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

[TimB_Stoke]

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?

[Mr.WeakTight]

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

[Photoc]

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.

[TimB_Stoke]

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.

[PokerKhan]

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.

[Benedict]

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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.

[alavet]

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

[FiveFingerz]

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.

[PantsOnFire]

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Is this normal?

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No.

[LiveInPeace]

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.