Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

What's the usual routine if a player leaves a tournament early with chips still in play? This happened to me last night - a player went all in, announcing that he was leaving. He then won the hand, but left anyway. His chips were removed from the table, which skewed the average and total chip counts for the rest of the tournament.

Is this normal?

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

where I play (Canterbury in MN), I believe the standard procedure is to blind the guy off until his chips are gone.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

Anyone can leave their seat at any time, they just get blinded out. Their chips do not get "removed from play". They are chips that were paid for and belong to all tournament players until one person has acquired them all.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

That's what I always thought too - in fact, we disputed it and requested a ruling. Both the TD and casino manager confirmed that the chips should be removed from play, and showed previous rulings to back this up.

It still seemed very wrong to us.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

Not only do they stay in play, but theoretically they still have the chance to place in the money - i.e., if there are still chips in the stack when enough players are eliminated. I doubt any casino would pay out to a missing player, but some of the professional organizations (WPT, WSOP) would, I believe. Online poker rooms do. My guess is that casinos take the chips off the table for this reason.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

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Not only do they stay in play, but theoretically they still have the chance to place in the money - i.e., if there are still chips in the stack when enough players are eliminated.

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This is known as the Vinnie Vinh clause.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

afaik there was a very famous guy who got drunked \junked and hvnt participated but had so many chips to win a place in wsop years ago

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

Not only do they stay in play but cards also get dealt to the empty seat until the chips are gone (blinded out). Where the heck were you playing? That will screw up the chip counts as well as many other things. You cant just take chips that were paid for off the table during a tournament its ridiculous regardless of how many chips he had, and if had just went all in and won I'm assuming he had more chips then he had started with. So essentially you are taking his chips and someone else's out of play?? Then if you do the math it screws up chip stack averages and such ughhh I'd be heated.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

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Is this normal?

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No.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

Sounds weird but as long as the prize pool remains the same, remaining players shouldn't lose overall. The real losers of this rule (vs. the normal rule of blinding away) are those who were at the table - they don't get a bunch of free chips.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

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afaik there was a very famous guy who got drunked \junked and hvnt participated but had so many chips to win a place in wsop years ago

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In 1990, Stu Ungar was one of the chip leaders of the WSOP ME after two days, but failed to show after that. He was found in his hotel room and rushed to the hospital.

But he had built up enough to finish 9th and cash for $20,000 + change.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

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Not only do they stay in play but cards also get dealt to the empty seat until the chips are gone (blinded out). Where the heck were you playing? That will screw up the chip counts as well as many other things. You cant just take chips that were paid for off the table during a tournament its ridiculous regardless of how many chips he had, and if had just went all in and won I'm assuming he had more chips then he had started with. So essentially you are taking his chips and someone else's out of play?? Then if you do the math it screws up chip stack averages and such ughhh I'd be heated.

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Yeah, they stopped dealing to him too. This was a Grosvenor casino in the UK. We were very much not impressed - our table had been pretty loose during the rebuy period, the upside being that our table should have had a higher than average chip count when the 'real' poker starts. Suddenly losing 10,000 chips essentially means everyone still at that table lost a rebuy.

I hadn't even considered the change in the dynamic of the game by having the absent player dealt in - that's a whole other thing to get worked up about.

And yeah, we were not a happy bunch. The TD was pretty unanimously told by the players that the chips stay in play, but went against that anyway. What used to happen is that the absent players put in the big blind every hand. Apparently this no longer happens, but no one seemed to feel it was right for the absentee to fold every hand and just put in their own blinds (as would happen online, for example) because, as someone else mentioned, it would be possible for them to make the money in that case. Personally, I didn't see an issue with that.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

the chips play. just happened in a tourney i was playing. the guys chips actually lasted awhile, as the seat/chips tripled up from the bb one hand, according to the guys fiend.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

What if someone wants to take a break during play and just leave the table for awhile? Seems like they should be allowed to do that. Do they come back to a chair with no chips? What a horrible rule for so many reasons.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

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Sounds weird but as long as the prize pool remains the same, remaining players shouldn't lose overall. The real losers of this rule (vs. the normal rule of blinding away) are those who were at the table - they don't get a bunch of free chips.

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OTOH, those at the table now have much less of a chance of accumulating chips since he was chip leader.

Re: Early leavers in a tournament - what happens to the chips?
 

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Not only do they stay in play, but theoretically they still have the chance to place in the money - i.e., if there are still chips in the stack when enough players are eliminated.

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This is known as the Vinnie Vinh's chair clause.

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