TwitchTV poker streamer Catherine “catrific” Valdes found herself in the middle of an unfortunate situation this week, the YouTube star being DQ’ed from the WSOP Circuit Main Event in Las Vegas…
just had the absolute worst experience ever in poker thanks to @WSOP ???????
— cat (@catrific) 31 March 2019
Why was Cat Valdes disqualified? Allen ‘Chainsaw’ Kessler provided the initial information by way of an ‘anonymous question’ on his Twitter page…
From @queenofsets.
Player buys into 4pm $400 tourney Player goes to Main Event late reg table; dealer doesnt check ticket correctly; sends player to main event.
Player plays for 2 hours; runs up 100k stack. Floor realize shes in the wrong event. Whats the correct thing to do?— Allen Kessler (@AllenKessler) 31 March 2019
…and Catherine Valdes herself decided to make a YouTube video describing in detail what occurred at Bally’s Casino. She claimed it was a genuine error and she didn’t know what to do once she realised she was playing the $1100 ME instead of her intended $400 buy-in tournament.
Here is why I was kicked out of the @WSOP circuit event for those wondering 😀 #poker #wsop https://t.co/lwaOwHPccw pic.twitter.com/FaZtfZ3m6b
— cat (@catrific) 31 March 2019
Of course, it’s not the first time someone has royally screwed up, as we’ll see a little later, but opinion was divided over just how much Catherine Valdes was to blame for the situation.
Friends, pros, her Thirst Lounge boss Bill Perkins, poker journalists and numerous ‘Twitter randoms’ all weighed in, and with varying degrees of sympathy for her error.
I think the Michael character could have been nicer about it but lol at staying in the tournament when you realized it wasn’t the right one.
I think there are 2 parts to it but I understand Michael’s frustration over what he saw as an obvious angle.
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1) 1 April 2019
I know you’re upset, but once you tell a tournament director that you were fully aware you were in a tournament you should not have been in, you’ve basically told him you were cheating. So, not exactly a situation where people are going to be warm and fuzzy.
— Jessica Welman (@jesswelman) 31 March 2019
The instant you realize you are in the wrong Torunament you stop, get up & notify staff. That’s clear. Why you didn’t or more specifically, did your chip stack influence your behavior will never be known. How nice/mean director was/wasn’t is irrelevant drama.
— Bill Perkins (Guy) (@bp22) 1 April 2019
This. I think those who know me would attest to my ethics. But, I could totally see a younger me making the same mistakes she did as a result of inexperience and immaturity. Woulda really sucked if I was just blackballed from the poker world forever bc of it.
— Danielle Andersen (@dmoongirl) April 1, 2019
Naturally, with so much money involved in the poker world, the possibility of Valdes deliberately angleshooting – in effect ‘freerolling’ the big buy-in Main Event – was thrown out there several times. Such behavior isn’t entirely unheard of.
One famous case back in 2015 saw a player pay $125 for his nightly Aria tournament, only to find himself in the $25,000 buy-in High Roller by mistake.
The unnamed reg, dubbed ’Curly’, bust Jake Schindler, Tom Marchese and Jason Mercier, building up a big stack before the error saw him unceremoniously ousted from the event. Justin Bonomo described what happened…
“Seven hours into this $25k tourney and a player was just escorted out. He paid for the $125 tourney, got the wrong ticket, and kept quiet. The player had a lot of chips when he was disqualified. Chips removed from play after a few orbits of blinding down.”
Quite what the tournament director should then do in such a situation is highly unclear – the busted players and disrupted chipstacks creating a secondary problem.
Matt Savage is more experienced than most as a TD and seems to feel that the best approach is to leave things the way they are once the offender has been booted.
Exactly, so what happened to the players that were affected both positively and negatively are not entitled to anything. If they are given anything it’s above and beyond service.
— Matt Savage (@SavagePoker) 1 April 2019
Catherine Valdes responds on YouTube
For Catherine Valdes it is hopefully a salutary lesson that the poker world isn’t always a cuddly place to be, and that owning up to your (and in this case also others’) mistakes immediately is the best way to steer clear of serious problems. That’s something she seems to have done with a short follow-up video…
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