Friday, March 30, 2018

Another Guilty Party in Phil Ivey Edge-Sorting Cases?

Defective or Not Defective?
I know you've all heard enough of my opinions on Phil Ivey and his baccarat edge-sorting scam...but before you say you've had enough of me, this is an entirely different angle!

I promise.

Some of you may not know that Phil Ivey's lawsuit against Crockfords casino and the Borgata's lawsuit against Phil Ivey (both of which Ivey lost) are not the only lawsuits in the case. The Borgata in turn sued Gemaco Playing Card Company, the manufacturer of the defective cards used in the games that Ivey and his partner Sun beat the Borgata for $10 million. Borgata sued Gemaco for that same $10 million--and received the embarrassing judgment that the most it could recover from Gemaco was $27, the cost of replacing the defective cards with new, flawless cards.

Which brings me to this article: Should Gemaco be held liable for its defective cards that caused this whole baccarat-cheating debacle in the first place?

Well, this time I am not giving my opinion. I would much rather hear yours. So what I'm going to do is state the obvious in support of each side of the argument. I'm sure I'll have left out something when it's all said and done, so you can let me know any pertinent facts I may have missed.

At the end, those of you who would like to share your comments on whether or not Gemaco should be held liable to some extent more than $27, please do!

Argument 1: Gemaco should be held liable:

Assuming they entered into a contract with Borgata to supply and deliver high-standard playing cards protecting the integrity of the casino using them, and that they were indeed paid for those very services, then Gemaco certainly breached the contract, therefore their defective cards exposed the Borgata to the very dangers by which they were victimized. That's to say that had their defective cards not been supplied and delivered to the Borgata, Ivey and his partner Sun never would have been able to scam the casino for $10 million.

Simple enough? Sounds good to me.

Argument 2: Gemaco should not be held liable:

First of all, the cards are not defective! Just because the backs of the cards on one side had a infinitesimal difference in the size of the white border columns or a tiny tip of the diamonds cut off, who is to say that that constitutes defective cards? No one inside Gemaco could reasonably think that such a slight "imperfection" could be used to wipe out a casino's baccarat tables. Furthermore, even if these infinitesimal imperfections can be considered a constitution of defective playing cards, then the casino should be responsible to inspect each and every pack of cards they receive from Gamaco before putting them on the games. Had they done so, they should have noticed the defect and immediately removed them from the casino decks ready to be played, and then notified Gemaco of the imperfections so that new, perfect decks could replace them.

Simple enough? Sounds good to me.

I await your vote...and please: No "It could go either way" votes!