August 8, 2006

Chip Races

Why is it impossible that chip races added 514,000 in chip value to the WSOP main event?

The 25 chips were raced off during the split day 2, which began with fewer than 3500 players. If all 350 tables were still there and every one of them added the maximum 50 in chip value, that would add 17,500 to the event. Probably more than 1/4 of those tables had already broken and probably only 1/4 of the maximum 50 was added per table.

The 100 chips were raced off at the end of day 3, with 481 players remaining. If all 54 tables added the maximum 200 in chip value that would add 5400 to the event, but the expected add is zero.

The 500 chips were raced off with 288 players remaining. If all 32 tables added 500 that would add 16,000 to the event. The expected add is half that.

The 1000 chips were raced off with 49 players remaining. If all six tables added 2000 that would add 12,000 to the event. The expected add is zero.

So the very maximum possible in added chip value is 50,900.

Now it's still possible the listed chip count at the end of yesterday was inaccurate. But if not...where did the half million come from?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chip count at the final table is now 90,140,000, per both pokerwire and cardplayer web sites.

Anonymous said...

You've probably heard this already, but I've heard from a couple of people (including Jerrod) that they were using main event chips in the main event supersatellites. In the endgame chips above a certain stack level are essentially meaningless, so take a couple of high denomimation chips off the table and there you go. Disgraceful.

Haley said...

Actually, Richard, I played a couple of main event supers and the chips were different in at least one the ones I played. I saw an instance of very lax security, however, which I'll write about on one of my own poker blogs soon.

Unknown said...

Are there any Canadian chips in play?

Ok, bad joke.

Haley said...

Up now.