The WSOP Circuit Cherokee Main Event was disrupted after a man overturned multiple poker tables, sending chips and cards flying before he was tackled to the floor.
Tournament directors biggest nightmare! pic.twitter.com/CEMG8scQVv
— Matt Savage (@SavagePoker) February 23, 2025
The Incident
The chaotic scenes unfolded while players were on break during the $1700 buy-in ME at Harrah’s Cherokee casino in North Carolina. A man, believed to NOT be a player in the event, took “a running start” before “crab-scuttling” under three tables, flipping them all before being stopped. The person in question running amok was not, however, poker pro Daniel Magnuson as first thought by some…
Need to be super clear here: this is NOT Daniel Magnuson as I mention in the video. I could not see face at any point and it looked like him from behind@DanielMagnuson sorry about that -reacting to the situation live when recording
Taking vid down pointless bc ♾️ retweets
— @rEaLrUeTaMa (@realruetama) February 23, 2025
Quite what prompted the outrageous behaviour is unclear as yet, though one (as yet unverified) witness stated the man in question shouted that “God told me to do it”. That would make sense in a ‘Jesus Cleansing the Temple’ (of the moneylenders) way.
The tournament was down to 65 players when the incident happened and tournament officials had to make an attempt at recreating the chip stacks of those involved.
Savage thoughts
Matt Savage, a WPT director, described it as a “tournament directors’ biggest nightmare!” and was soon being quizzed on X/Twitter as to how he’d handle it.
“Really curious on what you’d do here?” asked Greg Himmelbrand. “Could 27 players’ stacks be accurately reconstructed w(ith) cameras? Is that even feasible to do with a significant delay? What if it can’t be? Can’t ICM chop w half the remaining field w unknown stacks. Even chop seems absurd to the big stacks.”
Savage replied: “Have to get it as close as possible and get players to agree using cameras and total chip counts. It’s a long arduous process and need players honesty, patience, and assistance.”
The Reconstruction
With players already well in the money, and $360k+ up top, the issue of who had how many chips before the eruption was a tricky one. A poker.org update eventually clarified that after two hours they had finally managed to reconstruct the state of play prior to the attack.
“After spending close to two hours taking the information that players provided and cross-referencing it with surveillance footage, the tournament staff reconstructed the stacks at all three of the tables that were knocked over,” wrote Chris Land.
“Every stack and every other remaining table in the event has also been counted down and the amount of chips in play is verified and correct, so the decision has been made to go forward with the completion of the tournament as scheduled.”
Poker and Casino Chaos
Such incidents are very rare but they do occur, even at the biggest of events.
At the 2019 WSOP, Ken Strauss became known as the “Naked Bandit” after shoving all-in blind, then dropping his shorts to expose his genitals, and finally throwing a shoe towards the dealer – all caught on camera.
Uhhhhhh what is going on at the #WSOP main event??? Player shoves blind, drops his pants, then throws his shoe on the table 😂 😂 😂(video via @blattsmullet) pic.twitter.com/oHGk5pjlnJ
— Scott Davies (@sdaviespoker) July 5, 2019
Strauss later the same day performed a similar act at the Luxor and was eventually arrested for making terroristic threats. Strauss’ chaos didn’t hugely affect the Main Event though in the way today’s Harrah’s WSOPC did.
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