I do feel bad for the players who actually made it that far and cant play it out, hopefully they expose who did this and the poker community throws it in there face or faces. Other than that where is my refund, lol. I can add this to the full tilt $ still owed.

They just found MORE counterfeit chips.....unbelievable !

Chainsaw,

From my days as a Police Officer with the NYPD and a Government agency before being retired. There is the possibility of said DNA and or fingerprint evidence on the rear of the applied labels.

When approached pull out the cheese whiz and eat the evidence...

I found your Pho

this is why you don't mess w/the police

Edit: I hope to God they catch these scumbags !

CLASSIC and HILARIOUS!!!

This is what makes me want a refund. Had phony chips been introduced on Day 2, Ill take getting eliminated and go on my way. If tourney was tainted from the start, ship me a refund.

Why would the day they were introduced make a difference?

Not sure why everyone insists on bickering, you should be happy you were part of history!!

you have to figure the Borgata would rather piss off 26 or 27 people really really bad than 2500+ people really bad ...sounds like a chipchop/refunds and one of the 27 is a culprit..

Ban Men and all his horses for life. Case closed.

Hey 2+2 I'm one of the final 27, soon I'm probably gonna sit down and write a detailed account of some of the craziness but (and I'm probably going to sound like a corporate lackey here) I'd just like to offer the opinion that the real issue is not that the Borgata doesn't know how to run a poker tournament (they do in my estimation) but that some loathsome cheats need to be punished. There are many astute observations in this thread about what can be done to avoid a fiasco like this but if there is not JAIL time for one or more of the conspirators then the Borgata is going to have difficulty stopping cheating in the future because there will simply not be the FEAR of horrible consequences...."fear is the mother of morals" (Nietzsche). If someone goes to jail for ten years only a true lunatic would try a stunt like this.

Also like to say it was amazing being in the poker room today with the support I got from my fellow players; they definitely are feeling outraged and want those of us who made it to day 3 to get our money.

I think we are getting paid. Conjecture of course. Right now all we know is that the prize pool is being held while the investigation is going on. As you can imagine it was a wild and emotional scene when Joe Lupo took the 27 of us behind locked doors and told us the tourney was cancelled and that no prizes would be immediately forthcoming. I really don't have any certainty how this will turn out but I'll make a couple of predictions:

1) The DGE will give everyone their entry fees back
2) The Borgata will send the remaining 27 players (or 26 or 25 or 24 players....gotta be honest, won't be the least bit surprised if one or more of the remaining players are proven to be transgressors) a check for their chop of the prize pool....I mean, even if all the tourney money is used for refunds don't they have to reach into their pockets and pay us? To save the Borgata poker brand they seem to have no choice. Now, will the money be given to us in a fair and timely manner? Not sure about that one. Of the 27 there were wildly disparate reactions on what we, the players, should be doing. One guy was enraged and thought the only way we'll ever get our money is to sue and then we still would likely not got our money for several years. Another player (a model of grace under pressure) seemed confident that the Borgata is a class act that will do the right thing and that we would be getting paid in under six weeks.
3) The Borgata Poker Opens will continue and prosper IF someone is arrested and they demonstrate they have the capacity to police their tournaments with some measure of proficiency and IF all the players get their entry fees back and the remaining 27 get what they have earned...me especially

funny, that's what several of my buddies told me

I'm pretty fine with borgata's solution to this, chip chop for the remaining 27 and refunding all players who busted short of the money there buy in. They're taking all the hit themselves. No one loses a dime.

What if they discover the chips were introduced on day 2 only? Does everyone deserve a refund?

Well, that would explain how the fakes clogged the toilets at Harrahs.

Quick Joe, eat faster!

If the group of cheaters snuck in one million worth of fake chips early in Day 2, doesn't that corrupt the entire day of play? Wouldn't a fairer distribution of the prize pool be based on the last legitimate chip counts before the corruptions, i.e., if the total chip counts at the end of Day 1 bagging is correct, then this may be the last point.

So players that were legitimately eliminated in Day 1 would get no part of the prize pool (except for Borgata volunteering to refund the fee portion like some online poker sites). Players at the beginning of Day 2 would get their portion of the prize pool on an ICM-based formula such as used by PokerStars on tournaments that crash and get cancelled before completion. I used to play at PartyPoker where there were a LOT of crashed tournaments, and we would receive our tournament equity based on a non-ICM formula.

I read that there are plumbing problems in the Atlantic City hotel where a cheater flushed the remaining fake chips. Would they be able to isolate whose room the chips got stuck in the pipes to add to any video evidence?

What about anyone who made it into the final 27, who through no fault of their own, is subject to a chip chop with no say in the matter? If you were lucky enough to make it into the last 3 tables of a 4800-person tournament, and felt you had a significant edge on the field, wouldn't you want to play it out (what should happen anyway)?

A chop is just a proxy for playing out the tournament, so why enforce a chop that surely would not be unanimous if the players actually had a say, when it solves nothing with regard to the actual problem-the 1% extra chips in play?

Obviously, if you can identify a cheater in the final 27, eliminate him, but the only fair solution for the remaining players is just to finish the tournament as intended.

Great post. Thanks

If the chips were introduced on day two why would you refund anyone who busted on day 1 since nothing was compromised.

Yea, if the final 27 (less any proven cheaters) are to be paid, then why would those players not determine if it would be chopped or not ?

Should be up to them.

No they have no idea when the chips were entered into play was it 200k on day 1 and 800k on day 2? I mean they will never know the whole story.

How could anyone be sure as to when the chips were brought into play? It's not like the floor inspected every bag at the end of each day 1 to see if any chips were fake

If they were introduced on day 2 and you busted out on day 1, you would not have suffered any harm. But my understanding is they (5K chips) were in play from the beginning, so you can't say you may not have been harmed.