Comments on: Example of Top-Pro Favoritism in Event #55 Hellmuth gets drunk, tourney purity spoiled

By: Poker Shrink

Poker Shrink — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:50:26 +0000

If you have a rule and you write it down and you don’t change it. Then there are few problems. Rules should not have grey areas; “Acting in the best interest of the game” often means doing what the pros want when they want it. Not the players fault. Rules are either made to be broken or made to be enforced, depends on the authority of the rule maker.

By: Kevin Mathers

Kevin Mathers — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:17:15 +0000

Lee Watkinson in a blog on CardPlayer earlier this month said players could unregister and reregister at will in the first two hours. I’ll pull up the link shortly, but I don’t think people would go to that extreme to go table shopping. Especially in the later days of the WSOP when players who registered late, who were the more well-known players were all seated together.

By: DanM

DanM — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:01:40 +0000

unless you’re phil hellmuth?

By: Poker Shrink

Poker Shrink — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:59:25 +0000

Just another spin-off of explosion of late registrations. But this one comes with a twist. If you register and your chips are put in play, then either they stay in play and you get no refund. Or they are picked up at some pre-determined written-down-in-the-rules time during the event and still you do not get a refund.

By: DanM

DanM — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:23:47 +0000

btw, i’m pretty sure they don’t color up, but rather race off.

even if i’m wrong on this, coloring up green chips wouldn’t lead to such a difference.

i think it’s interesting that phil lost 5,000 chips during his time at but not at the tables … and 15,000 chips is the disparity.

By: DanM

DanM — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:15:51 +0000

Indeed, late registration has been the biggest complaint from players and floor people alike this year. And that’s the real issue here. It’s not likely we have an extra-chips situation akin to the 2006 main event (when I believe 2 million were brought into play.)

But even if we assume you are right about the extra chips being a matter of reporting error, we know that’s not the case for at least 5,000 of them.

Though not accusing Hellmuth of doing anything wrong here, there are reasons why this situation is bad in theory/practice.

For one, a buy-in+no-show could be used to dump chips onto a table. Also, a late player could get word (via twitter or otherwise) that he happened to have, say, 5 of the toughest 2-7 players in the world at the table, and then decide to back out. Level 5 seems too late for that.

Even if the courtesy extended to Hellmuth was offered to all players, it would create an incentive to buy-in late and get a read on your table before deciding if you really want to invest the money into the event.

By: Kevin Mathers

Kevin Mathers — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:07:53 +0000

It’s probably a mix of coloring up and people reporting their stack size in error.

I assume one of the things that gets fixed next year will be late registration. I’d think the 2007 policy would work just fine, late registration was one level, and players lost up to 3 rounds of blinds/antes from their stack.