8773 players x 10,000 in chips = 87,730,000
Total chipcount for the remaining 12 players, per CardPlayer = 92,785,000
Total chipcount for the remaining 12 players, per Harrahs offical count = 88,246,000
What's going on here? Let's toss out the CardPlayer count, if for no other reason than using live chip counts isn't the best way to judge the number of chips really in play. For example, Player A is listed with 1 million in chips, but Player B has 500k, until Player B takes a few chips from A and reaches 750k. Only one count is updated, making the total number of chips look like 1,750,000 when it's really 1,500,000.
But for the offical count to be off too? These are the numbers that players are reporting every night when they bag up their chips. Dealers should be verifying their counts, but I've witnessed bag-ups where the players did the count on their own and the dealers signed off without ever having actually verified the totals. The difference could come from something as simple as that, though I suppose we won't know for sure until we've declared a winner and someone actually sits and counts the chips he's got in front of him once the last hand has been dealt. (Note: I am not volunteering)
So where does the difference come from? I admit I'm surprised, I had a feeling the counts would be off but figured they would be low given the rumors of chip stealing we've heard about. Have chips made their way from one tournament into the main event? As someone pointed out at dinner last night (I apologize, I forget who), when buying into a $1000 event and receiving 1,500 in tourney chips, it can be tempting to remove that 500 and pocket it for a rainy day. I have heard no stories that this has happened, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. And let's not forget, you can pick up 500 tournament chips for a pretty good price on eBay.
When coloring up chips, often there is a variance in the number of chips in play, but even then a 516,000 difference is a bit high (or so I'm being told by my tournament director friends who know far more about these things than I do). I have heard rumors that people returned for another day of play and found their chip stacks either missing a few chips or missing entirely. In those cases, tournament officals are rumored to have replaced the missing chips, again relying on the word of the player to determine the correct count. On the other hand, I've heard reports that player's stacks have been short chips and they've been told there was nothing that could be done.
There's nothing concrete here and no smoking gun that we can point to, but a discrepancy such as this does raise a few eyebrows at least. Or maybe not...players may be so fed up by the other problems they encountered that an issue like chips in play is low on the priority list.
