Players leaves early in tourney – ruling?
 

Nightly tourney at a local room, $40 buy-in, 10k in chips, 30 players.
Early in the second orbit, a regular who plays the tourney twice a week or so (not me) gets a text – his wife has been in car accident. He immediately leaves, abandoning a stack of about 9500.

TD rules his chips come off the table, and buy-in will be refunded at a later date. Other players, including me, are OK with this.

Agree or disagree? Does your opinion change if
A) If it is a larger buy-in event?
B) If he isn’t a regular?
C) He has a different chip amount (either much higher or much lower)?

I would be fine with it honestly.... he is a regular who plays twice a week and he was at the starting point in his stack (9.5K) so its not like he was short stacked and might of tried to pull a fast one to get his entry fee back.

If it was the WSOP or something, he would of been screwed but I think with the small buyin, combined with him being a regular and the tournament just starting I would give him his money back...

thats just me tho, I can see why people would not want to give his entry feee back.

In this situation, I'd agree with the decision. Beyond the specific parameters, though, it gets tougher.

In a bigger event, he wouldn't get his buy-in back, nor should he.

On the meta level, life doesn't stop for poker (he had to leave) but neither should poker stop for life. Thus he theoretically should be out of luck. Go a little further down the road in the tourney, and the room can't make the decision they made and be fair to the other players.

Early in a small tournament with a regular that has developed a friendship and connection with the tournament, sounds fine to me.

If it is a larger buy-in event, I think the chips/buy-in would have to stay. Depends on how close the participants are to each other. Perhaps they are nice enough to pass a hat around and lessen the sting.

If he isn't a regular, screw him.

If it is later in the event or he is an extreme low/big stack, sorry dude. Split or forfeit your chips to the table and see ya next week.

Friendly decision that I am sure no one would object to here, but they should have left his chips on the table and his entry fee in the prize pool and blinded him out. If the poker room wanted to be nice and comp his buy in, that is up to them.

When this will become a huge issue is when one of the November 9 can't make it to the final table someday due to ______. I'll be interested to see how they handle that situation.

Yeah what TP says is pretty much correct. A few years ago I bailed on tourney chips in a fairly social game at the University ($100 entry). The table adamantly refused to allow me to sell my stack to a guy that wanted to play, and they blinded me out.

I agree 100% with TP, leave the chips, blind him out, and poker room pays the refund if they want to.