Hi, new here so I hope this is in the right place. I was playing in a casino poker room in Vegas last weekend. Here is what happened, what do you think?

Small tournament, 2 tables, we were all supposed to start with 15k in chips. The dealer at our table gave us 20k each. After the third round when the dealer was being pushed, a new player came in and it was discovered when he was only given 15k that the rest of us had been given 20k. New dealer asks for floor to come over.

Floor says since two players had already been knocked out, one had rebought, he could not just add chips to the other table so asked us all to give 5k back. No problem EXCEPT one guy had a showdown and was short stacked to 800 chips.

Floor said he was out of the tournament immediately.

All heck broke loose, many of us stating that was not fair. Well, it didn’t stop there because the guy who had won the previous big pot volunteered to give the 800 small stack 5k and he would also give his 5k (so he would give 10k just to keep the game going). A saint and I certainly would not have done that, but he just wanted to get to playing. Floor had refused to stop the clock and this had gone on for over 15 minutes and the other table was playing, so everyone was irritated.

Floor excepted that, but the guy with 800 chips left was angry and handed his 800 chips to his friend next to him and left. Floor said that was not allowed and took the 800 chips and said they were dead.

I have only been playing about a year, but have never seen anything like this. I ended up chopping at the end of the tournament, but man it was a tense tournament.

Seems fine what the floor did. Unfortunate situation but the guy didn’t deserve to be in it with 800 in the first place.

I don't see much wrong with how it was handled. Maybe the floor could have been nicer about it from how you say it went down. One thing that can never happen in a tournament is a player giving tournament chips to another player. That's an absolute.

Stopping the clock is always tricky. You never really want to do it if you don't have to, and maybe this floor thought his ruling would be accepted and you could have played on without delay.

I suppose an alternative solution would be to GIVE everyone at the other table 5k so everyone is even, but that could probably lead to issues with the gaming board.

Telling someone with chips in front of him "Sorry, you're out." could probably lead to issues with the gaming board.

How in the world can you guys not see anything wrong with the way it was handled? A floor man made an arbitrary decision to just kick a player out of the tournament.

It's not just because the guy was eliminated; they screwed over everyone bu just taking 5k away. Imagine you are sitting on 5100 at 50/100 with a manageable 51 BB, and then the floor comes over and says "just kidding, mate. You actually only have 1 BB now, good luck. And then you can consider how all the previous hands would have been played differently if stacks were smaller. You see nothing wrong with this...really?

I've heard tales of this being handled a couple of different ways and all are flawed and lead to people complaining about being wronged. You can't go back in time and replay the whole thing so a decision had to be made on how to go forward.

uhh easier to give everyone who started with 15k who's still in 5k more right and 5k extra to each person who knocked someone out that had started with 15k I think. essentially just makes starting stacks 20k instead of 15k. It's a bad situation no matter what though.

Why didn't anyone speak up earlier?

OK, so I am not alone in this one!

Nobody had noticed. Since we all started with the same at the table, nobody noticed differences in stacks, the other table had less, nobody went to compare the two tables.

I would have ruled differently but tell me if this would have made a good ruling: Everyone at that specific table gives up the lesser amount of half their stack or 5k (they retain any odd chips).

Why not give the other table 5k each?

Someone mentioned it might be a gaming violation. Also, what do you do about players who have been knocked out? Do you give 2 to players who rebought?

I don't have an answer that I'm confident is correct or that my room would use, but I can say there is no way they'd be refunded. Maybe a food comp.

As everyone above notes, there is no perfect way to make this right, and no handbook ruling to correct something this screwed up.

Some of the options I can think of:
1- Cancel and refund to all
2- ICM chop to all remaining (with or without trying to add/substract $5k from some)
3- Straight chop to all remaining
4- Give $5k to everyone who started at other tables
5- Give $5k to everyone who started at other tables, plus an extra $5k per bounty chip they have (if a bounty tourny)
6- Remove $5k from everyone who had extra, eliminate anyone with less than $5k
7- Remove up to $5k from everyone who had extra, leave everyone with at least 1 chip
8- Remove $5k from everyone who had extra at end of current round, i.e. give them a chance to double up past $5k if in danger of being eliminated
9- Leave as is, comp everyone who started short with something agreeable

I would probably go with 1 if at all possible, then 9 if possible, then 4 or 7 if not.

1) I certainly think this is a 'clock stopping' situation. Sounds like this was just a 2-table at the time.

2) Not sure why eliminations would affect balancing the chips. What table did the eliminations take place on? Did the re-buy stay at their original table?

The adding on of 5K chips to those who were shorted would be the most straightforward method, if allowed. The Player who re-bought, if he was at 'the other' table doesn't get 10K ... only 5K per live stack. The 'knockout' Players only get 5K under a 'action given, action accepted' caveat.

If you're looking for a 'left field' solution ... well folks, each of you are now part of a single table SNG, not a 2-table MTT!! Obv if there had been any Player movement caused by the two bustouts, then this wont fly. GL

This is an excellent suggestion. It sounds like the arriving player was the first new one at the $20k table. Just treat them as two separate 1 table tournaments and go from there.

This happened at Mohegan Sun about 2 years ago. There were 9 tables running and the tenth started up and got an extra 5,000 chips per person. It was discovered almost 2 hours into the tourney and after deliberating for over 20 minutes (looking at the tape), MS elected to play on as is. Many of us (me included) were shocked by this and I personally don't play there almost at all anymore.

I think the best solution in a multi table tourney would be to give everyone else 5,000 more chips. People who who have been knocked out were playing against others with the same starting stack so I don't think there is a problem there. The problem with this solution is that it increases the time of the tourney which will cost the room money and also possibly lead to a shortage of dealers in the late stages. I like the idea of giving 5,000 extra chips to a player who knocked somebody out but I think it is hard to do in practice.

One solution that nobody has suggested so far would be to refund everyone still alive at the table who got too many chips and allow them to buy back in for 15,000 immediately (i.e. restart that table). I believe that it is every player's responsibility in a tourney to validate their starting stack so the disadvantage to some would be fair in my mind.

I like the solution of turning this into two SNG tourneys. But wonder how latecomers would be handled (especially if a new table had to be started up)...

Taking away 5,000 chips from players who are short is problematic. I don't think you can eliminate people from a tourney. If I was going down the chip reduction path, I would take 25% of the chips from players who received 5,000 more chips. Not sure if this wouldn't also cause a firestorm. But I think it is defensible.

For any management looking at this thread I would highly recommend announcing the starting chip stack for every player before the start of every tournament and remind players that it is their responsibility to start with the appropriate stack size.

Starting a tournament where some players got more chips than others is already going to lead to issues with the gaming board.
This is exactly what I do and why I do it. I tell everyone to double check their chip stack now to make sure they have X because they will have no redress once the tourney starts if they have the wrong amount.

Personally, I would have given everyone else an extra 5k. It is the only reasonable fix. Then I would start preparing to answer some questions from gaming.

Absent refunds/ restarts, the best solution is probably giving 33% more chips to everyone at the other table. No solution that takes chips from the short stack is fair. Busting him is a comically bad ruling and should never have been considered.

Adding 5k >>> adding 33%.

There's no perfect solution but this likely wasn't the best choice. I'd be pissed at getting auto-kicked out when I thought I was still in. Against that, it seems highly unlikely to me that no-one at the table noticed that they got extra chips. If they had spoken up instead of taking what seemed like a freeroll, this wouldn't have happened.

We have recently started to do the same thing. No specific reason, we just did.

We also give the same announcement and have luckily never run in to this we problem. We have the dealer and floor verify stacks and if the TD isn't busy they're there too. We only have 10-11 tables for tournaments usually, so it is probably a bigger risk for a larger room.

Hi Kpro,

Glad to see you followed my suggestion and came to 2plus2.

This is/was a good place to ask about that tournament you played.

I think all of us in Vegas you related this too were dumbstruck.