Disappearing chips

November 9, 2006 by BramCops.

Hello,

The following happened at a pokertournament I was directing.

There was a break up in tables and two players were moved to another table.

This happened under the supervision of 2 chiprunners who move the chips for the players as a security measure.

Player 1 was a shortstack and had about 2000 chips

Player 2 Had an average stack(+/-15000).

Both players were moved to seat 8 and 9 of a new table. Right of seat 9 was the dealer and left to seat 8 was a player with a slightly below average stack. The blinds were 400-800 at that moment.

Some players had removed some chairs for their confort on the table the 2 players were about to sit down. The chiprunners placed the chips of both players infront of them at the table. One chip runner turned around to grab a chair for the player (shortstack, seat 8 ) to sit down when he turned back to the table he noticed the chips were gone. The tournament area is strictly allowed for players and staff only so no other people were in the neighbourhood. The other player seat 9 was getting seated at the same time.

I suspected that players on seat 7 had taken the chips but could prove this. They were not a lot of chips since it was the shortstack so I could notice a difference in his stack. He was suspiciously saying he didn’t do anything but I had no prove. The dealer at the table and the other players didn’t notice anything.

I knew howmuch the shortstack had so I provided him with a equal amount of new tournament chips. (There were no camera’s to prove anything).

Since it didn’t make that much difference for the player who took the chips (max +10% of his stack) I thing that was the best thing to do ?

 Any comments about how I handled this situation ? What would you do ?

Posted in Chaos: Sloppy Mgmt of Tables & Tournament, Start Chips, Blind Raising Structure, Tourney Timing, Money & Chips, Seating & Moving Players | Print | 1 Comment »