#145: “Best in the Business”

The Saturday before last, as I was railing my friends Dara O’Kearney and Padraig ‘Smidge’ O’Neill, (as they skillfully came 13th and 14th respectively in a UKIPT turbo side-event that paid 12,) an argument was breaking out between Tournament Director JP McCann and a player who had just been eliminated from the tourney. Of course, being the busy-body that I am, I was curious to know what it was about.

The player had received a one orbit penalty for failure to take his seat at his new table immediately. According to the other players at the table, he missed 3 hands while he was away, giving him and his short stack an obvious advantage as they approached the bubble. JP made the ruling that he would have to sit out for one orbit and as a consequence, he returned to his seat 15 minutes later to find he had been blinded and anted down to a stack of just two big blinds. A few moments later, he was eliminated in 15th place and he immediately began protesting the one orbit penalty, saying it was too harsh a punishment for what he had done. He accepted that he had broken the rules but believed, as did several of his table-mates, that such an offense warranted a more lenient response. He marched away from the tournament area but returned a few minutes later, armed with some new information that he believed proved that an injustice had occurred.

The player in question bee-lined straight for JP and cited the tournament rule that failure to move to your new table promptly should incur a two hand penalty. As the dispute got more and more heated, JP did the appropriate thing and took the player off to the side, away from the playing area. He was causing a scene and was becoming a distraction for the players who were now navigating the bubble. JP explained to him that the reason he decided on a one orbit penalty was because he had chosen a compromise between the two rules that the player had broken. You see, he had actually left the tournament area with his chips while he was meant to be moving tables and as a consequence of that action should have been immediately disqualified from the tournament. Instead of taking that rather drastic action, JP used his discretion and opted for what I believe was a fair and appropriate response to the player’s clear angle-shoot.

I know that, in the end, the player did not agree with the ruling handed out, nor did many of the spectators gathered but I would like to go on record as saying that I think it is pressurised moments like this that define the quality of a TD and I think JP, with poise and sound judgement, demonstrated why he is one of the best in the business.