Comment by andrewljohnson
11 years ago
It occurred to me that the main analogy to card counting is poor, regardless of the law, but I found the article interesting.
In card counting, you never have precise knowledge of what cards will come... it's always statistical, and you don't manipulate the cards with your hands to create the signal.
It sounds like with this method, you literally know the next card to come and base your bet on that knowledge. That sounds more like marking cards... like if they were playing poker, and they were denting the Aces with their fingernails.
This scheme, also, was imperfect: it made a few high-value cards look different, but only over time (and I'm not sure the dealer's indulgence rotated every card, or just some).
Even if all the high-value cards were the only ones rotated, it didn't reveal exactly which value would be next, only that it would be one of the more-interesting ones. And that much information didn't guarantee a win, just a better chance of a win, when all the other (unpredictable) cards came out. (There are no choices in this game other than how much to bet, on either the 'player' or the 'dealer'... so only one card's worth of extra info, the top card in the shoe, at the beginning of each round.)
So it's all still just statistical.
Also, apparently Ivey never touched the cards: he requested the dealer reorient them, and under the full observation and assent of the casino. (It wasn't a secret side conspiracy with the dealer.)
He didn't say it was like card counting. He said that it exists on a continuum, somewhere that is clearly less legitimate than card counting but not obviously cheating like bringing loaded dice.
Your analogy is actually worse; the cards came pre-marked. So they didn't mark the cards, but they did go out of their way to exploit the existence of marked cards.
It can't be considered marking cards because they are not physically altering them.
It is considered "edge sorting" because that is exactly what it is. This isn't new, and if you mention the term to any gaming regulator or supervisor they know exactly what you are talking about.