Inside the WSOP: Disgruntled Supervisor Speaks Out

I've been involved in an email exchange with a suit from Harrah's who descrbes him/herself as a disgruntled supervisor. Here's the latest email that I got. I asked them if they could confirm the rumor that Jamie Gold tipped the dealers $1 million as he promised. I aslo asked about their theory on the WSOP extra chips controversy.

Pauly,

I have not talked to anyone that could confirm a tip or not from Mr Gold. But the dealers get their final toke checks on Thursday so I will know before then. I find it interesting that you knew the figure quoted without asking. If he did, man did I pick the wrong side of the coin to work this year. Oh well, I can count on the good karma for being there til the end. I'll have to keep you posted on this.

As far as the extra chips. I don't buy the skimming off the top theory. For only one reason. The paperwork involved for the Harrah's corp is staggering. The single table satellite mgr, received a report with 114 (114 is not a typo) errors from the auditing dept after one night for example. Every form, count, registration etc was reviewed by 4-5 people. Just witnessing the payout procedure should be enough to convince one of that. Getting paid was such a pain in the ass, it took 4 people to get you to the window. And at bubble time and right after... forget about it...

The final chip counts for the daily final tables varied from short as much as 60k to over as much as 40k. The chip control was one area where there was little or no control. But with the number of events, chips, days, entries, etc I' not sure of a good way to control them better so they don't get introduced later. The easy solution is different chips for the Main Event, but that is so easy, it would never happen.

There was never more than a 10k chip out except for late in the main event, so it would take 400 5k or 2,000 1k chips to alter the count as much as it was. And that amount of missing chips would for sure turn up in the balancing of the chips on hand vs those in play at any given time. You always lose some chips as souvenirs but not that many. Matter of fact, some have been on eBay already.

Color ups, and dealer mistakes are for sure part of it. There was not a night where the color up didn't get fucked up somehow, usually by the same 2 people. Even by myself once. Even with the dealers watching every move as I required it is an easy mistake to make at times. Or a shift supe would not do a scheduled color up, "because it would give the players less chips to play with." Duh! no shit, kinda the point. Less chips = more gamble. But it also leaves more chips on the tables for possible theft or whatever.

But then, the same man added a stack on the 2nd day of a tournament at the fucking World Series of Poker, and then did it again later and kept his job, sigh. But given that I had several dealers replaced with others because they could not count or cut chips, counting mistakes were common.

I think there were a lot of dead or unpaid stacks that were left in play and blinded off. The control for that was poor as well. I'm not positive that all 10 stacks at every table on every first day were accounted for in the final tally of stacks vs 10k received. this is something that could have been ignored or just plain covered up, don't know which one.

Profit mongers they are for sure....... I wish them luck finding quality people with out some changes for next year.

Disgrunted Supervisor

I admire this person's courage to tell their side of the story. Thanks for all your input.

By the way... I'm looking for WSOP dealers who would like to anonymously share their horror stories. Please shoot me an email and I'll publish those too.