Less chips than expected in play

[Luca P.]

Hello everybody.
Where I live, it's running a multi-room tournament with a starting chipstack of 30.000 and 191 players so far in 5 rooms.
They did the chipcount and found 81.700 chips less.
The correct count should be 5.730.000, they have 5.648.300


What do you think about this?

[Stuart Murray]

This kind of thing usually happens when someone is short changed in a chip race.  As long as no-one is complaining about it continue without addressing the issue, and try to tighten up your chip race procedure, I usually have one person racing the chips to one stack then another person comes along and buys the chips from each table with the racer present to verify.

It could be something else, but I doubt it.

[Dave Lamb]

Hi Luca P.,
You do not tell us if the count was done at the end- a final table chip count, or if it was done while the event was still under way.

If at the end: I would be very concerned that large denomination chips have been pocketed with intent to use in future events. 

If counted by the players: It is nearly impossible to get an accurate count- it is why we stopped trying to verify chips as we bag them at days end for multi-day tournaments.

As Stuart points out, the chip race is a likely source of counting errors. Every effort should be made to have a dealer, supervisor and one other person/player witness the color up to assure accuracy.

[Luca P.]

Thnak's for the answers.
The chipcount (I believe) was made at the end of day1

[Brian Vickers]

My recommendation for chip race is to have one floorperson handle the chips during the race/color up and the dealer watches and verifies each transaction.  When multiple floorpeople or dealers are touching the chips, it seems like that's when mistakes are made.  ("too many hands in the cookie jar" theory)