Im at a 2/5 table at Matrix in San Jose. ~ 2 am. Guy sits down, has 100 in front of him, dealer announces “400 behind”. Very first hand he doubles up vs. Villian. After the hand the dealer tells villain that its 500 total (he covers by far). V wants to “see the chips” before he gives up the 500. Dealer argues a little, its annoying but whatever, we all wait for the guys chips to get there. The setup at the Matrix is awful in this aspect. It’s a long walk to the cage and it usually takes a while.

So we wait. And wait. After 5 min we understand that something is wrong. Nobody remembers who the chip runner was (again - its 2 am). Floor is called over and says they will check the camera. So we wait. And wait. 20 (!) min later floor comes over and confirms “yes - he had 400 behind”. So where is it? “um… we are checking”.

V gives the guy the 500.

So we ask the floor (somewhat rhetorically) “does the 400 play?”. Floor: “yes”. So he is assuring that the 400 will be retrieved by the casino (if new guy goes all in and gets stacked)? Floor: “um…well… ok so I guess for now the 400 doesn’t play”. Of course V that shipped him 500 asks wtf and floor literally runs away from the table. We still don’t play a hand. We ask a different floor if the casino can vouch for the 400. “um…This is complicated”.
Now the guy with the 400 is worried too obv.

20 min later (this is 40 min after the all in) they find out that the chip runner gave it to some random guy in a different 2/5 table. They approached the guy, I didn’t hear exactly the back and forth but bottom line he played dumb, said he doesn’t think it was a mistake and he wants proof before giving anything back.

After another 20 min with the shift manager and security pulling him aside he agrees to give it back and the floor gives it to the original guy.

This all raises a few questions:

- The obvious question: So random guy gets 400 dropped into his lap. Says goodnight, racks up and walks out (or loses his stack). Now what? At no stage was anyone from the casino willing to vouch for the 400.

- How in the world, in a basically brand new casino, does it take so long to access the footage? These are all obv digital files, I just don’t get it.

You've convinced me to go to the cage to get chips myself in the future.

I stopped playing at Matrix partly because of the chip runners. They've lost my chips in the past as well. Whenever there is a spate of rebuys within a short period of time, you can have multiple guys in the pot that don't have chips. And this sometimes goes on for two or three hands before the chips get there. The dealers don't do a very good job of keeping track of how much people owe, either. I've had to remind them multiple times that someone owed me money from previous hands. I've had it with this nonsense.

And you notice how the chip runners always bring over five blue chips? Worse service than Bay 101, and they still try to hustle you for a tip.

But yeah, if you're playing at Matrix, always get your own chips from the cage. Not only is this less stressful, it's also somehow much faster than using the guys whose only job is to take your money, walk it over to the cage, and walk your chips back. Often by like 5 minutes.

I use to work inside a poker room and this is how it would work. Once we find out who the random guy was that got the free 400, and if he was no longer inside the casino/poker room, there is then a notice put out for him and he is temp banned from the casino until he gives back the 400. The 400 if he lost it all would technically still be in play and the casino takes the hit until random guy pays the cage 400.

I am still not sure why it takes surveillance so long to access footage, sometimes for simple things would take forver, and I am not sure if its due to them being lazy or what, I knew some of the surveillance team but I never bothered to ask.

They aren't going to vouch for the money until they know what happened. The money wasn't lost, so there's no reason to vouch for it.

Had player B taken off, the poker room would have been on the hook for the $400. As far as a guest is concerned, a chip runner is an extension of the cage (even though they work for Gaming, a separate division from Cage). If the Cage stole your $400 or handed it to the player behind you in line, the casino would be responsible. In any respected poker room, the same would hold true. Obviously, I don't know how this room would have handled it, but lets hope they would have made it right.

To remedy the situation, they should have taken a $400 marker from the cage to put the money back into the original players stack. Then they could have begun the process of recouping the funds from the other player, which is their worry, not Player A's.

It takes surveillance time to track down the original transaction, then follow the money. They are watching the entire ordeal before they return the phone call, including where the money went. They probably even watched it in real time so they didn't miss anything. After all, the runner could have stopped halfway between the room and cage and put the money into a garbage can, or handed it off to someone else. They are in the dark, and have to look for everything.

When they are positive of what happened, they most likely bring in a Supervisor to confirm it. Then they return the phone call to the poker room, and explain the entire process, step by step. At that time the poker room asks a lot of questions and confirms the identity of the player who received the money. Most likely, they approach him first before returning to your table, hoping to get the $400 and bring it to Player A with a "problem-solved-holy-***-that-was-close" smile.

And that's how it can take 20 minutes. Remember, they are solving the problem of "Where did the money go", not the question of "Did he buy in for $400". Obviously looking at the entire story is going to take much longer than looking at the first chapter.

tldr...sorry.

Yikes. Not a fan of chip runners or playing behind for more than a hand.

Glad it worked out.


In AC, I don't recall ever seeing chip runner. Am usually grabbing my chips from the cage out of habit.

Keep in mind that in AC they don't use imprest banks, they have racks that more resemble table games racks, because they are putting the rake in the rack they can keep a rack with a lot of chips to sell to players.

Ever since the new ownership/management of Garden City/M8trix, they have shown a distinct lack of knowledge of how to run the poker side. Which makes sense, because their goal has been to have at most 5 poker games and the rest the much-more-profitable California games.

Chip runners are great. Look at Bay101 or the pre-Swallow Garden City.

Seems to me that once they were sure that the guy was $400 behind they should've just gave him the $400 and then went about tracking down the original $400 on their own. You should not have had to wait for all that BS.

Maybe its fair to make sure he didn't somehow already get the $400 back.

I once had a situation where more than half way into my down a player complained that his chips never came. He claimed to have given $100 to a chip runner when the previous dealer was there .... (the dealer never said a word to me about him playing behind .... and this was the first I heard of it). Many other players at the table all confirmed that he was still waiting on $100 in chips. So I called the floor.

When I got pushed out I saw the floors were scurrying around talking to the chipo runners ... on the phone with surveillance...... all in search of this guys $100.

Later I found out that surveillance found it .... the chip runner had brought the chips to the correct player and he took the chips and played with them and lost them and apparently forgot that he got them.

So giving him the chips once they confirmed that he had given the money to the chip runner is not enough ... you need to confirm that he didn't get the chips or money back.

At the Horseshoe in Hammond, IN if you give money to a chip runner they leave numbered markers at your position to indicate how much you have given them/how much you have behind. They then take the markers back once they've brought you your chips. Even then, this only happens when the dealer's tray is too low. It's an incredibly simple and effective solution.

I haven't played in that many different casinos, but I'd say that any busy room that doesn't do this is just asking for issues to occur.

I was under the impression that they already confirmed he was $400 behind and hadn't gotten the money yet, but they just didn't know where the money went...

+1. Why doesn't every casino do this? Rio does it during the series as well (one of the few things they get right).

Determining that he he gave the chip runner $400 doesn;t confirm that he didn't get the chips or money back. Until you see where the money went you don't know that it didn't end up in his hands (or the hands of an associate).

The lammers bring with them their own issues: Not the least of which is that lammers are usually generics, easily purchased and substituted in .... easily lost.

Also using lammers means random card room employees can;t just help out and run chips ... without first going to get lammers (for example sometimes I may be coming back from a break see the chip runners are jammed up and see that the table I happen to be nearby needs a chip runner .... I may just take care of that ... but now if I first have to acquire lammers I'm more likely to just leave it for the chip runners)

I would actually prefer to see chip runners carrying large banks in rolling lockable carts (like the change people who used to walk around the slot areas) (though in some rooms it may be hard to manuever).

Once it has been established that the individual bought $400 and never received it, I would agree that the house should do whatever is necessary to get the person $400 and worry about recouping the $400 after, even if it results in a monetary loss to the casino. It's to be expected that tracking down where the $400 went may take some time, but it should be fairly quick to establish whether or not the individual bought the $400 and if he/she received it.

Anytime I've used a chip runner, a marker is always put down for how much I'm playing behind. Does M8trix not use these?

That's what they do at my two regular spots....I joke around with the chip runner that he look like either an old school ice cream man or a flight attendant pushing that little cart around.

but I've never seen a problem with that system....you want $400, Paul is right there behind you with a cart full of chips.

I think Parx (PA) does this.

They could also wheel around dim sum. "Ha gow! Shu mai! Chips!"

Yes, they do. First room I've ever played in that does this. Very convenient/easy. They can also make change etc... Felted an obvious table game player (had no idea what he was doing/throwing money around) and changing the 100s/25s to reds was not an issue at all.

I was at this table and the delay messed up an extremely juicy game. A week earlier I'm sitting at the deep stack game and a chip running delivers $300 in chips to me, which I didn't order. The dealer and everyone starts laughing and we notify the floor manager.

M8trix was delayed in being allowed to open because their surveillance equipment wasn't up to snuff. I'm surprised it works at all.

LOL, this place is under investigation by state authorities for all kinds of shenanigans. It's expired license has not yet been renewed and it's operating provisionally, I guess.

Bay 101 uses the same dealer/chiprunner banking system, and the way they handle this is by having at least 4 chip "kiosks" throughout the room of 30ish tables. Chips are never physically more than 50 feet away from a table. The runners don't go to the cage.

The way parx does it is the best, never had or seen a problem with mis handled chips or money. Although usually we just lend the money to the other player until the chips get there to make sure there isn't anything missed.

The only weird thing at Parx is that the chip-cart runners cannot pick up money off the table, you have to hand it to them--not sure where they "show" the amount for the camera-other places just spread it on the table in front of the player for the camera.

Works well. Canterbury has runners all over the place and never heard of a problem--might happen but pretty rare. Some long runs back to the cages (and obviously amount behind in an all limit room is not as big a deal as NL or PL games. So training/good runners can overcome the limitations of the runners to the cage system.

stories like this just baffle me.

I'm a part-time chip runner, part-time dealer. Where I work, the chip runner has a cart full of chips, so there's no need to go to the cage. If someone needs chips, we are right there behind them, they give us money, we give chips immediately. The carts are very tightly controlled, they have to be locked if the chip runner leaves the room, has to deal a down (all our chip runners are also dealers), etc.

In the odd occasion we do have to get chips from the cage (the chip runner with the cart is on break, etc), the lammers for the amount the player has behind are controlled by the dealer of the game, and kept in the dealer's tray. The same trays that are locked when the table isn't in use, so stealing them would be tough.

I'm not sure why every room doesn't use a system like this, it's really quite simple and efficient. Our room isn't even a large one, and I would think this kind of thing would benefit a big room even more.