The Glitch that Stole Christmas

It didn't really -steal- Christmas, but it did have an effect of a thousand dollars or two in payouts at the final table of the Party Poker $200,000 Guarantee on Christmas Eve. The situation was that three players remained, and after some squabbling, the three final agreed to at least look at a deal. The first time they tried it, they couldn't agree. Same happened the second time.

By the third time they entered the deal-making setup, they'd pretty much ironed out their differences. Only one problem --- the chip totals fed to the deal-making software did not match to the chips that each player actually possessed. Proof? Of course, I was quick enough to snag a screen grab. You think I kid in these matters? (Not that I wouldn't, of course....)



Strange stuff. One of the three players --- I forget which one, but I think it was Yabai, noticed the discrepancy, pointed it out to the others, and they all scratched their heads trying to figure out what to do. Since they could not start from the correct figures, and had no direct access to the chip formula Party Poker uses to calculate the deal, they were at a loss as to how to proceed. Eventually they had the idea to leave the deal to refresh the software and come back into the deal-making setup again.

They did this, but exiting the existing deal forced them to play at least one more hand, and though the button and the small blind folded to the big blind, the blinds were large enough so that the chip-count chop amounts would have been affected by a thousand or two, compared to what they would have shown had the deal-making software worked correctly on the earlier visit.

So, it's an open question: Did a software snafu screw one of these players out of thousand bucks?