Ruling Needed!!!
Hey all,
We're in need of a ruling for one of the more bizarre situations to have ever come up at Bristol St. Here's the situation...
9 players left in the tournament. The final table will be formed once we're down to 8 players. At dinner break, one player announces that he has to leave and must forfiet his chips. What happens??
a) The chips remain in front of the player and he's blinded out. (Coincidentally, he's currently the chip leader)
b) His stack get's distributed to the players remaining on his table, then the final table forms.
c) First the final table forms, then the chips are distributed amongst all players at the final table.
d) Something else.
I'm doing some digging around for offical rules, so I was hoping to get your thoughts while I do this.
thanks!!
Rob.
We're in need of a ruling for one of the more bizarre situations to have ever come up at Bristol St. Here's the situation...
9 players left in the tournament. The final table will be formed once we're down to 8 players. At dinner break, one player announces that he has to leave and must forfiet his chips. What happens??
a) The chips remain in front of the player and he's blinded out. (Coincidentally, he's currently the chip leader)
b) His stack get's distributed to the players remaining on his table, then the final table forms.
c) First the final table forms, then the chips are distributed amongst all players at the final table.
d) Something else.
I'm doing some digging around for offical rules, so I was hoping to get your thoughts while I do this.
thanks!!
Rob.
Comments
If you were to divide the chips between the players at one table, this would give a very unfair advantage to those players. They did not win the chips, they were granted them on the basis of luck alone (they drew that players table). Eventually a decision was made that one table would split the 30,000 chips in play after 20 minutes of blinding the player out, if noone had been eliminated by that time. Noone was eliminated and 4 players benefitted from an almost 8K increase in chips. Rules are rules I suppose, this one clearly sucks and IMO is not fair. Rob did his best to be fair about it and please everyone in a difficult situation. I just know the final table and results could and most like would have been very different if the ruling would have went another way.
stp
It is tough for me to comment as I was one of 4 who benefited from an extra $7K in chips, however, I do agree Rob was in a real tough situation to make any decision. We are not professionals and I believe Rob made every attempt to find the proper answer and hopefully no one holds that against them.
Just for a point of reference, I busted out in 3rd and the 2 remaining players were 2 of the ones who didn't benefit from any chip increase so from that point of view, it wasn't that bad!
I would've respected any decision Rob made as I believe he was trying to be fair to all blinding out for 20 min (current blinds 1000 -1500) and we had 2 of the 5 players with less than $4000 chips at the start of the 20 min. The short stacks had about 4 all ins and just happen to double up. Had they not, it wouldn't of been a different story and no controversy.
It was a stressful time to be running a tourney and I hope no one holds Rob's decision against him.
Thanks again to Rob for hosting another fine tournament.
Cory
I really wish I had been at the other table, because I would have stuck to my guns and ruled that b) was the correct course of action. Unfortunately, I was put in a horrible spot in that the correct ruling benefited me most. Argh.
Here's why I believe ruling b) is correct.. I'm going to use an extreme example to illustrate my point...
You're running an 11 person tournament with one table (table A) at 6 players and one at 5. Everyone starts out with 1,000 chips. A player at table A has been running over the table and has gotten 5,000 out of the 6,000 that started there. Suddenly he leaves and forfiets his chips. If we distrubute the chips to all the players in the game, the totals on each table are now Table A: 3,500 and Table B: 7,500.
Without doing anything, Table B suddently gets an influx of 2,500 chips coming their way. The average stack on Table A is now 700 chips (comparied to Table B at 1,500 chips) and, most importantly, Table A now has no chance in winning back the chips that they had originally lost to the player that had to leave.
In the game of poker, chips flow back and forth continually. I believe that sending the forfieted chips to all the players in a tournament (or, as suggested above, completely removing the chips from play) creates an unfair situation to the players at Table A.
Once again, I'm sorry if I created any hard feelings with my ruling.
This is what I have done in the past.
When it happened at my game the "absent player" made it to bubble time. The remaining live players decided to raise and fold blind to eliminate that player. I had no problem with this since I have seen it happen at online tourneys..
Thanks anyway but totally uneccessary. The rule was there in black and white whether we liked it or not, you were in a difficult situation. Thank you for the offer though.
I think what you describe here is a more natural thing that often happens in poker. I can think of several times when a chip leader from one table gets removed to another table creating an unbalanced situation. Again, this situation was quite unique because the tables were already unbalanced. Kevin's table (the guy who had to leave...kwatish *whip sound) had approxiamately 110,000 chips in play where as my table only had 70,000 chips in play. Now, it is understandable because your table also had 5 players (including Kevin) whereas ours only had 4. I think in the interest of fairness (for next time) the player should be either blinded out or the chips should be evenly distributed to all remaining players. Again though, I would likely only distribute in the case where we were creating one table by this players departure. The chips at the time when Kevin had to leave were appox.(not exact) as follows:
Table One
Brad 12K
Ben 14K
Mario 30K
Shannon 11K
Table two
Tye 35K
> 42K
Kevin 30K
> 0K
Corey 32K
>39K
Rob 3K
>10K
Tye's friend 8K
>15K
Anyway, not to beat a dead horse. I would have like to see, if we were using the rule that despersed the chips among players, that they be given out evenly to the remaining 8 person table. Everyone increasing by 3,750 rather then 4 players increasing by 7,500.Â
No worries, this as previously stated, was a difficult sitation to be in. I wouldn't want the decision myself. I still had a very good time, ran very cold with that bad bad bad dealer dealing hahaha.
stp
I recall playing in a FPP satellite and a monster stack was on my right. I looked him up and saw he was also playing a high buyin Sit and Go. He announced he was late for his haircut appointment and would be back later. He sat out the Sit and Go and since it was heads came in 2nd. He did return to the MTT and easily made the final 9 to advance.
1) blind him out! He worked for those chips and also paid the same $40 that everyone else did. at the point he was, he coudl just have sat out every hand till he was blinded out. We all play online too, so we all see how it happens online. It's fucking annoying, pardon my french, but thats the way poker goes.
2) His chips are struck dead. all his chips are taken out of the game. his chips become no advantage to anyone because they were fairly TAKEN form everyone. if you didnt win them back, they shoudlnt be in your stack (didnt mean for that to rhym).
as far as letting a friend take over his stack and try and win for him? well, i was pretty annoyed when i asked to do it for kevin and evryone objected. kevin said it woudl be an alright idea so i had his consent
HOWEVER!!!!! i was having a discussion with shannon on the subject and he bropught up a good point. if you were at the world series of poker and you saw 2 buddies changing seats to take over eachothers stacks, or if you saw a marginal player get up and hellmuth took his spot at your table, you would definately not liek it. SO! anyone else taking kevins spot woudl not have been a good idea. end of that idea!!
thanks
johnny
what do you guys think about that??
johnny.
I appreciate the board feedback so, an an official rule change for Bristol Street (and, if there's no objection, it should be a rule for the KWSOP), I am going to start using the rule that absent players will be blinded out for as long as it takes.
Perhaps she should reimburse him....
stp
thanks
johnny
Have you read Doyle's book?
lol.
Good call this eliminates any judgements calls and probably the fairest way to do it.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned - the player said that he had to go. It doesn't really matter why the player has to go. Suppose in half an hour he came back, because the "urgent business" has been resolved. Where does that leave everyone? I think the player is still entitled to have his/her chips in front of them, and to resume playing.
Know thats just crazy talk; hard feelings HA!
It was a hard ruling and one I never even thought of a player leaving a tournament?????
All and all it was still a fun day.
I mean, i coudl have busted first at one of robs tournaments and still had fun!!!
OH SHIT!! I DID BUST OUT FIRST!!!!
and still had fun.
Johnny
Dispite the fact it was written down, that's still one of those sitautions where you know that "the rules" are going to bother people.
IMO, the discision was a rather fair one, it was likely Rob would bust first, or if not, there were two other low stacks which 'almost' were taken out.
Needless to say, the final two were both from the table that didn't benifit, go figure :P
If this happens, only 3 people will start, and everyone would just tag the others in.
If a player leaves you need to just blind them out, or take all of their chips out of play (they are his, by removing them from play, noone benifits/loses).