cino and it will just look like the

whims of a superstitious Gambler a mandarin speaking bakarat dealer is experienced in accommodating all kinds of odd superstitious requests and generally won't raise a fuss or think anything of it and the Very request alone adds to son's cover you know one of the interesting things I remember I was talk speaking with Richard about you when we first started doing the story for the Sunday Times and um he said he he said he goes like what what's so brilliant about the play is that you applied it to bakarat the game where you can bet huge sums

and where the casinos don't sweat it the way like they're used to people Bing that kind of money and and they don't sweat the action at bakup espe esally if you're Chinese it helps maau style using Sun's cover as a Chinese Gambler they requested that the dealer rotate quote unquote lucky cards 180° at Sun's request this would allow them to EDG sort without ever touching the cards the dealer would be doing it for them so if a nine a good card comes out son can simply say lucky card in Mandarin and the dealer will turn

at 180° as we did in our example thus Ed sorting the good cards the next a private table and area Ivy's significant Fame in the gambling world would draw too much attention at a public table besides the fact that Gathering fans would be a distraction someone might catch on to what they're doing so they needed privacy use specific cards some cards are easier to Edge Short than others they might have a more distinctive pattern or simply just a larger pattern for instance these brigata cards have a very distinctive and large pattern on the back making

them Easy Ed swort reuse cards casinos periodically switch out play decks with new decks and doing this would ruin hours of work of IV and Sun Edge sorting the decks and we require them to play through an entire new shoe again just to Resort the cards you see every time a new shoe of cards comes along they basically have to play through that entire shoe just to get the edges sorted and only then could they use their strategy and apply their advantage so they requested that if they felt that this shoe of cards was quote

unquote lucky they can reuse it and thus they can retain The Edge sorted decks for long periods of time an automatic shuffler remember in our find the ace demonstration where we said we can Shuffle Ed sorted cards in million times and they'll still be sorted so long as the cards aren't rotated will a dealer shuffling by hand is unpredictable they might use shuffling techniques that involve rotating the cards and thus getting the edge sorts out of order but an automatic shuffler shuffles cards the same way every time and crucially it never rotates the cards so

it guarantees that the edges will remain sorted so to summarize this was The List of Demands allow a guest to sit with Ivy a mandarin speaking dealer play quote unquote maau style a private table and area using specific cards reusing cards and an automatic shuffler [Music] how much of an advantage does Edge sorting really give you we know that all casino games are rigged against you to start with in bakara for example the house Edge is a bit higher than 1% which is some of the best odds in the casino so any strategy needs to

start by making the house Edge back just to break even let alone make a profit but before we start throwing out numbers without context let's look at a typical Edge that other Advantage Play Systems would get you now Blackjack card counting is the most accessible and well-known Advantage play strategy so let's look at the math for that real quick Ed Thorp kicked off the Golden days at Advantage Play Back in the 1960s when he published beat the dealer it was the first big card counting book and it introduced Advantage play to the world the strategies

in the book give you a 2 to 3% advantage over the house back then so for every hundred bucks you wagered you could expect to make $2.50 in profit per bet you could go on hot and cold streaks but over a large sample size your average profit per $100 bet would be close to$ 250 and this was really really good so good that casinos had to change the rules of blackjack and introduce anti- card count and countermeasures to make it harder and thus the arms race between Advantage players and casinos was born and while it's

been an up and down battle the casinos have largely won the war Advantage play is a lot harder nowadays and even the profits you get are lower modern card counters can optimistically hope for a 0.5% advantage and if you can maintain that consistently that's considered impressive in the modern day but even a small Edge like 0.5% compounds over many bets if you can imagine flipping a weighted coin that lands on Tails 50 and 1 12% of the time it'll be slow but if you keep making bets on tails you could actually grind out a living

but with such a small sample size it's all about getting a huge sample size both to account for the variance and results with such a or small advantage and to actually realize the advantage here's some interesting graphs from a blackjack site called blackjack in color it shows simulated profit graphs of a card counting strategy over different sample sizes and as you can see until you reach around 100,000 hands played you're not even certain if you have an edge kind of looks random so just keep that in mind the most popular and oversaturated ated method of

Advantage play has grass that look like that but Ivy and Sun's strategy was radically different and that's what made it so exciting and dangerous it was nearly impossible to lose so long as they played a large enough sample size here's a table representing their advantage over the house based on the first card drawn in bakara Ivy and Sun's bets are highlighted in green and it shows which bet they would make based on what Kelly son's Edge sorting told them was coming next so if a quote unquote bad card like an Ace 2 3 4 5

10 king queen whatever anything that's not a 6 through n was coming out they would bet on the banker hand and as you can see even a quote unquote Bad Card gave them an advantage for every single card so if a two came out they had a 4.9% advantage over the house and that's huge remember in the golden days of card counting 2 to 3% was considered great and it gets even better when a good card comes out if an eight or a nine comes out they have a 17 or 21 1 12% Edge that's

just mindboggling and most impressive about this was that they had a statistical advantage AG on every single bet that they made whether a good card or a bad card was coming even back in those golden days of blackjack that we keep referring back to you were still only profitable on half of your hands and that profit had to make up for the losses from the unprofitable half of hands so needless to say this type of massive statistical Advantage is pretty much unheard of not just in the casino but in the stock market sports betting nearly

any Pursuit where people use numbers to predict things and make money so when these types of opportunities come up they never last so they had to strike while the iron was hot because even if things go perfectly to plan the casinos are going to start noticing things when they start haming millions of dollars [Music] despite all the work sun has done thus far millions and gambling losses learning the ropes of Advantage play Under Steven black spending time in jail to develop the strategy figuring out the math doing trial runs and finally finding Phil Ivy everything

is still somewhat hypothetical this strategy hasn't been tried on a large scale yet and it can't be until sun gets access to a VIP High Roller who will convince casinos to bend the rules to make Edge sorting possible at scale but time is running out this chatter about Edge sorting in the casino security industry and other Advantage players are figuring out Edge sorting and they're hot on Sun's tail the strategy is simply too lucrative to last it feels like casinos will catch up and any day now and sun has barely gotten started she's planning a

home run a grand slam a massive cash grab before it's too late she can't let her years of work go down the drain and miss the opportunity but she needs Ivy's VIP status sure son has done some trial runs and made some cash winning 200k here 300K there but this strategy has eight figure potential potential so it's time to go get Phil Ivy let's shift to the present day January 2012 after Ivy wins the Austy Millions son and her Mentor Steven Black hop on a plane to Australia Ivy apparently has $6 million in cash on

him at the crown Casino in Melbourne and it's time to shrike while the iron is hot but I've even sold on the idea of edge sorting yet in fact he's far more interested in Black's fantasies about controlling the dice and craps something which has never proven to be possible actually but Ivy being a degenerate crafts player can't contain his curiosity about controlling a game that's mastered him for years they head to the crafts table and swiftly lose $3 million already skeptical of Black's wild ideas I almost ready to tell them to hit the road but

he can't resist taking a Peak at this Edge sorting strategy a gambler can never pass up a proven system so $3 million in the hole they head to the bck raw tables to try to make some of it back and it goes south they lost 500 Grand the pattern on the back of the crown Casino cards was too small for sun to make out but Ivy wasn't hearing it he feels like he's been played for a fool he calls son and black Hustlers moves on with his day and just like that son's opportunity to strike

it rich with Edge sorting seemingly slipped out of her hands due to factors out of her control it's a fitting end inside of a casino the trip to Melbourne seemed to be a failure Sun needs Ivy and she might not get another opportunity like this before the casino smarten up to Ed sorting sun in Black beg and plead with Ivy to give them another shot and he finally agrees to one final trial run so when they head to the bakra tables the next day sun knows that the next few hours could be the most consequential

of her life she won't squander this opportunity a second time she stayed up all night studying the crown Casino cards finding a way to Ed sort such a tiny pattern and by the end of the session they won $3.5 million seven times Sun's initial loss that was all the convincing that Ivy needed to go all in [Music] they spent the next few months flying private jets from casino to casino making as much as they can in the process Sun finally found that whale that can make her grand slam a possibility they were going undercover as

drunk Rich and dumb gamblers looking for thrill and excitement but in reality they're great white sharks sniffing for blood they went clubbing they got drunk and they hung out by the pool just like tourists would but they were still looking for the Big Score they were Globe trotting and seeking the weakest link the greediest and most desperate Casino willing to make any concession if it means Ivy would a wire a few million dollars and after months of flying between destinations like Las Vegas MCA Montreal Singapore and Monte Carlo they finally found their target on the

Jersey Shore in Atlantic City's Bergata Casino the rata is the crown jewel of Atlantic City but that's not saying much once an East Coast gambling destination Atlantic City has become a zombie city a declining population rampid crime abandoned neighborhoods whales like Ivy don't come around these parts often and the Bata wants to make sure they keep him around as long as possible and the bata's desperation was son and Ivy's way in they knew they could push to Bata to make concessions that other casinos would not they found their weak point and now it's time to

attack [Music] it it's April 11th 2012 Ivan son been jet setting for the last 10 weeks hitting every Casino in sight but now it's big game hunting they don't plan to just make a half a million and run they want to set down some Roots here and establish the verata as a cash cow that can consistently be t for profits Javy has a million dollars in chips in front of him he and Son sit down in the bata's private high roller area and start their session they keep their bet sizing small to start things off

the shoe of purple rata cards are playing with has eight decks in it it's going to take a while to play through all of them and get them sorted so they bet the minimum while they have no Advantage but once the whole shoe is sorted aka the good cards and the bad cards are sorted by the edges they quickly up their bets to the maximum of $50,000 per Hand by the end of this 16-hour session they're up $2.4 million they've more than tripled their initial million doll deposit in one session things are going exactly as

planned and every fiber in their being wants to stay at the brigata all month printing Millions until the casino finally catches on however you can share a sheet many times but you can only skin him once they need to be act F they need to balance the long game of keeping the Bata opportunity open for as long as possible while still maintaining the urgency that dis Advantage could be found out any day now by the casinos they need to strike a balance between cautiousness and aggressiveness if they're at the Bata every week or every day

that in itself would be very suspicious high rollers like Ivy typically don't set down routes in Atlantic City but on the other hand disadvantage one won't last forever so when they do play at the Bata they need to be very aggressive and bet as much as possible they need to push the casino to constantly up the max bet so they ultimately settle on about one 16-hour session at the Bata per month it's enough to make a big payday while still maintaining their cover and keeping the brigata opportunity open for as long as possible and they

made every session count on May 3rd 2012 they returned to the brigata and made made another $1.6 million over 56 hours that's of course spread over multiple sessions they return again in July on July 17th 2012 and make another $4.8 million in just 17 hours after that they continue flying around the world finding more casinos to play at while they wait for their next brigata session where they're going to hit it big in the meantime Phil's flying around the world on his own too playing poker playing craps doing his normal rich guy things fast forward

to August 20th 2012 Phil Ivy is in London playing some poker and craps when he sees the legendary crockford's Casino it's Britain's oldest casino and the gambling spot of choice for rich British whales the beautiful Georgian architecture oozes luxury and exclusivity and that gives Ivy a primal urge he quickly calls son and demands she fly to London at once he wants to take crockford's money with EDG sorting and sun is initially reluctant they didn't previously identify crockfords as an advantageous place to play this is purely at Ivy's whim Ivy's Relentless so Sun boards the first

flight to London [Music] it's about 10: at night Ivy and son are sitting at a private table in crockford's getting their usual VIP treatment Kelly's son is a well-oiled Bak ra Machine by this point she's used to sessions spanning dozens of hours non-stop she can practically Edge sort in her sleep at this point so they're going through the motions as they ordinarily do they start by betting small while they're getting the shoe fully sorted and once the shoe is fully Edge sorted they start scaling up their bets to the maximum $50,000 per bet Ivy is

oozing with confidence he wants more he's done trying to be subtle for today at least he pushes the casino to raise their limits $75,000 $100,000 by the end of the night they're betting $150,000 per hand of bakara and by 3:00 a.m. at night they're up over $2 million and he's not done Ivy insists that they're coming back tomorrow and he specifically requests that crockfords keeps the game exactly the same most importantly for taining the edge sort of decks from the previous day so the following after afternoon at around 300 p.m. Ivy and Son sit down

again and what they don't know is that this will not be an ordinary day of bakura at least not on the surface the next few hours of gambling will have dramatic consequences on the next several years of their lives Ivy starts by betting the maximum he's rolling in money they're up $5 million in virtually no time within three 3 hours total they're up over $10 million this is the fastest money they've ever made not only is son firing on all cylinders but they're catching a huge streak of luck the sheer amount of money is overwhelming

but sun is nervous she was already reluctant about coming to play here now they're on the best Lux streak of their lives and Kelly wants to quit while she's ahead before the casino catches on but Ivy has zero interest in stopping now he sees an advantage and he intends to push it as far as they'll let him go looks like he's gearing up for an allight Marathon again and their luck continues until a suspicious Casino manager comes to their table and switches out the carts at this point both Ivy and Son assume the worst they

think they've been found out or at the very least the casino is on to something something about what they're doing they quickly get up from their table and walk to the cashier's cage to cash out their $12 million in total winnings they instruct crockfords to wire the 12 million to Ivy's bank account but they weren't walking away with their winnings that day instead they walked away with a receipt crockfords withheld their winnings on suspicions of cheating instead giving them a receipt to collect their money when crockford's deems It Was Won fairly they have l choice

but to tuck their tails between their legs and leave defeated Ivy will of course file suit but as of now he's just focused on the next Edge sorting opportunity they board their plane not knowing that the events of today would bring down their entire operation like a house of carts losing their winnings was a major setback but a temporary one for Ivy they continue playing at different Global casinos with an increased urgency at least one casino is on to them and word spreads fast in the casino industry it's October 5th 2012 crockfords is still holding

Ivy and Sun's winnings Ivy concludes that they're not getting it back without a court mandate but his focus is chiefly in the present he just arrived in Atlantic City and is here to press the monthly free money button at the brigata he and Son spend the first two days of their visit on clubbing and Leisure as per usual by the 7th of October they're looking forward to another productive day of gambling with the crockford's debacle almost entirely behind them and iy pushes the limits of Bata and gets them to agree to a maximum bet of

about $100,000 per hand there's several hours into another Marathon session and their luck is starting to run hot they're up $3.5 million with no end in sight it's possible that this session can largely make up for the crockfords incident however a familiar scene unfolds as a Bergata High Roller manager approaches their table and starts a conversation with Ivy and something just feels off about this and then the brigata manager brings up the incident at crockford's in August Ivy and Son's Hearts drop how did the Bata find out about crockford's and more importantly what do they

know or suspect this time they can't afford a repeat of their previous mistake when crockfords hinted at suspicions Ivan son panicked and fled which is exactly what a guilty party would do now they needed to stay seated and pull off a performance worthy of Ivy's best poker Bluffs so they start using Edge sorting against themselves iy's making precisely the wrong bets based on what Sun reads on the cards they need to lose some of this money back to Bata or I'll still have two casinos investigating them by the end of the night they're up just

$800,000 a pittance compared to the $3.5 million in profit they reached just hours prior they take a deep breath and head to the cashier's cage like a kid being sent to the principal's office to their surprise they cash out without problems they start wondering why they were allowed to cash out were they being paranoid what do they do the next time they come to the Bata will they even be welcome back there does the Bata even suspect anything unluckily for them they don't have to speculate for Long by the time they get home the internet

is a washed with rumors and reports about The COC for's incident their cover is completely blown what perhaps more worrying is that there's talk of legal action from several casinos The Daily Mail a British tabloid ran an article claiming that crockfords refused to pay Ivy and Son their winnings and that the casino is investigating if the two were cheating Ivy and Son know that their fate is sealed Edge sorting is over no Casino in the world will let them play bakara anymore let alone cave to their special requests with his cash cow slaughtered Ivy is

just about ready to close the book on this whole Edge shorting Adventure it's the nature of any exploit in the gambling world you find one and then the casino stamp it out few advantages even in poker last forever but before he moves on he's getting his 10 million back from the crockfords of all the casinos in the world it's this Posh stuck up Casino in London they were the only ones that tried to steal it back from him there's always been the understanding between betters and the casino that if you can fairly beat the house

you're entitled to your winnings even if they don't welcome you back like famously they do with card counters sa for Mob run casinos it's virtually unheard of for casinos to withhold payment to a winning customer the implicit deal has always been that casinos have a free money machine sanctioned by the government if someone's smart enough to beat them the casino can kick them out but he keeps his winnings and it's a great deal for casinos they should just pay Ivy so dialing his lawyer he has no clue that he's about to kick off a 6-year

legal [Music] battle it's May 2013 and Ivy fires the first shot filing a lawsuit against crockford's in London's high court it's slated to be the biggest casino related legal battle in UK history Ivy's argument is simple Edge sorting is a legitimate Vantage play technique and not cheating no cards were marked no inside help was employed he simply outsmarted crockfords at their own game but crockfords isn't backing down they argue that Ivy's actions amount to cheating and they violate the fundamental premise of gambling as the crockford's case unfolds another legal storm is brewing across the Atlantic

fast forward to April 2014 the Bata files a lawsuit against Ivy and Son seeking to reclaim the $9.6 million they won in those four sessions throughout 2012 and the bad's case is more complex than the lawsuit that Ivy filed against crockfords the Bata isn't refusing to pay out winnings they're trying to claw back money they already paid out they Levy a laundry list of counts against Ivy and Son including breach of cont contract fraud and they're even trying to use Rico laws to claim that Ivy and Son were operating a criminal Enterprise the same Rico

laws passed to combat the Italian mafia during its Heyday in the 1970s they go so far as to claim that Ivy and Son were utilizing an illegal quote unquote cheating device which gambling lawyer Mac ver standig put better than I could quote of course that does not truly strike as humorous until the complaint reveals that this cheating device was the automatic shuffler yes that automatic shuffler the one owned by the Bata presumably acquired from a manufacturer of Regulation gaming equipment and the one used every day to make sure a hybrid generation of card counters not

be able to follow specific cards through a manual Shuffle so Ivy finds himself fighting a warant on two fronts with millions of dollars and his reputation at stake the gambling world is watching closely this could be the end of Advantage play as we know it at its core these two cases go beyond legal jargon and lofty theories about player Casino contracts they beg a fundamental Paradox in the gambling world how can a casino cry foul over an advantage when its entire business is built on its inherit burn Edge over its customers This legal battle isn't

just about Edge sorting it's about the nature of betting itself Ivy and his legal team file a motion to dismiss the Bergata lawsuit they contend that edge sorting is skillful play rather than cheating as well as invoking a six-month statute of limitations for recovering money lost in illegal gambling which had already expired meanwhile the crockford's case across the pond is heating [Music] up it's the night of October 7th 2014 tomorrow Judge John mitt of the London High Court will deliver a verdict on Ivy's lawsuit against crockford's if things go his way there's $10 million waiting

for him but tonight is about rallying the public support for his cause Ivy's usually media shy with very few public appearances now he's going on mainstream media 60 Minutes one of the most popular shows in America once you get cheater next to your name especially in in my business it's it's really bad and casinos they they take cheating and Advantage play as the same thing when it's a big big difference they spend millions and millions of dollars on game protection and it's their job to protector game and I'm viewing the casino as my opponent it's

my job to try to exploit weaknesses in the house Jim Harley was the only expert to talk to us on camera he agrees with Ivy and says the borata and crockfords have no one to blame but themselves he made him look bad you know he played him for a chump I do not believe that that was cheating he did not alter the elements of chance he didn't alter his wager he didn't mark the cards he did not physically do anything they did it for him the next morning Judge John mid rules against Ivy the judge

states that while Ivy might not consider himself a cheat his actions do constitute cheating under UK civil law disappointed Ivy and his legal team shift their focus to appealing the high Court's decision while the lengthy appeal process occurs overseas Ivy is deposed by several lawers in the Bata case there are several highlights like ivy remarking on the bata's provocatively dressed waitresses highlighting existing game protection technology that Bata could have utilized to stop Edge sorting and how they wanted him to be drunk all the time but one of ib's responses to a lawyer's question got to

the heart of the case and that went on for four visits to Bergata and each one you played multiple hours right yes each one I played multiple hours and they never asked me to stop or never asked me what I was doing or what my strategy was they never asked me why Kelly was here talking about strategy as a professional Gambler if some casino dealer or host or floor person or Pit Boss says to you Mr Ivy what's your strategy today will you answer him I'll laugh at him no it would be ridiculous wouldn't it

you never give up your whole cards you never tell him what your what's your reasoning you have for doing anything this question cuts through the high-minded legal theories about the implied contract between a player and a casino the truth is much simpler a player is at a casino to extract as much money as possible from them and the casino is doing the same thing both sides implicitly keep their strategies to themselves Pit Bosses Don't Tap you on the shoulder when you play craps to explain that the mathematics of the game are designed so that a

player can never be a long-term winner nor do they explain the mazike layout of a casino the lack of Windows or free drinks that these things are all scientifically designed to make you bet more and for longer and we don't expect them to explain these things and yet when the casino plan to Harpoon a whale for Millions went South the regata runs to the courts to complain that Ivy wasn't fully forthright about his intention to actually win money at the casino appeals are where cases go to die it took until April 2016 for the UK's

court of appeal to even hear iy's case and later that year in November they upheld the high Court's decision nearly all hope is gone but there's one last resort taking things all the way to the UK Supreme Court the highest Court in the United Kingdom it's a last ditch effort but he has to try anything to try to get him Square again at this point Ivy is drowning his crockford suit is a long shot he's in the heat of things with the Bata it's likely he won't get his 10 million from crockfords and even worse

he's not entirely confident he'll beat the Bata suit meaning he might have to pay back another 9.6 million and despite Ivy being one of history's most successful poker players taking a $20 million loss from some lawsuits is enough to put a dent in anyone's wallet especially if they love playing high stakes dice his unlikely appearance in a Chrysler Commercial during the lawsuit might provide some Clues to the financial stress he was under just a month later in December 2016 the bad news got worse presiding over the Ivy and Bergata case a US federal judge R

in bata's favor and ordered Ivy to pay $1,130 th000 back to the brigata while judge NL Hillman concluded that Ivy's Edge sorting strategy didn't constitute fraud it was a breach of contract with the Bata he ruled that Ivy and Son failed in their obligation to the casino to provide a quote unquote Fair gaming experience under the casino Control Act after the ruling the berata even sought an additional $5.6 million in Damages this is to account for the money they quote unquote would have won if Ivy made the same bets without the edge sorting strategy the

additional request was declined unless ivy can overturn this case on appeal the last pinch of hope he has to grasp to is that he'll get his Day in the UK Supreme Court argue is crockford's case it's October 2017 and the morning of Ivy supreme court hearing UK Supreme Court Justice Lord Hughes stands up in the Supreme Court to make his rolling Mr Ivy is a professional Gambler he won approximately 7 million pounds over an evening on the following morning from crockford's Casino in London when crockfords reconstructed what he had done from the close circuit television

recording it became clear that he had developed a highly sophisticated system crockfords had never met this practice before when they worked out what he had done they refused to pay so he sued for the £7 million whether he was entitled to it or not depended on the end on whether what he did was cheating it was no doubt true that crockfords might have been better prepared than they were if they had known about the practice but if they were cheated they weren't liable to pay the judge and the court of appeal both held that what

had happened was cheating uh and so Mr Ivy couldn't claim the money this court uh agrees that it was cheating the key point is that Mr Ivy did not just watch the cards with a trained eye but rather took active steps to fix the shoe if he'd got sertia access to the shoe and rotated the cards then that would clearly be cheating he achieved the Same by duping the cuper and that is cheating as well so his appeal fails any hope that iy could pay off the Bergata lawsuit with a win in the crockford's Case

is dead the profit of several months of edge sorting months that could have been spent playing lucrative poker tournaments is lost for good even worse a 4-year two-prong legal battle totally lost after spending an Untold sum on lawyer fees but there's a silver lining the years of shess fighting two high-profile Los suits on different continents and having your name in The Press every day is over ivy can go back to his old life before a simple gambling strategy cost him years of it it wasn't all over Ivy was still determined to drag out the settlement

payment to Bata as long as possible the Bata even resorted to garnishing Ivy's public poker winnings and seizing his Nevada assets but in July 2020 almost 4 years after the brigata rolling Ivy and the Bata reached a settlement for undisclosed amount to finally put the nail in the coffin it had been about 7 years between Ivy's first lawsuit against crockfords and his 2020 settlement with the brigata before both cases were finally completely [Music] done in the end The House Always Wins except when it doesn't and when it doesn't it rewrites the rules for a brief

moment each bar on this graph was a middle finger to the house Edge each dollar or confirmation that Ivy and Son were able to do something almost nobody else can but then came the lawyers who had to ruin all the fun for years the courtroom became Ivy's new poker table but he couldn't Bluff his way out of this one he angered the wrong people in the wrong jurisdictions the aftermath left his reputation damaged two major lawsuits lost old poker buddies going after you for deaths Arya Casino even renamed its poker room from the ivy room

to table one but like he's done his entire life Ivy bounced back and he landed on his feet he's had some of the biggest tournament wins in his career over just the last few years and with that card Phil Ivy is your event number 10 champion picking up his third Triton title Ivy joined Joe Ingram for a rare public interview in 2021 feeling refreshed by the pandemic it allowed him to get closer with his family and work on his mental health and see what's most important in his life can you imagine your life within 5

years no I can't I don't I don't I don't I don't really like um I don't really like again you know I like to really just stay in the moment and enjoy now you know I don't really think about what's what's going to be like in 5 years [Music] [Music] and as for son well they're making a movie about her the bakara queen is in production now and will tell son's life story with her EDG sorting Saga being the main event incredibly Sun continues to use Edge sorting and convince casinos to bend to her requests

and she's not even keeping her exploits Under Wraps she's taken to Tik Tok where she tells her best gambling stories crockford shut its doors for good in 2023 ending its 995e history as one of the world's swankiest high roller joints and despite Atlantic City's growing troubles the Bata is becoming the proverbial lockness monster in a shrinking pond in July it accounted for 44% of total Casino profits for the city despite there being eight other casinos in Atlantic City I think this entire Saga between Ivy Sun the brigata and crockfords it's about creativity Innovation and social

engineering and how institutions react to those things rather than adapting their practices or improving their defenses the casinos turned to litigation and Rule changes to neutralize the novel advantage that IV and Sun had discovered to State the obvious casinos aren't the only industry to engage in this type of response to disruption whether it's an individual better a tech startup or a group of cunning commodity Traders large institutions rarely agree to play it fair with the little guy one only has to look as far as April 2022 when nickel a metal critical to electric vehicle production

had a short squeeze in response the London Metals exchange halted the nickel market and canceled all trades that occur during the squeeze effectively robbing traders of their cash to protect their nickel producing clients who are hurt by The Squeeze and there are countless more stories like it in the worlds of financial markets gambling technology oil production and so on but this story also teaches us about finding edges in seemingly unbeatable systems bakara is supposed to be a game with fixed odds impossible to alter through Advantage play and this blind spot from the casinos allowed Ivy

and son to turn the casino's own procedures in accommodations against them they tricked the casino into fixing the game in their favor all while the casinos figured they were simply catering to a high roller superstitions those who believe they cannot be deceived are the easiest to fool and this strategy had nothing to do with Superior math or analysis or finding the best betting system it was primarily social engineering it was all about manipulating the casino staff making these seemingly innocuous requests that were actually critical to their strategy sometimes emotional intelligence and networking can win you

more money than pure quantitative analysis and it's these type of strategies that are difficult to replicate are high constraint unscalable activities with several preconditions simply put the best edges are often hidden and plain sight requiring creativity and a willingness to operate in difficult circumstances Ivy and son did what a computer program could never do and 12 years later with artificial intelligence On The Rise these lessons are as critical as ever are you happy I am yeah I'm pretty happy now that's great thank you are you you always look happy yeah I okay just we will

just get it [Music]