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Usually, this isn't how it works, though. Typically, because many players like the illusion of playing for bigger stakes, the amount of chips surpasses the actual buy-in. So, you may get $300 in chips for your $100 buy-in -- three times what you'd expect. This doesn't mean the casino is being generous. It just means the chip values are exaggerated -- but the prize pool, unfortunately, will not reflect this. So, if the prize pool is announced at $20,000, then the chips gathered by the final player might be $60,000 -- three times what is actually paid out. As you can see, it's not hard to know whether the finalists are being paid what they should. This also works for rebuy tournaments, because when you buy again for $100, you get another $300 in chips, the same as you did for your original $100 buy-in. The process of verifying whether the prize pool is correct remains the same: Does the value of the chips at the final table equal the announced prize pool? Now, we come to the problem Turner was talking about. In some recent tournaments, the players get various values for their rebuys, depending on which stage of the tournament they occur. For instance, suppose the original buy-in got $300 in chips for $100 cash. Fine. During the first hour, you can buy-in again and get an additional $300 for $100 cash. So far, so good. But, in the second hour, your $100 buys $400, and in the third hour it buys $500. HOW BIG SHOULD IT BE?  Do you see the problem? As Turner correctly points out, it is now impossible for the final players to know exactly how big the prize pool should be, because they don't know how many players only got $300 for their buy-ins, how many got $400, and how many got $500. Although I know of no proven situations where this method was used to short-change the players, the system is bad because it causes doubt. It's also a nightmare for ethical managers, because they may find it impossible to know exactly if a few hundred or a few thousand dollars slipped between the cracks. Well, OK, that's a nice way of putting it. So, I agree with Robert Turner on this one: All buy-ins, rebuys included, should be of the same value, so that the final money winners can simply count the chips and compare this with the prize pool. online casino Back to casino news