WPT-Mad Magician

[Inthacup]

Yeah, so he ran over Phil H. That was fun to watch, although I didn't want to see Phil go. However, there was 1 thing that I found deeply troubling. Phil went all in, and MM started cutting Phil's chips to see how many he had. Mike Sexton did the right thing in commenting how that was not right and that was the dealer's job. But It's especially bad because he's a MAGICIAN. He knows slight of hand tricks, it's what he does for a living. I can't think of one other type of person that I'd be more suspicious of touching my chips than a magician.

They should have IMMEDIATELY stopped him and warned him against doing that again. If Phil wasn't over in the corner, then he could have stopped MM himself. Keep that in mind the next time you're playing poker vs. a magician.

[Joe Tall]

I would have ran over to the table and crushed his hand as I ripped his arm off. Simple. I couldn't believe he was doing that, like it was some drunken home game. Actually, in my home game, if anyone did that, you would get your 'hand crushed as someone ripped your arm off.'

[RiverMel]

Obviously, Phil was in on it. It was an elaborate chip-dumping scheme.

[Ian]

I played with him in San Jose about six months ago in a 20-200 spread limit HE game. He had a disreputable air about him and was quite obnoxious (grabbed my arm several times during hands to try and get a "read" on me). But fundamentally he was quite weak so I put up with it until a seat in the 40-80 opened up. Actually, I was fortunate that it was spread limit because it was a three-handed game and his hyper-aggressive style would have been far more challenging in a short-handed straight limit game. Also, I am glad I did not know at the time that he is a magician as that certainly would have distracted me from cleaning his clock as thoroughly as I did ($3k in 40 minutes). For what it's worth, I saw about 15 minutes of the WPT Colma show and thought he played quite well. And Phil didn't make any huge mistakes that I saw, he just didn't have the cards and the MM did. That's just the way it is in most of these things.

[jasonHoldEm]

Has anyone else noticed the mad magician is the "dealer" in the WPT commercials? (The one's with Chris Furgeson, Phil Helmuth, Annie Duke, and (I think) Phil Ivey?).

jHE

[TobDog]

I saw that too, there was another incident that they did not address, another player cut and counted an all in players chips and it was not mentoned, but I too think that there is a tournement director and a dealer to count the chips of the all in player if he is not there or does not want to count his own chips.