by Dan Michalski, Nov 2, 2009 | 5:49 pm

I just witnessed something pretty-dern interesting (new to me) … am at Binion’s for the World Tavern Poker Open 9, and saw for the first time instant replay used to help with a difficult floor situation.

WTP is one of the bigger amateur bar-leagues out there, and this is one of their two annual big kahuna championship tourneys. More than 10,000 bar-league players across the country competed for seats in this event, which started with a field of 188 … The top 8 all make the money … with prizes starting at $1,000 WSOP event entries, and $2,500 worth of WSOP dollars for the winner. They were down to 11 players when a dealer error almost seriously fugked things up.

Apparently it was a multi-way all-in, and at some point the dealer took a bunch of chips from one player to pay another … but he scooped in more than he was supposed to, and then mashed them all together. Floor got called over (Binion’s Monday afternoon TD, Alan, the guy in the Aikman jersey) and it was a bit of a nightmare sitch trying to recreate the hand to figure out who had exactly how many chips before and after the hand.

But tournament purity was salvaged when they could simply go to the cameras, and the floor guy could see exactly who had what and when:

They’re at the final table now … with eight plastic champagne glasses awaiting a toast for the money finishers once the bubble bursts … and because of cameras, all can know they did or didn’t get there fairly.