Well it started like any other tournament we have ran. 90 players, most of whom came at 1:30-1:45pm, creating another log jam at the registration and then the fun began.
With the tournament starting at 3pm, we thought that the rest of the afternoon would be a walk in the park. Yeah, if the park was in Upper Harlem or in the Bronx, at midnight, on holloween. Boy, when the fit hits the shan, it gets all over.
One player tried my BBS on one play, and I still am sketchy about the details if he raised pre-flop or not, but he busted out another player with his 24o flopping two pair while the other player had top pair with a high kicker. So nothing going, donkey play sure, but with the rebuy in effect that week, no problem. Until I was shuffling the players because of the imbalance in players so I tried to move a player into their table and LO AND BEHOLD, the player in table 1 seat 3 was supposed to sit in table 1 SEAT 7. That's not just donkey, thats really just an ASS. So I hear it from the other player that was donkey-ed (or got served a BBS, depending which blog you read) cause the situation wouldn't have been even there if the guy sat in his assigned seat. Valid point, but at that point in time, I found it moot because it was something the dealer should have done before the tournament started. So I go into apologetic mode, because the offended player was a friend and as always, bad things happen to good friends. I think he was pissed also but more so trying to bust my chops. So a very tense situation and then it seemed that three other players decided to sit where ever they chose. Good thing PARGCOR's Emi Mungcal was there to straighten them out.
So that was ok, faux pas, but got rectified, the player was still busting my chops during the dinner break but after he busted out the donkey, he was in better spirits, but I just got ahead of myself but needless to say, we have worked out a system that will make this situation not repeat itself.
About five minutes after that situation. One player says "I'm All-in" with the flop coming 8-8-8, but the thing is that he doesn't have any cards because he folded pre-flop and the thing is that I specifically discussed this before the tournament to the dealers and to the players. SO, I get called to the table and have another conversaiton with another friend, continuing the bad things happen to good friends motif of this post. He was kinda nice in the beginning because he knew he screwed up and he said, "Sure, my bad, I'll just rebuy."
So I thought that was finised already, but I got called back to the same table about five minutes later and the same 8's are still on the board plus two more cards. I just thought that hand would have ended already and we would just move on with the tournament, boy, was I wrong. It seemed that two people went all-in when my friend called "All-in" for his 1200+ in chips. (Making it simpler) Player A only had 260 left and Player B who had both players covered, simple so far, but when Player A won the pot, my friend has his panties in a tissy because he is arguing that he should get some of his money back. I was like "Excuse me?" Then I go into a discourse about him forfeiting his chips with his stellar move and that he has no claim to that pot because he doesn't have any cards. Compound that with the fact that a player can only win money up to how much he puts into the pot, I made my ruling that Player B gets the excess chips. To say that it didn't sit well with my friend, would be an understatement, and several promises of not playing in my tournaments were exchanged. Oh well, it happens, but I have to stick with my ruling.
Although it doesn't seem to be logical, the underlying concept is that a player forfeits his chips when he declares "All-in" when he was not involved with his hand. So he has no more claim to his chips and it was just lucky for the player, in this case, player B, that he still got some chips after losing the hand.
Of course, as always, when I get into situations like this, rules-wise, I ask my consultant in the US what would have been the right decision as the TD in that case, and I am still batting 1.000 in those cases. Whew . . .
I really hate being the
Poker Gestapo as one of the other players called us, but I think it was a logical step to bring in our rules from the Poker Bar Tour into any tournament that we run, even in Airport Casino Filipino. We are not really into enforcing the rules because we can, we enforce them for the protection of every player, regardless if the player is a friend, a stranger, even , albeit rarely, an enemy. We want to see Filipino poker players excel in the international poker areana, but we can do this without arming them with the right rules and etiquette because this person would be the poster-child for poker in the Philippines, and I would be really remiss if I didn't try to take out those bad habits that our players have right now before he takes his game internationally.
