Thus, the player must also request that the dealer shuffle the cards with an automatic shuffler, which does not change the orientation as a manual shuffle might. This orientation will remain so long as the cards are not 'washed,' shuffled in a way that rotates them. The unintentional card edge irregularity thus makes the high or low value of face-down cards apparent to an observer aware of how the dealer has been tricked into orienting them. The dealer, indulging superstition, does not realize he or she is unwittingly orienting the cards such that valuable high cards are oriented one way in the deck and low cards the other way round. Typically the backs of every card in such a pack are identical, but the two long edges of each card are distinguishable from one another: the back pattern of one card is not symmetrical to another that has been rotated 180° (half a full turn).ĭuring the course of a game, the player asks the dealer to rotate high-value face-up cards, saying for example that they feel it will bring them luck.

Many packs of cards produced by manufacturers have unintentional, almost indistinguishable edge irregularities. This ruling would not be applicable if the player simply took advantage of an observed error or anomaly in the deck for which he was not responsible. Īpplied by poker player Phil Ivey and subsequently challenged in court by the casino in which he did so, the England and Wales High Court and Court of Appeal and the UK Supreme Court ruled that the technique, which requires the player to trick the dealer into rotating specific, high-value cards, is cheating in civil law, and that a casino was justified in refusing payment of winnings. Edge sorting is a technique used in advantage gambling where a player determines whether a face-down playing card is likely to be low or high at casino table games by observing, learning, and exploiting subtle unintentional differences on the backs of the cards being dealt.

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