Missing Two Million WSOP Chips
An edited portion of the ESPN coverage of the World Series of Poker main event has announcer Lon McEarnern state at the final table two million dollars worth of tourney chips have been introduced incorrectly.
But how?
Thanks to long time poker tourney bloggers Tim Lavalli and Amy Calistri tracking down several different sources including Harrah's management, the 21 players who were still in the tourney when the miscount occured, and doing a little math, they have finally debunked the mystery behind the additional chips being introduced. Surprisingly, overwhelming chip leader Jamie Gold and 2nd place Alan Cunningham were not the receiptants of the ill-gotten gains.
Below is their assertion that no one tried to defraud the tourney nor were actively involved with the management to obtain extra chips via the color up:
The prize pool for the remaining 21 players in the main event was just under $38 million. We think that answers the question of "Why". For the "How" let us remind you of the procedure for the color-up. Prior to the color-up break time (5 or more minutes), which is followed by a tournament break (15 minutes) the floor staff may and often does begin to color-up many of the chips to be removed from play. Then the floor selects one player at each table to begin "buying up" the small denominations chips from the table. This way the big color-up is done with only one player and the other players are only involved in the race-off for the odd chips. The odd chips in this case, coloring up from 5K to 10K, means players either had one 5K chip or none. Here is the critical point, the floor selects which player at each table will "buy up" the chips. So if there was collusion, all the floor had to do was pick their "cohort in crime" to buy up the chips and then when all the players had gone on break, give your "partner in crime" more chips then they deserved. This potentially criminal activity is what the NGC and Harrah's were concerned about and have found "no evidence" of.
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