96240000 total chips from 4812 x 20,000

This figure won't be correct. What denominations did the starting stacks have? The stacks would have been chipped up a couple of times, so with an average stack now of ~3.5m, the 5k chips must be the smallest in play? It won't account for over 1m chips, but there isn't 226 fake 5k chips in play.

Presumably, Bogata staff will have opened all the bags of the remaining 27 players and scrutinised their stacks so they will know exactly how many counterfeit chips are in play. If i was left in the final 27, i'd hate the thought of my bag being opened by staff while there's still question marks over whether it was partly an inside job or not.

As for the best solution, playing on might seem like the best idea on paper, but how much of your heart would be in it now for you to be able to play your A game and play to the best of your ability when you still don't know what the final outcome is going to be.

I'm not trying to be that guy -- I cut my teeth at the Borgata so even though I wasn't in the tournament I have been reading through the thread intermittently. It has become one of those threads where it's impossible to follow and have a life though.

Can someone give cliffs on what the theories are on who/how this happened and what the official company line is on the security of their games?

I suspect the answer involves several solutions;

-Update, modernize, and vary tournament chips

-Gain back control of tournaments - rebuys/re-entry/multi-day 1's/bring your biggest stack to day 2, etc...etc...1/2 field in Poker Room 1/2 field in convention center.....players carrying chips around to food lines, and into bathrooms....CANT HAPPEN - if you can't find a way to manage it, don't offer it. Determine how to manage large fields more effectively.

-Put an end to allowing 2nd chances for known cheaters being allowed back in Casinos. It's a privilege not a right to enter such an establishment. Hold players to higher moral standards when it comes to cheating. Poker should only tolerate a 1 strike policy. You cheat once, INSTA ban from ALL Casinos. Have a Poker Room BLACK LIST like they do for Casinos in General

-More closely monitor chips in play throughout tourney. Have check points. Train dealers to aid in this effort. Uncover discrepancies much earlier.

-eye in the sky should ALWAYS be there and be effective. being in the convention center is no excuse for a drop in security. Casino MUST protect it's players, and provide the safest venue to to play.

other ideas ?

Random thought:

I wonder if the demand for Quality Live Poker Events has grown at a Pace that Live Poker Rooms (with a current lack of commitment from Casino Executives) can't keep up with.

Seemingly.....

They don't have enough dealers
They don't have the latest technology
They don't have enough space
Hell.....they don't even have enough chips !

No wonder Poker Stars wants to get into this market so badly !

[IMG]http://s28.************/bjodpydf1/20140119_043139.jpg[/IMG]

Pretty much a slap in the face the staff still has this up in the poker room.

I'm not sure if this is standard in cash (as opposed to tourneys) but I know at Thunder Valley in Lincoln, Calif., it's not unheard of to have three different inlays in the $5 chips. I always figured it was a matter of when they were issued — no different than having three $20 bills that look completely different, yet are all legal tender.

But again, it might be a different matter with tourneys. Any event I've ever played has had uniform tourney chips. They are often very plain (e.g. no edge spots) but definitely from the same "set."

I was grinding cash all day at the Borg today and there was obviously a lot of talk about it. Men Nguyen's name of course came up a lot. I think given his history, he deserves to be looked at closely and I have no issue with people speculating, but this isn't exactly his MO and it seems a little bit like amatuer hour for someone who knows what they're doing. (Counterfeiting is harder to pull off than sneaking chips out of one tourney and into another, the risk of getting caught is much higher, the potential legal ramifications are worse, and the upside is no different.)

However, before the tournament was even suspended and we knew about fake chips, there was conversation about him at the tables since he's a known player who people were watching play. Something that was said the other day now seems odd to me. A player mentioned that Men was still in Event 1 and was firing a bunch of bullets at another event's Day 1 trying to build a big stack. I didn't think much of it at first, but today I realized that this is another area where tournaments are susceptible to cheating.

This isn't to accuse him, especially since it's all just hearsay that he even did try to build a stack in a second event... but rather to point out that people firing a bunch of bullets at an event who are still in another event could be trying to pull chips out of play for later use.

As a poker community, we should push for more of a response to prevent opportunities for cheating, including:

1) Multiple Day 1's that use the same chips and allow you to take your biggest stack to Day 2. There are lots of risks here (not just pocketing chips, not just dumping them to horses, but even just dumping them to someone at your table in exchange for a percentage - even a recreational average Joe could think of that and pull it off)

2) Tournaments that start in multiple rooms and allow players to walk from one, across the casino to another when a table breaks without supervision.

3) Tournament series using the same chips throughout not only the series, but year to year.

4) Allowing players to be bought into multiple tournaments at once.

5) Allowing players to bag their own chips without confirming chip counts. All chips should be examined and counted at the end of play and beginning of play with dealer/floor supervision.

I also think that all tournaments should be required to publish a report at the end that shows how many chips were in play at the final table, and how many should have been. We know that there has to be an expectation of some amount of cheating, but what's an average amount and an "acceptable" amount? The 2006 WSOP Main Event comes to mind as a prominent example... If casinos published the total number of chips in play and by what % it was off, it might create more pressure to monitor it more closely.

This brings up an interesting point too. No edge spots means that if a chip is in the middle of a stack, the only part that will face scrutiny is the edge, which is a solid color. Thus if the color is close, it's impossible to notice. That's a low tech, minimal safeguard that can be easily implemented on higher denomination tournament chips.

This is important too. It might mean there were more counterfeit chips in play than the numbers being thrown around. Hopefully the Borgata will address this after the investigation is finished.

The T100 chips were basically black, and the T5000 are light gray/silver. The colors were nothing alike, so I don't know how anyone could see any similarity. The dark green T25 and black T100 are tough to tell apart from across the table, is that what you are thinking of?

Um, what????

There doesn't have to be ANY EXPECTATION of some amount of cheating. I seriously cannot believe you posted this.

Can someone copy the photo of Adam gerbers final 27 chip stack from his Facebook. There are two shades of 5ks but none have the fluorescent look of the counterfeits.

People who are saying this isn't the fault of the venue (starting with the TD) are almost as dumb as the guy who is certain MTM isn't behind the counterfeit chips. Casinos are granted a license to charge/gouge us and it is their job and responsibility to ensure the integrity of the game(s). Borgata and TD failed in basically the worst way and should be held accountable.

A TD's job during the course of a tournament is to monitor and make sure everything is run smoothly- certainly a giant task. Yet next time you are at a Borgata tournament do me a favor and take a look at TD. I can guess where he'll be. Sitting on his throne buried in his computer. He probably won't look up from his computer more than once or twice per level. The guy isn't even present when these main event final tables play out (unless of course it is televised).

Wait, we arent supposed to expect playing such a great game vs cheaters? No wonder they always get there...

Didn't you just get yelled at for copy and pasting Wellman's Facebook post on whojedi? You shouldn't do this

Is the decision now to refund people that didn't cash, and payout the original prize money?

If that is so, the real winners of this are the people that busted early, and the losers are the people that won prize money. Why? Because in terms of expectation, the counterfeit chips can be counted like rebuys that were made, but not added to the prize pool (1M chips=50 rebuys):

A person that say finished 100th place, finished 100th in a 4861 entry tournament with a 4811 entry prize pool. Same for the people that are still in the last 27: they should get higher prize money.

For a person that say finished 3000th place, it doesn't matter if the field were 4811 or 4861 people. They'd still leave without pay - but can now be happy about the refund.

Overall every (honest) tournament player lost average 1% of equity playing in this event.

You appear to be his Facebook friend. Why not a) ask him to post it, b) ask him for permission to post it, or c) post it yourself without express permission, since he does not set his images as private? (Note: asking him would still be a courtesy you should extend.)

Besides, I'm looking at two different photos on there. They don't reveal anything interesting. Yes, the gray $5K chips seem to range between a light gray and a darker one, but that doesn't tell us anything. We already had a poster (Wildman) say that both the older, worn chips and the new, fresher chips were both legit. The difference was in its feel rather than its appearance.

Men "the Master" - now in his 15th year (or more) of tournament cheating:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...er/9jX03fqtEUk[1-25-false]


12/21/01

"True story, no one can deny. The night before the main event, a one
table sattelite was about to start when Men and Daniel go into a war
of words. Daniel says Men you are a bad man, and you are a cheater.
Men yells and screams at him, denying all of it. Daniel says I don't
respect you and I know about the **** you do. They were both about to
play the sattelite, until Men gave up his seat!!!!
In the sattelite where Erik S, John J, Allen C, Andy B, Tony Ma, and a
few others who all saw it! Nobosy else spoke. The satellite
continued and Erik Seidel won the seat."

He was ITM and paid out.

7/30/02

"John Juanda Backs up Dan's accusations against the Master"

"Men, I dont think anything that Daniel said here is because he is
jealous of you or because he dislike you. He simply dislike WHAT YOU
DID to poker. I dislike what you did to poker too. Daniel wrote in
one of his posts, regarding the '98 Nhut Tran 'dumping-chips'
incident, that there were 2 other players who saw it happened. For
the record, I, John Juanda, was one of the players who saw it
happened."


https://groups.google.com/forum/#!se...Y/RFOjAaH1RdsJ

"The most blatant accusation against Men centers around an incident that took place in Mashantucket, Connecticut, at Foxwoods Casino. Men was there with his guys for a poker tournament. As is their norm, they arrived with coolers full of steak, fish, rice and Coors. They shared a suite and set it up with hot plates, steamers and a fridge. After a team member overcooked dinner, the room filled with smoke and fire alarms went off. Hotel workers rushed inside and asked Men and his guys to leave while they dealt with the situation. The fire was put out, but rumors spread that tournament chips were found in the room. If true, that’s a terrible infraction of poker-tournament rules. It means that players on Men’s team had been pulling chips from the tournament as their likelihood of getting knocked out became more and more of a certainty, and they then provided those chips to the group’s winning players, who could surreptitiously supplement their chip stacks."

http://www.laweekly.com/2003-05-22/n...r/?storyPage=7

http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...MEN-THE-MASTER

"There is a story from Mellisa Hayden about a spotter signaling him opponents cards from the rail from the old RGP archives archive: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...2b576ee9?pli=1"



"I was made aware of cheating going on during the Taj. Tournament.
Men (the Master?) had one of his horses Signal to him the hole cards
of one of the players at the final table of the $500 limit hold-em
event.

My source is one of the most upstanding, knowledgeable players in our
community. He has no axe to grind w/anyone, and he is a winning
player. That he was even present for this is a fluke.

Anyway, I heard it, as this -Minh was behind the man so close that he
could clearly see his whole cards.
Minh would then signal Men as to what he had. He continued to do this
until someone in the crowd started saying "he's cheating, he's
cheating."
He then said "he's (pointing to Minh) looking at his cards and
signaling Men." this went on for a bit, at first no one was paying
attention because he wasn't saying it loudly enough for everyone to
hear. He continued getting louder until everyone listened. Then
everyone started looking around.
In the meantime Minh who was aware that the guy was pointing to him
disappeared into the crowd."

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...er/9jX03fqtEUk[26-50-false]


None of this means he was the one who perpetrated the Borgata crime.

But how has this total scumbag managed to not get banned from poker after 15+ years of these and similar incidents?

For shame that none of the "name" players (except for Negreanu/Juanda and perhaps 1 or 2 others) have never over 15 years spoken out publicly about this.

Now comes another question refunds admit borgata messed up. What about food rooms gas people spent coming to this fraudulent event. Maybe 300$ in comps to everyone as well? Two rooms good for anytime during spring series.

What about players that missed work on Saturday? Tourney was supposed to end friday and the players ended up having to wait around until Saturday.