In April the Borgata filed a lawsuit against Phil Ivey claiming he “cheated” the casino by using a tactic known as edge-sorting to gain an unfair advantage in baccarat games. Since this lawsuit was filed Ivey has cashed in just a single tournament, a $5,000 score in a WSOP event last week.

For a little more background on the story you can check out this article by SFGate.com, and to go even further back in time and read about Ivey’s edge-sorting problems with Crockford’s Casino over in London from 2013.

I’m not interested in figuring out the guilt of anyone or whether edge-sorting is cheating, unethical, or perfectly legitimate: edge sorting could be just like card counting or it could be similar to using the Blackjack Guide at CasinosForMoney.com‏.

That’s not for me to decide; I’ll leave that up to the lawyers and the courts. In this column I’m interested in why Ivey has slumped since the Borgata allegations came to light.

In February Phil Made his biggest tournament score of his career by winning the $250k Super-High-Roller tournament at the Aussie Millions and when Phil Ivey trumps his largest tournament score you can bet it’s significant score(the Aussie Million victory was good for over $3.5 million) considering he has five seven-figure scores on his tournament resume to go along with 35 (yes THIRTY FIVE) six-figure scores!

But I suppose that is expected when you have over $21 million in career tournament earnings.

But since his big win in February Phil has been shutout other than his insignificant (relatively speaking) $5,000 payday for a 22nd place finish in the $1,500 Pot Limit Holdem tournament at the 2014 WSOP.

So I ask the question: Is the lawsuit weighing on Phil Ivey’s mind?

Think about it, if Phil loses the Borgata lawsuit he will have to repay some $10 million. If he loses that lawsuit he will almost certainly lose his UK lawsuit (filed by Phil to claim the $11 million Crockford’s withheld) which means Phil Ivey could come out of this scenario somewhere in between owing $10 million or with over $20 million in the bank.

That’s a pretty big swing that would cause me a few sleepless nights, and I doubt I’d be on my A game for the latest $1,500 tournament I was playing in.

It’s quite possible that Phil’s lack of results at the 2014 WSOP has everything to do with this lawsuit. Of course it could just be your regular run of the mill variance too.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2014 at 10:52 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.