The "Ghost" extra chips in the WSOP ME

[BobFeduniak]

Here is a possible benign explanation for the extra chips:

I think the published chip counts are based on the amounts that the players count and write on their name/seating/chip count cards and seal with their chips in plastic bags. Those amounts aren't verified by anybody and I've heard off and on in recent years that some players purposely overstate their chip counts for various reasons (such as liking to appear higher in the chip count listings). Even so, the large jump late in the ME is eye-catching.

Bob Feduniak

[JohnGroomsTD]

Ok guys,
I will try to explain this as well as I can.

Players started with 5 denominations of chips in the event.
$25
$100
$500
$1000

When racing off chips, each player will divide their lowest denom. chips in to stacks that represent 1 chip of the next highest denom. ( 4 green($25) chips= 1 black($100) chip).

The left over chips for each person are stacked in front of them, and the dealer gives the players one card face up for every chip.

Ex.- a player has 13 green chips. He divides his chips into 3 stacks of 100, and has one chip left over. The dealer gives him 1 card face up for that chip. Each player at the table repeats this process.

In this example, lets say there are 14 odd chips left over with the 10 players a the table. The 3 players with the highest card up will recieve 1 chip. that accounts for 12 of the chips. In this instance, anoher chip would be awarded, because the 2 other chips represent 1/2 or more of a higher denom chip.

In this manner, it is possible(but extremely unlikely ) that every table remaining when the green chips were raced off gained an extra chip. Let's say that 360 tables were left(beginning of day 2). That would be 360 tables x $50 gained(replacing 2 $25 chips with one $100 chip).

That would be a net gain of chips in play of 360x$50=18,000

try again with the 100's.

If there were, maybe 200 tables left again, and all(impossible) of them were to gain a chip, Thats at a minimum $200x200= $40,000

Repeat the process with 1000's 100 tables=50,000
5000's= 10 tables- 50,000
10000's- 2 tables- 40,000
50000's- i table- 50,000

add up these figures. It's absolutely imossible that the 200 players worth of chips were introduced during a race off. The dead stacks on day were were fully blinded off into the tournament. Or a huge mistake was made on a color up. I will answer any and all questions on this topic tomorrow, as I am leaving for a mini vacation in 10 min.

Thanks
JG
100000's

[Botchman]

[ QUOTE ]
richard brodie addressed this in his blog, if anyone has a link. He contends that it is very unlikely with all the racing off of chips, that an extra 3M was added. i thought it was very interesting that Gordon brushed over the discrepancy saying its only 5% of the chips in play. i couldnt tell if he was being serious, or throwing a dig in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not very unlikely because I watched a total of 1 table colour up and the dealer was about to give 1 player double what his chips are worth, If I seen this watching 20 seconds of one colour up I'm pretty sure this did happen more than a few times
EXTRA 3 MILL= DEALERS NOT KNOWING HOW TO ADD

[MicroBob]

John Grooms - so does this mean you suspect that extra chips were somehow smuggled into the stacks somehow?
Making THAT many color-up errors seems unlikely.

[pineapple888]

OK, let's say it was a conspiracy.

Did 100 people smuggle in 20,000 extra chips each?
Did 10 people smuggle in 200,000 extra chips each?
Did 1 person smuggle in 2M extra chips?

Does any of this sound totally ridiculous? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

Well, something happened because there were quite a few extra chips out there by the end. So how the hell did it happen?

[fyodor]

Everyone who subscribes to conspiracy theories knows the first place you look is to the person/persons who gained from it all. Ask yourself who had a lot of chips? Who ended up with all the chips? Why did he keep leaving his table to talk to Chan? Was he seen shuffling chips in his hand every time he returned to the table? Did his stack seem to keep growing even though he was telling everyone what his cards were? The truth is out there.

[BOTW]

[SavageMiser]

Looks like the floor could be a bit casual with the chips as well. Thread

[NoahSD]

If it was a floor/dealer mistake, is it a player's responsibility to tell that he got extra chips?