Wednesday, July 02, 2008

...but some poker players are more equal than others

Another disturbing-if-true story of highly selective application of the rules by WSOP tournament staff, found here (thanks to Pokerati for the link):

My first table of the 1500 had an empty seat on it for over 2 hours. If
you've played any WSOP events, you know that an empty seat at your first table
is *always* a pro running late, but usually, they tend to show up within an
hour. This time, the stack was being blinded off all the way to the 100/200
level, so by the time the pro - who turned out to be Scotty - showed up, he was
already down to 1800 chips.

Naturally, Scotty was unhappy about that and asked the dealer why he didn't
have 3K. But at the WSOP, only late registrations get their full 3K chips (and
get seated in Seat 10); everyone else gets a regular seat and then gets blinded
off if they're late, which is normal. Scotty, though, obviously didn't like the
idea of starting out with a 9 bet stack, said "I'm not playing", and went off to
find the tournament director. I think he just wanted to be allowed to
unregister, but instead, a couple of minutes later, the floor showed up with a
full stack and gave it to him. On the one hand, this is pretty much blatant
cheating - it's a free 1200 chips that nobody not named Scotty Nguyen would ever
get; on the other, I a)kinda sympathized with the guy and b)personally was of
the opinion that I was better off with Scotty having 15 BB at my table than him
having 9. (Don't get me wrong; he clearly plays well. But much like every other
live pro, the guy's not particularly math-oriented and doesn't know short stack
strategy.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I probably wouldn't have made any fuss over the matter and would just have assumed I was late, it's my fault, I'm stuck with the chips I have left.

So now I know if I'm ever in that situation, I'll just ask Scotty to help me out ;-)