A legendary poker player from New Jersey playing baccarat for up to $100,000 per hand while participating in a scheme that set him up to win a total of $20 million at casinos in London and Atlantic City.
Sounds like a rich Hollywood script, right? The fact that it’s true makes it even better.
But word came out last week that while the incredible story indeed is headed to the big screen, the focus will not be on poker’s Phil Ivey but instead on his mysterious “partner in crime” — though neither British nor New Jersey courts found anything criminal about it.
That partner is Cheung Yin “Kelly” Sun, daughter of a Chinese billionaire, who was so outraged by being tossed into a Las Vegas jail for several weeks in 2006 after MGM complained about unpaid bills that the jet-setter vowed revenge.
And in a development that increases the chances of the movie being a hit, actress Awkwafina of Crazy Rich Asians fame has been tapped for the starring role. The movie is based on a 2017 Cigar Aficionado magazine article called “The Baccarat Machine” about Sun, who is usually reclusive with the media.
The scheme started when Sun realized that she — and she alone — could decipher the tiniest of imperfections on the backs of one particular brand of mini-baccarat playing cards.
That edge was relevant because in Asian culture it is common for superstitious players to have dealers manipulate playing cards in various ways for good luck. Sun was able to persuade dealers to orient the cards in such a way that after one time through the deck, she gained what the industry calls “first card advantage” — she usually knew whether the first card was likely to be a high card or a low card.
While she tended to lose about as many hands as she won, Sun, thanks to the “edge sorting,” made maximum bets when the cards were in her favor and minimum ones when they were not.
Still, Sun found the spotlight placed on her by executives at dozens of casinos — the ones where she often took down six-figure and seven-figure sums in one sitting — to be uncomfortable. In 2012, she was introduced to Ivey, the brash poker pro known to be always looking for the next edge.
Crockfords in London and Borgata in Atlantic City each were chosen by Sun that year because they are owned by MGM, which had filed a claim of unpaid bills that had briefly taken away Sun’s freedom.
Ivey, now 43, a graduate of Old Bridge High School in Middlesex County, was more than happy to make all sorts of demands of the casinos on Sun’s behalf, including that the dealers be fluent in Mandarin Chinese, that purple Gemaco playing cards be used, and what sort of card-sorting device would be employed by the dealer. The $10 million from Borgata (over the course of 107 hours, all told) was obtained from four visits in six months that year, with casino officials searching in vain for how Ivey and Sun could be beating them consistently in a game widely known to come down to pure luck.
Ivey and Sun are appealing an October 2016 ruling by a federal judge that directed them to pay back all of the mini-baccarat winnings. That ruling was upheld in 2018, and that finding sent Ivey and Sun to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case is pending. (Ivey lost his case in a London court in 2017.)
A 45-minute hearing in Philadelphia before a three-judge panel last September did little to clarify the matter, as one judge expressed frustration that New Jersey gaming regulators declined a request to shed further light on the scheme.
Ivey and Sun’s best case may be that while Judge Noel Hillman ruled that in directing the dealers to orient the cards in their favor they were “effectively marking the cards,” that phrase usually means the players improperly altered a card themselves. It is undisputed that the duo never touched the cards, after all. Still, Hillman found that the scheme constituted a “breach of contract” violation of the state’s gambling regulations.
The stark contrast between a dingy jail cell and $1,000-a-night casino hotel suites — and Sun’s unbridled anger at the casino company — is liable to play out in the opening scenes of the movie. Then the boldness of Ivey and her coolly and methodically “beating the house” over and over, as casino bosses wring their hands in frustration, should prove equally compelling.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com