The final Sunday at one of the WSOP Circuit stops in Cherokee are always some of the busiest days on the entire WSOP calendar.
From a high profile Main Event playing their Day 2, to many other events going on, it is always a very high stress day for players, media and staff alike.
Tables Flipped in Main Event
On Sunday that stress got turned up a million degrees as one of the craziest incidents you will ever see in a poker room occurred in the heart of the Cherokee Main Event, one of the top WSOP circuit destinations.
An unidentified man with long black went on his hands and knees, went under one of the tables in the Main Event and flipped it over. He then proceeded to crab walk to the next table and flip that one.
He was able to flip a third table (this one caught on video) before finally being subdued by what looked like other players while security looked to be fairly inactive.
This is one of the biggest nightmares of a tournament director as chips for 27 different players went flying, when there were only 65 players remaining in the tournament in an event with over $368,000 at stake.
Those in charge then had a major headache as far as what to do next. They went to the cameras in an attempt to estimate the stacks as closely as they could.
Chopping the tournament 65 ways seemed to be out of the question with so many players left and considering the prestige of the largest circuit main event on the calendar.
Eventually the stacks were re-created in a process that took about two hours, which considering the amount of damage done, was pretty swiftly taken care of.
Reaction
The reaction to this incident was of course massive with videos circulating far and wide. Barstool Sports even picked up the story and got close to a million impressions on their post on X about it.
At another WSOP Circuit stop in Baltimore that was going on at the same time, the conversation in the room on Sunday quickly became all about the madness going down at Cherokee with players energetically discussing and making jokes about it.
Many people wondered what would possess this man to do this. There were jokes made about him possibly having a brutal bad beat or some beef with another player.
But from all accounts, he was apparently not connected to poker and did this in a random fit of emotion, told by God to do so according to him. Safe to say this man is not at all interested in collecting any online poker bonuses.
One video posted rashly and incorrectly named poker player Daniel Magnusson as the perpetrator, seemingly due to his similar looking long hair, but Magnusson quickly went on X to clear his name.
Similar Incident
Many poker players joked that the thought has gone through their head before to flip the table after a particularly brutal bad beat or losing session. But nobody could recall any such incidents that were similar to this one.
The only one that you could draw a comparison to was in a Japanese streamed cash game in 2022 when a disgruntled player walked into the streaming table and lifted it in anger, spewing all of the chips everywhere.
However in that instance, it was a singular table of play that was streamed so there were exact chip counts present before the incident, meaning that the chip stacks could be re-created fairly quickly.
That was not the case for the Cherokee incident in the multi-table tournament where there were many more factors to consider.
Does this Change Anything?
One of the questions about this completely random incident is does it change anything as far as how poker tournaments work and allowing people into the tournament areas during big events?
Anyone that has been to a live poker tournament knows that there are always a lot of people milling around multi-table events, whether they be fans, friends, other players or completely random people.
In theory something like this could easily happen again and greatly disrupt the integrity of the game. This is also coming off the heels of a situation where a man attempted arson at a Las Vegas casino.
At the same time, this is the first such incident that anyone remembers in any high profile tournament, so it is probably not worth making any massive changes based on a one-off incident.