A Tournament Chip Scamming Puzzle.

[Speed Racer]

This happened last summer in the Legends of Poker Super Satellites but I could never figure it out, hence, the title of this post “A Tournament Chip Scamming Puzzle.”

I was thinking about it recently because the Commerce WPT tournament is coming up and the Commerce will spread the same satellite and if someone scammed the LOP satellites they will probably do the same at the Commerce satellites.

I was discussing it with a regular $40HE player at the Commerce and he "figured it out."

Last summer, I played in the daily Legends of Poker Super Satellites. These are $100+20 NLHE rebuy tournaments run twice daily where the entries are put into a pool and the winners get an entry into the WPT main event (worth $5000).

If there is $8000 in the prize pool, first place gets $5000 and the odd $3000 is paid out to 2nd and 3rd.

If there is $18,000 in the prize pool, the first 3 finishers get a $5000 entry to the WPT event and the odd $3000 is paid to 2nd and 3rd.

The chips used in the satellites and super satellites are special satellite chips that are different from those used in the real tournaments and different from those used in the Bikes cash games.

The satellite chips have no denomination printed on them and the players are simply told that certain colors represent certain values, i.e. the brown chips are worth $100.

During the Super Satellites, some large denomination satellite chips (the chips whose color was used to represent high value chips) were missing from the satellite chip rack at the end of the day.

Someone had bought into the $100 Super Satellite and slipped some large denomination chips into their pocket, presumably, to be slipped into another satellite at a later date.

What puzzled me at the time, is that it didn’t make any sense to buy into the $100 super satellite where $100 buys $800T in chips where the other satellites cost less than $100 to enter and you got about the same amount of chips, i.e. $800T.

If someone was scamming the chips from one satellite to another, they would buy into the low buy in satellites, take the chips off the table surreptitiously, and slip them into the high buy in satellites.

Since the $100 Super Satellite was the biggest buy in satellite it didn’t make any sense for the Super Satellite chip to be missing chips. If someone was scamming chips, the $100 SS chip rack should have extra chips at the end of the day and the lower buy in racks, i.e. the $50 SS racks should be missing chips.

One possible answer to the “puzzle” is to slip the scammed chips into the $500/$1000 single table satellites that are run during Satellite Day but this would be easily detected because at the end of the single table satellite the total chips would not be a multiple of the buy-in , i.e. if you get $800T to start and $800T when you rebuy, and there are $8300T at the end it is readily apparent that someone slipped chips into play and the universe of possible offenders is small.

When discussing this “puzzle” with a player at the Commerce, he suggested a plausible answer.

The $100 Super Satellite is the best place to slip chips off the table, better than buying into low buy in single table satellites, because at the end of the tournament, when there are only three or four players left and there are lots of chips in play, the real cash value of the high denomination chips is very low.

For example, in a $100 Super Satellite where there are 200 entries and rebuys, there would be $160,000T in chips in play. With 4 players left and an average stack of $40,000T slipping $2000T in chips into your pocket wouldn’t have much effect on your chances of surviving to the final 2 with an average chip stack and almost no effect if the scammer had a large stack--hence, the solution to the “puzzle.”

I always assumed that the people who cheat tournaments just like the professional players who make a living in the games were good at what they do. Russ G’s RGP cheating posts partially confirmed this suspicion. The solution to the puzzle of why chip scammers would scam chips out of high buy in satellite instead of a low buy in satellites also supports the contention that the professional chip scammers are true “professionals.”

Speed Racer

P.S. cross posted to RGP.

[gusly]

Maybe the title of the post should be "Tournament Chip Scamming Puzzle and Solution" [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

But seriously, this is pretty interesting. I was thinking that maybe TDs should pick the color denominations randomly at the start of every tourney, but that would probably increase the chances of player/dealer errors...

Maybe they should come up with some kind of magnetic coding system to authenticate chips for each tourney so the colors can stay the same? Not only would chips brought in at a later date be invalid, but this particular kind of cheater would be weeded out...

Thoughts, anyone? Would this be too cumbersome or too expensive to implement for tourney chips?