[6thSigma]

For those that don't know about the Phil Ivey "hack," here's basically what he is accused of:

A certain card manufacturer had a defect in which there were tiny deviations in the designs on the backs of their cards.

What they would do was the dealer would show all cards face down and Ivey and his accomplice would have the dealer rotate the cards so that the designs were all the same way. Then as they would play, they would have the dealer rotate the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 (which are the good cards in Baccarat).

This way they could spot all of the good cards face down based on the designs on the back. Ivey made sure to request a card deck shuffler to ensure the cards weren't rotated during shuffles.

Ivey won tens of millions of dollars doing this and is now being sued by several casinos even though he never touched the cards, didn't have any kind of cheating device, and had the casino agree to every move he did.

[joezydeco]

Ivey made sure to request a card deck shuffler to ensure the cards weren't rotated during shuffles.

He also requested a dealer that spoke Mandarin (under the story of being superstituous) so he could ask the dealer to perform certain card-turning actions and, most likely, do it under the radar of pit bosses that might have been listening in.

[swang]

You seem to have gotten the story a bit confused.

They didn't ask for a dealer that spoke Mandarin for superstitious reasons, they asked because the person actually doing the edge-sorting was Phil Ivey's partner in this, Cheng Yin Sun. Their request to turn cards was under the guise of being superstitious, not their request for a Mandarin speaking dealer.

[joezydeco]

Yes, I was a bit mixed up on the story. Sorry.

[thret]

The sad thing is he played over two days. They just watched for two days. I suppose because they had no rules against his strategy.