Sure, although we have to say the whole episode remains fairly sketchy in its details.
According to Harrah's records, there were 8,773 paid-up players in the field for the 2006 World Series of Poker. Each player received 10,000 in chips at the outset of the tournament. At the end of Day 7, the last day of play before the final table on Day 9 (Day 8 was a day off), there was 90,140,000 in chips still in play – 2.36 million more than there had been at the end of Day 5, according to Harrah’s unverified chip count. Even though the discrepancy came to light ahead of the final day of the event, the chip count was never revised nor the mystery of the extra chips ever fully resolved.
General speculation was split among three camps:
1) normal chip accretion through chip races and dead stacks (see below) 2) player cheating 3) staff error
The Nevada Gaming Commission was involved and worked with Harrah's security to determine whether there was any indication of criminal activity and whether the additional chips in play had affected the outcome of the tournament, to which the answer came back in the negative in both instances.
The chip accretion theory rested on the fact that at various stages during a prolonged tournament like the WSOP, the lower-denomination chips that start out in play become obsolete and get "colored up" to higher denominations as the blinds and antes go up and the remaining players play for higher and higher stakes. Most of the chips are exchanged for an equal sum in higher-denomination chips, but many players end up with an odd number of lower-value chips that don't equal the next largest denomination. In such instances, the number of larger-denomination chips exchanged for the smaller ones can be rounded up to the next-highest number, meaning a table might end up with a slightly higher chip count than it started with (the process of what's known as "chip races" is actually a little more complex than this, but that's the general gist and we figured we'd keep it simple.)
Would this procedure be significant enough to account for a discrepancy of nearly 2.5 million? At the time, pokernews.com conducted an in-depth analysis and concluded that even assuming a maximum increase at every single table on every single day, chip accretion could account for no more than 84,850 extra chips in play.
As to "dead stacks," the term refers to chips placed at seats for which no player turned up to play. There were rumors that clerical errors resulted in not all emergency cancelations, refunds, and seat changes being reflected in the registration database and chip distribution, meaning that some extra chips might conceivably have ended up remaining "live," although there was no assigned player to account for them. Again, pokernews.com's estimate was that no more than 50,000 in chips could have been introduced by such errors.
Staff error does, however, seem to be the most likely cause of the discrepancy. The writers of the pokernews.com investigative story constructed a timeline that indicated that the error took place between 1:14 pm and 1:36 pm on Day 7, when the 5K chips were colored up to 25K. This process was performed at a rate of two stacks for one rack, i.e., two stacks of 5K chips worth 500K was exchanged for a rack of one million in chips, and it seems evident that two players, at least one of whom was not present at the table when the coloring-up took place and was almost certainly unaware of the error, were paid double by mistake. The authors of the pokernews.com article identified Kevin O'Donnell, who was away from the table during the color-up break, as the recipient of one million of the extra chips, but he was unaware of the fact. He busted out (in 21st place) to Allen Cunningham less than 30 minutes after the error occurred. They also apparently identified who got the other million, but we were unable to find the name in any of the articles we researched. What we can confirm, however, is that It’s been determined that neither winner Jamie Gold nor runner up Allen Cunningham was the recipient of extra chips and with the Gaming Commission and Gaming Control Board having concluded that no criminal investigation was warranted due to lack of evidence, the whole matter just melted away.
There were some repercussions, however, namely that the whole chip-counting procedure was painstakingly scrutinized at every turn at the 2007 event, resulting in the entire tournament taking even longer than usual and the players being subjected to even more exhausting schedules.
