[toc]After a little more than three years, poker champion Phil Ivey is closing his Ivey League Coaching poker training website at the end of this month.
The site will remain live, offering archived video training footage. There will be no new content while Ivey League processes refunds for annual and quarterly members.
A tweet from Ivey League said that from May 1, “we will no longer be posting new video content. The video library will remain online as we process prorated refunds.”
The company followed up by saying that “we would like to thank everyone who was a part of Ivey League and wish everyone the best with their poker journey’s [sic] going forward.”
Ivey League Coaching said that the site was shuttering “due to the current state of online poker.” The site did not expand on any specific business or industry reasoning for the decision.
About Ivey League Coaching
Ivey is a 10-time World Series of Poker champion and is long considered to be one of the greatest poker players of all time. He founded the site in February 2014 after acquiring poker training site LeggoPoker in 2013.
The site’s launch was highly-anticipated by the poker community, amongst which Phil Ivey was always one of the most respected and admired players.
However, over the course of its three-year tenure, the site published relatively few training videos in comparison to its rivals. Additionally, Ivey himself only published 31 training videos.
All in all, the vague communications from Ivey regarding the closure of the site reflect the history of the business. Poker reporter Barry Carter said that Ivey “never really got interested in his own business venture and people only signed up for him. I think he probably started it on a whim hoping it would have got bigger than it did sooner.”
Phil Ivey and edge sorting
News has not been kind to Phil Ivey over recent years. He is currently embroiled in multiple lawsuits with both Crockfords Casino, London, and the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Both lawsuits center on accusations of cheating and fraud.
Ivey and an accomplice used a technique known as “edge sorting,” whereby they would frequent casinos known to use defective playing cards with asymmetrical patterns.
This meant that by requesting the casino rotate certain face-down cards by claiming it was a superstition, they could sort the cards into favourable and unfavourable groups to gain an edge playing baccarat.
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