Principles in WSOPC Chip-Dumping scandal talk

During Day 1a of the recently completed World Series of Poker Circuit Series Event held in Tunica a player was disqualified from the tournament over a perceived chip-dumping incident in the waning minutes of the day’s action. The offending player Drew McIlvain turned up on the 2+2 poker forums to explain his side of the story, and later in the week PokerNews.com was able to land an interview with not only McIlvain, but WSOP Vice President of Corporate Communications Seth Palansky.

McIlvain gave a lengthy explanation as to what precisely happened on his end, which when boiled down to its core seems to be that a player who he had only met that day offered to dump his remaining chips to McIlvain since he was so short-stacked he didn’t feel like staying at the Harrah’s property for another night just to get eliminated from the tournament the following day (obviously he was unaware of the poker axiom “A Chip and a Chair”).

While McIlvain claims he never agreed to the dump, he never expressly told the other player no, and he never reported the conversation to tournament officials. While the Blind vs. Blind battle that the player spoke of for the dump never occurred, McIlvain ended up knocking the player out after opening in Early Position and having the short-stacked player move in on him with K4 of Diamonds.

In his response, Palansky pointed out that collusion doesn’t necessarily refer to intent, but simply to “conspire together.” Which whether McIlvain realizes or not he did, since no other players at the table were aware that the short-stacked player not only wanted to dump his chips, but had specifically chosen McIlvain to be the beneficiary.

As Palansky stated in his interview with PokerNews.com, “The definition of collude in the dictionary that I have in my hands, is two words: conspire together. He admits to having more than one conversation with the gentleman about it. Clearly by conversation number two, he had the ability to tell the guy, ‘I’m not interested, let’s play poker.’”

McIlvain is currently determining whether or not he will appeal the ruling, and at this time is still uncertain as to precisely what Harrah’s properties his ban covers. McIlvain told PokerNews.com, “I’ve been calling Harrah’s, and I’ve been emailing Harrah’s. I’m just trying to figure out what kind of evidence they have that I didn’t know about. I’ve also contacted Mississippi Gaming just to get a little information about whether or not I’m completely banned from the entire state of Mississippi or what. Most importantly, I’d like to hear the audio of me agreeing with this guy that we’re going to be chip dumping.”

Without knowing precisely what evidence was presented (Palansky alludes to both audio and video evidence as well as the way the hand played out) it’s hard to say if McIlvain was complicit in the chip-dump, or if his decision to not take the other player’s offer seriously was his undoing. One thing is for certain – as Palansky rightly points out-this isn’t the old days with grainy video footage, the current surveillance in casinos is top-notch and digital quality.