MR IVEY was a professional high-stakes gambler.

In 2012, he raked in 7.7 million over two days from Genting Casinos. His game of choice was Punto Banco, also known as Baccarat – essentially a game of chance – but with a house edge, handing the casino a solid statistical advantage over the punters who sat down to play.

Ivey, who styled himself an “advantage player”, decided to even the odds and challenge the conventional wisdom that the house always wins in the end. The advantage he seized was based on edge-sorting the cards in play.

In co-operation with another card sharp, he persuaded the croupier to use the same set, game to game. Essentially, this allowed the sharp-eyed Mr Ivey to work out whether the croupier was dealing high or low – based only on the external appearance of the back of the deck.

This wheeze proved astonishingly successful. Ivey netted bigger and bigger sums of money as he defied the odds, upping and upping his stakes as he squeezed every win he could out of his ability to read the cards blind.

When they reviewed the CCTV footage and rumbled the trick, the casino refused to pay out. They insisted Ivey’s edge-sorting scheme amounted to cheating and they didn’t have to hand him a penny of his winnings.

Blaggardly conduct

In 2017, the vexed question of whether this was the legitimate exploitation of an advantage – or unlawful, blaggardly conduct – went all the way to the UK Supreme Court.

Ivey’s counsel argued that the essence of cheating is dishonesty, and Ivey had been nothing but honest about his strategies. Sure, he’d persuaded the dealer into using the same sorted deck – but as Lord Hughes colourfully explained in the judgment, “casinos routinely play on quirky and superstitious behaviour” – including requests from punters to stick with a deck that’d proven lucky.

Why? Because it is in the house’s interest that mug punters should believe “that a lucky charm or practice will improve their chances of winning”. His point is, Ivey’s requests wouldn’t and didn’t strike his dealer as unusual. A wide variety of requests by gamblers – particularly those daft enough to be making higher and higher bids – “are accommodated by casinos without demur or surprise”.

Until, that is, they find themselves coming in seven million quid short at the end of the night. This, it seems, is the........

© Herald Scotland