Expelling a jerk from a tournament

Back in March, lots of poker news sources and blogs reported on the unusual expulsion of a tournament chip leader, a guy named Lesley Thornburg, from the final table, due to ongoing bad behavior. These were essentially all based on the report of Nolan Dalla, which you can read here. I didn't repeat or point to it at the time, because I didn't have anything useful to add to the story, and anybody who peruses poker news outlets or blogs would almost certainly have come across it elsewhere.

I was pleased and surprised to find in the May, 2008, issue of Poker Pro magazine an editorial comment from John Wenzel, who describes the situation with other details not previously reported. It's not clear whether Wenzel was there, or just reporting secondhand on what others told him, but at least he gathered perspectives other than that of Dalla. And even with these additional pieces of information about what the culprit was doing, it's clear that there is a lot being left out.

It's such a remarkable story that I'm posting it here, in the form of a scan of Wenzel's piece, since I know that Poker Pro magazine isn't nearly as widely circulated as other publications, which means that many people won't ever see this. (Click the image to embiggen it sufficiently for reading.)

The only question left is why the tournament director didn't disqualify the guy sooner.





Addendum, April 27, 2008

I started wondering if this Thornburg fellow had attempted any explanation or defense of his actions in the various poker forums, so I Googled his name and found one, of sorts, from somebody claiming to be Thornburg, which you can read here. Even if the post is really from the person in question, it's a pretty implausible defense, basically saying that he did nothing out of the ordinary, and he can't imagine why they picked on him. The threshold for conduct that will get you ejected from a poker tournament (for anything short of being caught red-handed cheating) is about a hundredfold higher than what this writer is saying happened. Furthermore, if Wenzel's witnesses are even remotely on target, the guy was hopelessly out of control, and probably drunk enough that he couldn't be counted on to even remember his own conduct, let alone be a reliable judge of it.