Phil Ivey Money
Phil Ivey On 1-2-1976 Phil Ivey (nickname: Phil) was born in Riverside, California, United States. He made his 100 million dollar fortune with World Series Of Poker, Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker. The poker Player is married to Luciaetta Ivey, his starsign is Aquarius and he is now 45 years of age. However, one apparent thing is that he supports several charities out of his pocket and helps raise money for them. Phil Ivey puts his net worth to good use. Empowered 2 Excel is one of the foundations he has supported with $50,000. They help children from difficult backgrounds excel in life. He even played in a charity poker event to benefit. Poker champ Phil Ivey just hit a $10 million setback in his court case against the Borgata Casino.For more poker news head to http://www.pokerlistings.com/Th. Phil Ivey is poker’s biggest superstar, and has been for many years. (Image: CardsChat News) Brady led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 beatdown of the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs on. A legal saga between poker legend Phil Ivey and the Borgata casino in Atlantic City that has lasted the better part of a decade appears close to a conclusion. According to a court filing on Thursday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Ivey and the casino have “now reached a settlement” in a case stemming from Ivey’s controversial high-stakes baccarat sessions at the.
Table Of Contents
The long legal battle between poker superstar Phil Ivey and East Coast casino Borgata over nearly $10 million that the former won in baccarat may finally be coming to a close.
NJ Online Gamblingreported Wednesday morning that Ivey and Borgata had reached a settlement, citing a July 2 filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Per usual in these cases, terms were not disclosed.
Ivey initially won the money all the way back in 2012, playing a series of sessions with gambling partner Cheung Yin “Kelly” Sununder agreed-upon conditions that enabled the pair to have a sizable edge on Borgata, unbeknownst to Borgata officials.
Borgata filed suit in 2014 and a legal war ensued for the next half decade.
According to gaming attorney and sometime PokerNews contributorMac VerStandig, the only real surprise is that the two sides took this long to come to terms.
'It's unsurprising to see litigation settled, especially at the appellate stage where both parties have had the opportunity to air respective grievances, and the cost of going forward may outweigh what either party stands to gain,' VerStandig said. 'Cooler heads normally prevail sooner but it's not at all surprising to see it come to pass here.'
History of Legal Back-and-Forth
While the legal war started in 2014, it took until late 2016 for a big inflection point to finally occur. At that point, the judge presiding over the case sided with Borgata and ordered Ivey and Sun to return more than $10 million they'd won — the at-issue baccarat millions plus some craps winnings.
The case continued on appeal, and some sources reported Ivey was in danger of losing tens of millions to Borgata if things continued to go poorly in court.
Further damage against Ivey came when Borgata was granted clearance to seize his Nevada assets early last year. They followed through on that in high-profile fashion, garnishing Ivey's winnings when cashed in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship.
Ivey's Hidden Progress
However, while every turn was seeming to go against Ivey, he was all the while making some small gains in the background, like a poker player stealing enough blinds to stay afloat in a tournament.
'Borgata's case has always had serious vulnerabilities'
The appeals process was apparently going far better for Ivey than the initial case. Of central concern was the issue of whether he had cheated by marking cards. While nobody disputed that he hadn't marked the cards in the traditional sense, Borgata argued that turning the cards in different directions so Ivey and Sun could identify tiny imperfections in them — 'edge sorting' — constituted marking.
NJ Online Gambling reported that Ivey was likely a small favorite on appeal, a sentiment with which VerStandig agreed.
Conclusion Not Thrilling, Not Surprising
If Ivey were to win his appeal, the case would have continued on remand, going back to a lower court for reconsideration.
Borgata would have been forced to return the $124,410 it had already seized from Ivey, and nothing would have been guaranteed going forward. Both sides would have also been on the hook to continue shelling out attorney fees, which have been mounting the entire time in the long-running case.
Furthermore, even if Borgata emerged a winner in court, it's uncertain whether anything but a Pyrrhic victory would have been achieved. A New Jersey search for Ivey's assets only turned up a 'zero-dollar' bank account, and Ivey has been keeping most of his poker-playing activities out of the U.S. and away from Borgata's reach.
NJ Online Gambling also pointed out that ultimately losing the case 'could potentially create a precedent that could harm parent company MGM Resorts International in future cases involving cheating or advantage casino play.'
Given that there appears to have been more downside than upside at this point for Borgata, the settlement seems unlikely to have been very costly for Ivey.
'Borgata's case has always had serious vulnerabilities and Borgata is certainly justified in getting whatever settlement it can get and not risking those vulnerabilities on a remand,' VerStandig said.
How Much Is Phil Ivey Worth
Tags
Phil IveyBorgataPoker and the LawRelated Players
Phil Ivey
Phil Ivey calls himself 'the greatest poker player of all time,' but a casino in Atlantic City has accused him of being something else: a cheat.
What Happened To Phil Ivey
In a lawsuit, the Borgata claims Ivey pocketed more than $9.6 million by cheating at baccarat, the card game made famous by James Bond where the object is to pick the hand with the value closest to nine.
As a well-known poker pro who has won nine World Series of Poker bracelets and nearly $22 million in prize money, Phil Ivey was allowed to make a lot of requests. When he visited the Borgata in 2012, he requested a private pit, a particular set of playing cards and an automatic shuffler. Initially the hotel was happy to oblige the gambler, but now the casino thinks he made those requests just so he could cheat, reports CBS News correspondent Vinita Nair.
The casino claims in court documents that Ivey and a female accomplice studied the edges of the playing cards for tell-tale imperfections. Once Ivey knew the value of those cards, he could then make big bets when those cards were re-dealt. It's a tactic called edge-sorting.
Gaming consultant Eliot Jacobson said playing cards often have irregular patterns along the edges because of printing errors.
'The casinos should be more careful with the cards they use, but the truth is that most of the decks of cards that are out there have some sort of design flaw,' he said.
According to the Borgata lawsuit, Ivey visited the casino four times in 2012. He was betting as much as $100,000 per hand.
The casino says edge sorting gave Ivey at least a 6.5 percent edge over the house, or more than $6,500 dollars won for every $100,000 wagered.
'By itself, there's nothing inherently wrong with edge sorting,' Jacobson said. 'The question is what else did he do? Did he involve the dealers in some sort of collusion? Did he work out some sort of deal with the card manufacturer?'
Borgata officials finally caught on after Ivey's fourth visit, when they learned he had been accused of edge sorting by the London casino Crockfords, which withheld more than $12 million of his winnings just two months earlier.
Ivey filed a lawsuit to force Crockfords to release his earnings, and this time he's betting on the law.
Ivey's representative told CBS News that Ivey takes the matter seriously and will defend himself against any questions of his integrity. Edge sorting has never been declared illegal anywhere, which means Ivey's cases could have the potential to set a big precedent.