The Worst Decision Ever

Over the years, the World Series of Poker has provided me with lots of information for my columns. It is the biggest and best tournament in the world, but at the same time, it is also a place where many bad decisions are made and inconsistencies happen. The reason is simple: The host casino (Harrah's Rio, in this case) has to put together a massive team of poker professionals. That isn't easy to do when you are searching for people who can work for only two months out of the year. Many highly qualified and well-trained people are already working full time somewhere else, or can't afford to put aside two months of their lives to work full time in Las Vegas. No matter who were to run the WSOP, there would always be some problems. The staff that is put together comes from many different poker backgrounds, and they all know slightly different rules. We as players must accept that. This is a tournament that will never be without its flaws. With that said, there are many areas that the staff can work on fixing, and I hope that all of those involved will take some time to realize that a good staff is vital to the long-term success of the WSOP.



Part way through the WSOP, I heard about a decision that had been made that I simply couldn't believe. It wasn't a split-second decision that was made during the play of a hand; instead, it was a decision that was made before a tournament resumed that ultimately probably influenced the outcome of the tournament.



Keep in mind that I was not present when this happened. I did, however, speak to the supervisor in charge who made the decision. I also spoke to three players who were at the table where the incident happened: Daniel Negreanu, Gavin Smith, and Kathy Liebert. The times and details are as reported to me by these people.



Event No. 5, the $2,500 shorthanded no-limit hold'em tournament, was about to resume play on day two. One of the tables was supposed to be fivehanded, and it included Kathy, Daniel, and Gavin in the No. 1, 2, and 3 seats, respectively. Five minutes prior to the starting time (2 p.m.), the dealers were instructed to open the chip bags of those players who had not yet arrived at their table. The player in the No. 6 seat at Gavin's table arrived shortly thereafter, and found no chips at seat No. 6. The supervisor told me that he looked around for the chips but couldn't find them. He then, apparently without consulting anyone higher, made the decision to take $101,000 in tournament chips from the cage and put them at seat No. 6. He made this decision without consulting or advising any of the other players in the tournament. Tournament action began at about 2:05 p.m., five minutes after the scheduled starting time.



Twenty minutes into play, the player whose chips had gone missing looked across the table at seat No. 4 and said something along the lines of, "I wonder if those are my chips." Gavin's immediate response was, "What do you mean, you wonder if those are your chips?" The player explained to the rest of the table what had happened. The players were dumbfounded. The player for seat No. 4 had not yet shown up to play, which was pretty strange given the circumstances. The stack of chips there had been blinded off during the 20 minutes. These were the chips that were supposed to have been put down at seat No. 6.



Gavin was visibly upset, and he had every right to be. The dead stack at seat No. 4, which never should have been there, was in the big-blind position every time that Gavin was in the small blind. With Daniel and Kathy to his immediate right, his blinds were relentlessly attacked, because there was no player in the seat. That put Gavin at a disadvantage. As it turned out, Gavin lost about 40 percent of his stack in that first 20 minutes. Would things have been different had the stack not been there? Who knows, but the situation never should have happened.



Here is how it was reported by CardPlayer.com:



Tournament Mistake Leaves Players Furious



It appeared that a player had not rejoined the field this afternoon, and his chips were being blinded off. The empty seat was to Gavin Smith's immediate left, so his small blind had been under attack.



Tournament officials realized there was a mistake – but not until the level was halfway over. These were actually Mirza Nagji's chips, which could not be found when play resumed. They gave Nagji a new stack of chips based on the official count, not knowing that his chips were already opened at the table, but at the wrong seat.



Players at the table were understandably upset at this mistake by tournament officials. The decision was made to remove the extra stack but leave the approximate $11,000 that had been added into play.


When the player discovered that his chips were missing, every possible attempt should have been made to find the chips. If they could not have been found, ultimately a decision would have had to been made to get new chips. That means that the decision to put the chips down was not horrible, but the process that occurred prior to making that decision was inexcusable.



What would I have done differently? The very first thing that I would have done is had every player sit down in his/her seat. I then would have taken the list of players remaining, with their chip counts, and verified each table, seat, player, and chips. Doing this would have identified the problem, as there wasn't even supposed to have been a player in the No. 4 seat.



Had I not been able to find the chips at all, after searching every possible location, I then would have consulted the people in charge before any decision was made. With such a critical decision to be made, I would have been comfortable delaying the start of the tournament an hour if it meant ensuring that the right decision was made. In this case, that didn't happen. One supervisor made a split-second decision that impacted the outcome of the tournament.



These are the kinds of situations that cannot happen at the biggest poker tournament of the year.

Correction: In my last column, "Show One, Show Both," I wrote, "I was, however, incredibly surprised to learn that the TDA (Tournament Directors Association) had decided to use this new rule. And because the TDA implemented it, many large tournaments have also started using it."



I had asked one of the people in charge at the World Series of Poker why they were using the rule, and he explained that they follow TDA rules, and it's a TDA rule. I then asked one of the TDA members, and he did not deny that it's a TDA rule.



I have since learned that the TDA has not implemented, nor does it endorse, the "show one, show both" rule.

Michael O'Malley is the poker room manager for PartyGaming.com and can be reached at [email protected]. His website is updated regularly at http://www.rzitup.com/.