Controversy at the WPT

Hey, it's not a WSOP story for a change!

There's a World Poker Tour event going on at the Bellagio, and a bit of a controversy came up Friday between Barry Greenstein and David Williams. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it's rare that Greenstein gets involved in a dispute of any sort. Second, it's rare for the events underlying a tournament dispute to be caught on camera.

You can read the blog post and watch the video of the incident and the floor decision here. (Caveat: That URL may not be stable as they add more pages of posts to this event, and there doesn't seem to be any way to point you to the specific post. You're looking for a post titled "Floor to Table 61," so if you don't see it on this page, you may have to move forward or back a couple of pages to find it.)

A few thoughts:

First, it's good to see that Greenstein, true to form and true to how he describes himself in his book, remains calm and rational through the whole thing. He never apologizes (since he believes he didn't do anything wrong), but also never gets accusatory towards Williams, as he easily could have ("Hey, pal, my chips were right here, it's your own fault for not asking for a count!"). Williams, on the other hand, is agitated and even drops an f-bomb on the floor guy, which isn't the best way to sway a decision in your favor.

Second, I think Greenstein's explanation fits perfectly with what we observe. He seems to be recounting things both subjectively and objectively accurately.

Williams, on the other hand, I'm not sure is being completely forthright. He says that he wouldn't have called if he had known the correct amount. Well, in the first place, he never called anything. He raised both times the action came to him. He moved all in, and Greenstein called him. Maybe he just got flustered, but he is definitely not describing what occurred accurately.

More significantly, though, he claims that he would not have "called" (or, presumably, moved all in) if he had known Greenstein's stack size. This seems implausible to me. The discrepancy is only one 10,000 chip, so, essentially, whether Greenstein had about 50,000 or about 60,000. There's nearly 60,000 in the pot when Williams shoves. At that point he allegedly thought that Greenstein had only another 15,000 left, and is trying to assert that if he had known that Greenstein actually had 25,000, he would have done something different. What, folded? The notoriously aggressive and willing-to-gamble David Williams folding pocket jacks preflop in that situation strikes me as pretty dubious. And what if he had just called? The flop came 10-7-2, so he definitely would have either pushed all in or called Greenstein's all-in bet after the flop anyway, with the same result.

Williams had to know that Greenstein was absolutely pot-committed. Greenstein had raised to 35,000, so whether he had another 15,000 or 25,000 left, either way Williams had to know that Greenstein was not only willing but probably eager to get it all in. Williams had no fold equity. So when Williams had his decision to make, he thought he would be putting in about 23,500 (to call Greenstein's raise) plus 15,000 (to put Greenstein all in), or a total of 38,500 to try to win the 60,000 already in the pot plus the additional 15,000 that he figured Greenstein had behind, or a total of 75,000, for pot odds of about 1.95:1. The actual situation is that he had to put in 48,500 to win 60,000 + 25,000, for pot odds of about 1.75:1.

In other words, I think Williams was either lying or just hadn't fully thought out the situation when he claimed that he would have done something different. (He doesn't specify what different action he would have taken, but as I said before, if he just calls Greenstein's raise at that point, all the money is going in anyway when the flop comes out; folding would have been smart, but out of character for Williams.) I refuse to believe that he would have been willing to commit that much money when being offered 1.95:1, but not when being offered 1.75:1. With pocket jacks against two opponents, both out of position and both clearly willing to shove it all in, that's just asking for trouble. It was a bad move on Williams's part, just about any way you analyze it, and failing to ascertain in advance exactly how many chips he was putting up was really just a minor part of his overall problem in that spot.

Frankly, Williams's trouble began with his outlandishly sized reraise. We don't know what the blinds and antes were at this point, but we are told that the first player raised to 1475 as the opening action. Williams reraised him to 11,500, a nearly 8-fold raise! That's just silly. It's one of those raises that will only get called (or, in this instance, reraised) if he's beat. Yes, of course he was trying to isolate the original raiser, perhaps sizing his bet to be about what that player appeared to have left. But if so, it was a serious error, not taking into account that there were two players yet to act between him and his target (the blinds). Had he raised to only, say, 5000, then it might have been easier to at least stop and think about getting away from the hand when (1) Greenstein came charging over the top of him, from out of position, with the third raise, and (2) the player under the gun pushed all in. That would tend to tell me, were I in Williams's position, that J-J might be in deep doo-doo.

I think the floor decision was the correct one. There was not even an accusation, really, that Greenstein had tried to hide high-denomination chips. And Williams didn't take the simple precaution of asking for a count of Greenstein's chips before pushing. He could even have just asked Greenstein to move his hands to get a clearer view, and that would have done it. In fact, I suspect that if he had done that, so that Greenstein knew he was contemplating an all-in, Greenstein would have accommodated him and counted (or at least estimated) his remaining stack. Greenstein's bet of over half of his stack was obviously a signal to Williams that he wanted to get it all in, and he would be happy to help Williams realize that he didn't have much left behind.