FILE - In this July 15, 2009 file photo, Phil Ivey looks up during the World Series of Poker at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He’s long been a winner at cards, but American poker star Phil Ivey’s... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this July 15, 2009 file photo, Phil Ivey looks up during the World Series of Poker at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He’s long been a winner at cards, but American poker star Phil Ivey’s... (Associated Press) 
 
 LONDON (AP) — He's long been a winner at cards, but American poker star Phil Ivey's good fortune does not extend to Britain's Supreme Court — he lost a major case Wednesday that will keep him from cashing in. 
 
 The British Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Ivey had used illegitimate means to amass 7.7 million pounds ($10.2 million) in winnings during a stint at the baccarat table in 2012. 
 
 He and a colleague were found to have used a technique known as "edge sorting" to gain an unfair advantage while gambling at the Crockfords casino in London's posh Mayfair district. 
 
 They did not actually touch the cards being dealt, but convinced the croupier to arrange the cards a certain way that allowed them to determine, in some cases, which cards were being dealt, allowing them to bet accordingly. 
 
 Crockfords cried foul and refused to pay his winnings, leading Ivey to pursue his claim in court. 
 
 Supreme Court Judge Anthony Hughes said the integrity of Punto Banco baccarat depends on the cards being dealt at random without gamblers knowing their face value. 
 
 "What Mr. Ivey did was to stage a carefully planned and executed sting," he said. 
 
 He said Ivey took "positive steps to fix the deck" by tricking the croupier. He said that "is inevitably cheating." 
 
 Ivey, long recognized as one of the top players in international poker, said his winnings were honestly obtained. 
 
 "At the time I played at Crockfords, I believed that edge-sorting was a legitimate Advantage Play technique and I believe that more passionately than ever today," he said after the ruling. 
 
 He said he pursued the case to Britain's highest court out of a sense of honor. 
 
 "As a professional gambler, my integrity is everything to me," said Ivey, who has won a number of World Series of Poker competitions. 
 
 The president of Genting Casinos UK, which operates Crockfords, said the ruling "vindicates" the company's decision not to pay Ivey his baccarat winnings. 
 
 "We are delighted that the High Court, the Court of Appeal and now the Supreme Court have all found in Genting's favor, confirming that we acted fairly and properly at all times and that Mr. Ivey's conduct did indeed amount to cheating," he said. 

 The poker player Phil Ivey has lost his court bid to recover £7.7m ( $10.2m) of winnings from a London casino. 
 
 The 40-year-old American has been fighting to recover the sum since successfully playing a version of baccarat known as Punto Banco at Crockfords Club in Mayfair in 2012. 
 
 
 
 The hearing at the supreme court considered whether dishonesty was a necessary element of the offence of cheating. 
 
 
 
 Ivey had challenged a 2016 majority decision in the court of appeal dismissing his case against Genting Casinos UK, which owns Crockfords. Genting said a technique he used, called edge-sorting, was not a legitimate strategy, while Ivey maintained that he won fairly. 
 
 Five justices unanimously upheld the majority decision of the court of appeal, which dismissed his case on the basis that being knowingly dishonest was not a necessary element of “cheating”. 
 
 After the game in question, Ivey was told the money would be wired to him in Las Vegas, but it never arrived, although his stake of £1m was returned. 
 
 
 
 Genting said the technique of edge-sorting used by Ivey, which involves identifying small differences in the pattern on the reverse of playing cards and exploiting that information to increase the chances of winning, was not a legitimate strategy. 
 
 Ivey did not personally touch any cards, but persuaded the croupier to rotate the most valuable cards by intimating that he was superstitious. 
 
 In the court of appeal, Lady Justice Arden said the Gambling Act 2005 provided that someone may cheat “without dishonesty or intention to deceive: depending on the circumstances it may be enough that he simply interferes with the process of the game”. 
 
 There was no doubt, she added, that the actions of Ivey and another gambler, Cheung Yin Sun, interfered with the process by which Crockfords played the game of Punto Banco with Ivey. 
 
 Stephen Parkinson, head of criminal litigation at Kingsley Napley, the law firm that represented Crockfords, said: “This is one of the most significant decisions in criminal law in a generation. The concept of dishonesty is central to a whole range of offences, including fraud. 
 
 “For 35 years, juries have been told that defendants will only be guilty if the conduct complained of was dishonest by the standards of ordinary, reasonable and honest people, and also that they must have realised that ordinary, honest people would regard their behaviour as dishonest. 
 
 “The supreme court has now said that this second limb of the test does not represent the law and that directions based upon it ought no longer to be given by the courts.” 

 Image copyright PA 
 
 One of the world's top poker players, Phil Ivey, has lost a Supreme Court bid to reclaim £7.7m of winnings withheld by a London casino for five years. 
 
 The American was challenging a Court of Appeal judgement that Crockfords Club could refuse to pay up when Ivey won the cash playing card game punto banco. 
 
 The club said Mr Ivey had broken its rules by using an "edge-sorting" technique to spot advantageous cards. 
 
 Mr Ivey had consistently argued that he had merely used a legitimate advantage. 
 
 The 40-year-old, a former winner of the World Series of Poker, had arranged to play a private game of punto banco - a form of baccarat - at the casino in Mayfair, along with a fellow gambler, Cheung Yin Sun, during a visit to London in 2012. 
 
 Crockford's owner, Genting Casinos UK, said the two players jointly used the technique of "edge-sorting", which involves identifying minute differences in the patterns on the back of playing cards and exploiting that information to increase the chances of winning. Genting said this was not a legitimate strategy. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Phil Ivey is one of the world's most successful poker players but was playing punto banco on his London trip 
 
 However, Mr Ivey contended that the technique was not a form of cheating because it did not involve dishonesty. 
 
 He said that he had merely exploited Crockfords' failure to take proper steps to protect itself against a gambler of his ability - and he was therefore entitled to his full winnings, rather than just having his initial £1m stake returned to him. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Paul Willcock, for the club, gives his reaction to the Phil Ivey verdict 
 
 The five Supreme Court justices unanimously upheld the Court of Appeal's decision on the case, with Lord Hughes saying it was essential that punto banco remained a game of pure chance with neither the casino nor the player being able to beat the randomness of the cards that were dealt. 
 
 He said: "What Mr Ivey did was to stage a carefully planned and executed sting." 
 
 Speaking outside court, president and chief operating officer of Genting UK Paul Willcock said: "This has been a landmark case in how the courts approach cheating in the modern day. 
 
 "This entirely vindicates Genting's decision not to pay Mr Ivey, a decision that was not taken lightly." 
 
 Who is Phil Ivey? 
 
 Mr Ivey is a 40-year-old world champion poker player who was born in Riverside, California, but now lives in Las Vegas. 
 
 According to the Hendon Mob poker ranking website, he is the sixth biggest earner of all time from tournament play - but he is known to have earned many more millions from private cash games. 
 
 He once played heads-up poker (a one-on-one version of the game) against Texan billionaire Andy Beal for three straight days and walked away $16m richer as a result. 
 
 During his divorce hearing in 2011 it was revealed in news reports that he received almost £700,000 a month from his stake in a poker company. 
 
 What is punto banco? 
 
 Punto banco is a form of the card game baccarat. 
 
 It is not unlike blackjack but the aim is to have cards that add up to nine, or as close as you can get. 
 
 It has a complex set of rules: when the total value of the cards goes into double figures, the first digit of the total does not count - so two sixes add up to two rather than 12. And there are further set instructions on what further cards must be drawn, unlike in blackjack where the player has the option. 
 
 Compared to other card games, it is not that widely played in casinos but is a popular choice with some high-stake gamblers. 
 
 A form of baccarat called "chemin de fer" was played by James Bond in the casino scene of the 1962 film Dr No. 
 
 What does this mean for Phil Ivey? 
 
 Analysis by John Hand, BBC News 
 
 For those who don't know their cards, it is hard to overstate how big a superstar Phil Ivey is in the poker world. 
 
 Dubbed the "Tiger Woods of poker", he has raked in tens of millions of pounds from a game that he mastered as a teenager - and coined in many more millions from sponsorship and by exploiting his carefully-built personal image. His mass appeal is such that he became the face of a Chrysler cars ad campaign. 
 
 For nearly two decades, Ivey has perfectly played the part of a cool, calm, calculating card-player with steely nerves and ice in his blood. Casinos fly him around the world as his presence can attract thousands of other punters. 
 
 But will Ivey be as big a draw after going "all-in" against the British legal system and losing? It is helpful for him that the case was not about poker - and that some of the gamblers he competes with will empathise with his explanation that he was merely being the best punter he could be, in using his savvy to try to beat a casino. 
 
 It was noticeable that this year Ivey skipped the main event in the World Series of Poker - the equivalent of Roger Federer taking a fortnight off during Wimbledon - and also mothballed his slick Ivey League poker school website. 
 
 Whether that marks the start of a general wind-down with more days to spend his millions and fewer days spent "grinding" for 12 hours at a poker table remains to be seen.
– Professional poker champ Phil Ivey won't be getting the $10.2 million he thought he won from a London casino, the Guardian reports. The 40-year-old, whom the BBC calls "the Tiger Woods of poker," was found to have cheated in order to win the money while playing a version of baccarat at Crockfords Club in Mayfair in 2012. He's been fighting to get the millions ever since, insisting the strategy he used to win wasn't illegal. His case against Genting Casinos UK, the owner of Crockfords, was dismissed last year, and he challenged that dismissal. But on Wednesday, Britain's Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, the AP reports. Ivey and a colleague used a technique called "edge sorting," in which they got the croupier to unknowingly arrange the cards in a way that allowed Ivey and the other player to figure out what cards were being dealt, based on small differences in the pattern on the back of the cards, and bet accordingly. Crockfords returned his stake but never paid out the winnings, leading to the court battle. The Supreme Court found what Ivey did was definitely cheating, but after the ruling Ivey maintained his innocence. "At the time I played at Crockfords, I believed that edge sorting was a legitimate advantage-play technique, and I believe that more passionately than ever today," he said. "As a professional gambler, my integrity is everything to me." Ivey was accused of doing the same thing in the US.