WSOP Player Tossed For Pocketing Chips

Give credit where credit is due. Although we’ve been dissing the WSOP for a number of poor decisions during this year’s WSOP, such as changing a no rebuy tournament to a rebuy event at the eleventh hour, they did make a good decision earlier this week, when a floor supervisor caught a player shoveling chips into his pocket and immediately disqualified him.

The guilty party claimed to have heard it was OK to do this in the WSOP, which is tantamount to Floyd Landis claiming that elevated levels of testosterone are OK in the Tour de France. The guilty player was immediately disqualified and his chips were confiscated and removed from the table. An announcement was made about this being the first disqualification of this nature in the WSOP.

It’s gone on before. Let’s face it. Chip dumping is a dirty little secret that’s been treated with a pair of don’t ask, don’t tell kid gloves in the past, so it’s good to see someone tossed from the event for his actions. While the guy may have been naïve, may have been stupid, may have been acting innocently, the fact remains that he is accountable for his actions and has to live with the consequences.

I’m glad the WSOP had the guts to man-up and toss the guy rather than give him a warning. If there are no consequences for people’s behavior, their behavior is unlikely to ever change.