This is slightly embarrassing but i thought you guys would get a kick out of this story.
I was at a Southern California Indian Gaming Establishment playing in a poker tournament last week. As soon as I walked in I noticed that the Tournament Chips were different than the last time I played a tournament there.
There they were, brand new, right out of the box, new car scent, virgin Bud Jones Tourney chips.
Got off to a pretty good start in the tournament and at the first break I had a better than average chip stack with 5 greens ($25) being the lowest denomination chip. They were going to color up the greens at this break so i figured I could pocket one for my collection since I didn't have a great chance of getting high carded for an extra $100 chip. (Make sense?)
This is something I've done a bunch of times before. Not to cheat, or re-introduce that chip into another tournament at a later date, just as a keepsake for my ever-growing chip collection. I have $25TC's from The Tropicana (AC), Taj Mahal, The Bike, etc. I pocketed one chip and headed out to take a break.
I get back from the break and before they start the next level, the Tournament Director makes an announcement that "one of their brand new chips is missing and they know that it came off of Table 1 (my table). Return it immediately or we will go to the surveilance tapes." When I heard that, I just about sh*t a solid gold brick. People are on the floor looking around under the table, speculating on the whereabouts of this missing chip. Meanwhile I'm sitting there saying nothing and the chip is resting in my pocket.
Hilarious.
About 5 mins. into the round I quietly took the Tournament Director aside and told him that I "accidentally" pocketed the chip thinking it was one of the live $1 chips I had on the table as a card protector. I told him how embarrassed I was when I realized my error and he said "no problem, don't worry about it". I had to give the chip back but at least I wasn't going out the front door in hand-cuffs.
EPILOGUE: I figured I was dead meat now, my poker karma was crushed, but I ended up coming in 3rd place out of 72 players. No TC souveniers though.
-scpj
Man, I'll bet that sucked! Thanks for the story.
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