Iveyv Genting Casinos UK Ltd (t/a Crockfords Club)

Cheating in a gaming contract is determined objectively by the court. The claimant’s genuine belief that his conduct was lawful, or support for that view among others, is not decisive.

Conduct amounts to civil cheating where a player obtains an advantage which the game precludes, uses the croupier as an innocent instrument to obtain it, and does so knowing that the croupier and supervisors are unaware of the consequence. The casino’s ability to protect itself by simple measures does not determine whether conduct is cheating. A game remains the same game even though a player’s conduct changes the odds.

The claimant, a professional gambler, won approximately £7.7 million playing Punto Banco at Crockfords Club by using edge-sorting. He and an associate persuaded the croupier to rotate certain cards without understanding the resulting advantage.

The casino refused to pay the winnings. It argued that no game of Punto Banco had been played, that the claimant had breached an implied term not to cheat, and that he had committed the statutory offence of cheating under Gambling Act 2005, section 42. The central issue was whether the claimant’s conduct amounted to cheating in civil law.

1. The claim failed. The court held that the game remained Punto Banco. It had been played according to its rules, with cards dealt in the prescribed sequence and bets paid at the prescribed odds. The claimant’s advantage altered the odds but did not change the identity of the game.
2. There was no sufficiently established industry standard by which cheating could be determined. The question was ultimately for the court. The civil standard was objective, following the approach stated in Starglade Properties Ltd v Nash [2010] EWCA Civ 1314.
3. The claimant’s subjective belief that he was not cheating was not determinative. The court considered the consequences of his conduct: he obtained knowledge of whether the first card was likely to be a 7, 8 or 9, obtained that knowledge by using the croupier as an innocent instrument, and acted knowing that the croupier and her supervisors did not appreciate what she had done or would have stopped play if they had.
4. Those features amounted to cheating in civil law. The conduct was materially different from legitimate advantage play, such as card-counting or taking advantage of an unexplained casino anomaly. The casino’s ability to prevent the advantage by simple protective measures did not alter that conclusion.
5. The court did not determine the scope of the criminal offence under section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005, because that issue was unnecessary to the result and the statutory definition was unclear.

First-instance decision. No prior appellate decision is stated in the judgment.