New Rule: Find some damn way to stop players from losing chips overnight or while on break.
This is a big one. I cannot tell you how many players have come to the table on the second or third day of an event and found they had less chips than they counted the night before. The excuse is always the same:
“It was late, the players count the chips, we (meaning the floor or the casino) do not verify them. Miscounts happen.”
.
That is probably true some of the time. But 'probably' is a bad excuse and for a game based on the accumulation of chips, there needs to be a near perfect way to make sure chips do not go missing during an event.
This current system is arcane and just simply doesn’t work. Players arrive at tables to find their chip bags already open. There needs to be a rule about this too. No bags are opened without the player being at the table or five minutes before the re-start of the event and someone actually watches the stacks other then a dealer talking to his buddy at the next table. You see it’s quite simple. People cheat and people steal. They are playing for millions of dollars and some small minority of people will cheat.
I have walked up to a dealer during a break to talk with them and they, of course, become totally distracted. If I had an accomplice with me, he or she could easily lift chips off the table. In fact, media are clearly in the best position to steal chips, we have access to the floor and we know many of the dealers and all of the floor staff. Yes, in theory those areas of the tournament room are closed during a break but media and staff always have access as they are passing through that area to reach the other live tournament floors.
Then when players are let back in, hundreds flood the area jostling to reach their seats, no way a dealer can keep in eye on ten chip stacks every moment.
Last year, Todd Brunson came back from a dinner break to find his stack of high denomination chips missing. When he complained the floor told him: “Well, you have to be a little flexible here, Todd.” Todd responded: “You make me leave the area, so I cannot protect my chips and now I am the one who has to be flexible?”
In addition, the rules they do have are inconsistently applied. “Sorry but the cameras can’t pick it up” is what we hear all the time at the tables, except perhaps if you are known to the floor. Check this out from Barry Schulman’s blog (Barry being the CEO of CardPlayer):
After dinner, a lady somehow had no chips at her place. People at the table felt that somehow they got shoved to the player next to her. The Harrah's floor man said that he felt with stone cold certainty it would be on film because "every inch of every table is on camera." Sure enough, within a couple of minutes they were told to give the lady exactly $6,500 from the stack next to her. In way too many tournament situations, especially in ballroom situations, we have heard, "Sorry, but the camera didn't catch it." Often we wonder how many cameras there are.
One solution is to “micro-chip” the chips and either electrify the tables or have hand held wands like the ones you see in the grocery store. It costs more to make those chips but this is what the casinos want out on the casino floor to prevent counterfeiting. It is also what poker rooms want to prevent player’s switching chips in the restroom or pocketing chips from a lower buy-in event and slipping them into a Main Event. Yes, that happens too.
Another low-tech idea is to cover every stack with those plastic boxes that card rooms use for “play over” players. Only when play restarts would chips be exposed to anyone but the player who owns them.
Find an exact system of counting chips at the end of the day. Yes, it will take time but put the responsibility on the players. No one leaves the table until we all agree on the chip counts of all the other players. The current system of putting all your chips in a separate bag only works if you are the only person who opens the bag the next day. But play has to start and big stacks need time to be stacked so often bags are opened before the player arrives and this is where players seem to lose chips. Either that or gremlins.
This chip loss problem represents perhaps the biggest gap in the integrity of play in a tournament poker and it has to be solved.
