The Case of the Missing Chip

WSOP 1500 Starting Stack of 4500 Chips

I just busted from a WSOP 1500, which was pretty standard and uninteresting except that I had a 100 chip taken from me.  It was probably an accident, but here's what happened:

The blinds were still 25/25, and I was the small blind.  I had just put my last 25 chip in for the big blind last hand, and all I had left were 2 1k chips, 2 500 chips, and 2 100 chips.  I put in a 100 chip for the small blind, and the dealer would give me change from the pot once everyone had acted.  After I put my chip in, I looked down to send a text, while at the same time my 2 neighbors exchanged a 100 chip for 4 25s.  When I looked back up, the transaction was complete, but my 100 chip had somehow been scooped up with all the rest.  Neither would cop to accidentally taking my chip, so we had to call the floor person over.  The dealer and I recounted the story to the floorman, who said that they would check surveillance footage to see if they could figure out where it went.  To be clear, I always know with 100% certainty how many chips I have, especially when I have so few chips, and I was 100% sure I put the 100 chip out for my blind.  40 minutes later, he had not returned, so I asked another floor person to find out what was going on.  They returned a few minutes later, saying that the security footage was "inconclusive" and that I would have to play on with 100 less chips than I should have.  Pretty frustrating stuff, considering that there are 4 "eyes in the sky" in view of my table.  It should have been incredibly easy to see that there was a chip in front of me and then 5 seconds later there wasn't, so don't believe what you hear about these high tech casino security systems.  I told them that my Tivo could have done a better job, but accepted the loss and played on.  Unfortunately, I never really got anything going, and lost to Blair Hinkle, a sick player and good dude, in a pretty standard spot when I got short stacked.  

The last few days have been pretty brutal, as most of my hands have looked something like this:  Player 1 raises to 25, Player 2 calls, I reraise to 80 from the big blind with Aces, Player 1 folds and Player 2 calls.  Flop is 9 4 2 all different suits.  I check to him to induce him to bet, which he does: All In for 215 dollars.  I snap call, and the board runs out 8 on the turn, J on the river and my Aces lose to his Q 10...no pair, no draw that turned into an unbeatable straight somehow.  Since getting back from Chicago and Stl, I have broken even in cash games, which I guess is commendable after that and a few other beats, but it feels pretty crappy.  However, I feel reeeeeally good about my game right now, so hopefully I'll start running good too.  

Time to get back on the grind.

-Danny