blonde poker forum

This is quite an interesting ruling. What would you think is the most fair situation here? Hopefully Richard can tell us to the book, but this is pretty weird.

At a player break, everyone leaves the room and the dealers remain in their seats. The dealers/TD chip up the lower denominations and the players return after the break. There have been no players in the tournament area while the dealers werent seated, and the whole time they have been in there, dealers were all sat down.

A player gets back to find his stack is gone. The reasons arent really important here, wether its theft or a mistake by the dealer/TD. Just the result.

The gentleman in question says he had around 14k. The average is 25k so its obvious hes not just trying to get a big stack. 3-4 seperate people around the table vouch for him having around this amount.

What makes this a really strange situation is that there was maintenance in the camera room leaving them all down, meaning theres no coverage.

What would you do?

check cameras, delay restart

Be more careful when you chip up!!!

Lol

I did this once when I used to run the pub one, such a sigh.

Could you not get it up on the cameras to see if you merged them with the stack to the left or right?

or check the "chip up" chips and find 14k extra

Check cameras. If for some reason there's no footage then just ask the dealer to confirm his story.

I'm prob happy to give him 14k but I'd rather know where it went in the first place hence checking the camera. Tho as guy says check the chip up tray first :)

cameras for the win. gotta see the guy right as its obv he aint at it

Sorry I missed it. What makes this a really strange situation is that there was maintenance in the camera room leaving them all down, meaning theres no coverage

How can gala run a poker tournament without cameras, such a farce! Does that mean cameras were down for the whole casino?! Why didn't anyone tell me!

Prize pool / divided by chips in play x 14k = amount the TD should pay into the prize pool, then give the 14k to the guy.

Meh, you can't count the chipped up chips as they won't have them anywhere other than in a bag with all the other chips that they always use.

Just give the guy 14k worth of chips

Oh dear lol,

Had similar instances but all were resolvable due to procedures and situations.

1st The players should be allowed to watch any chip race as they have no come back when the comp has restarted, any dispute should be before play recommences.

2nd Dealers are issued with x amount of chips for chip races and x amount should be counted back in by the TD

3rd If you have a system like DTD's check player hasn't already been knocked out

4th Check with the dealer to see wtf happened and if he did indeed have chips prior to break or was even at the table close to the break.

5th Check Cameras (if working)

6th In a dispute such as this I would recommend the last pot before the break be reconstructed (as this is where I have found other errors) and see if the disputing player was actually at his seat at the end of the last hand.

7th Appeal to players to check their chipstacks for more or less than they thought (this does require some honesty though LMAO) However it may be the case that the seat either side has collected it in amongst other chips if check 6 is worked out that a player either side won the last pot.

8th) TD should check previous habits of dealer i.e. do they play with chips when bored (sack the buggars)

9th  See 3 Suggest player goes to doctors with suspected dementia.

In all seriousness, depending on the answers found 1-8 there are 3 ways it could go

1) A player owns up and says he thinks he has more chips than he should have
2) The TD introduces 14k to the game (tough one) More than likely players at the table will say either No way he had that much and tell you the amount of the last pot he won
3) Player is knocked out (Very Tough one) Can't see this happening if all players and the dealer said he hadn't been knocked out
 
BUT YOU HAVE 300 IMPATIENT PLAYERS SCREWING AT YOU TO START THE BLOODY CLOCK, hurry up and make the decision and stand by it!

I may be wrong but don't dtd race during breaks when players have been asked to leave the tournament area?

No DTD ask players to leave the area for first break, I dont know about other TD's but I announce that players can stay during the chip up process which is usually 2nd break.

ok, not been for a while so don't remember

I did once come back to find a load of chips missing in the early days of the club when my stack was used to buy up all the chips but I didn't get anything back when they were removed. was all resolved pretty quickly though

Strange, the preferred method of chip races is that someone buys them all and the dealer deals with just one transaction so if there is a dispute of a player having less than they though it is easily resolved by checking the chips in to the chips out. Meaning if there is an error we know who it is with and can easily rectify.

yeah, in theory it shouldn't happen as there need to be 2 fairly big mistakes made, not replacing the small denom chips with new bigger chips in my stack and not counting the chips as they leave the table. guess it's going to happen very occasionally everywhere though. it was only sorted out because others at my table backed me up on my stack size, I may have had a problem at a less observant table

was a long time ago though, were procedures different back then?

Unfortunately yes, depends on who trained them. It is only my preferred way of doing chip counts.

What would you suggest in this instance Rich?

Alex, who said this was at Gala lol

What are the answer to the questions lol?

Change up tray wasn't checked at the start so unable to find that way. No player had visibly gained 14k (there were 2 5k chips and not many in play) on the table

If a change up tray was not checked at the start then the onus is really with the card room. Would probably swallow for the 14k, if all players stated he was there and was not knocked out, especially if the dealer can confirm.

How was his phantom 14k made up? i.e. did it include 5k chips?

2 x 5k, 3 x 1k, 2 x 500. All of these were in the tray along with alot more

Gotcha, i had the wrong end of the stick.
2x 5k is too much to have left over for a 25 chip race, if it was a chip race for 100's and there wasn't a lot of 5k's at the table and the average was 25k, i would expect the dealer to change up some 500's too. No way of checking the dealers float and no cameras, player deffo still in, then I would give him 14k. Dont like introducing chips but looks like the houses fault.

That was the solution that arose. Cheers mate :)