$2 Million in extra poker chips!?

This is old news in the poker world (see here and here), but so curious that it seems worthy of mention.

At this year’s main event of the World Series of Poker, there were 2 million dollars more in chips at the end of the tournament than there were at the start of the tournament. Where they came from is a mystery.

The obvious first explanation is that someone was cheating. After all, there was a prize pool of $80 million at stake. But the data detectives at www.pokernews.com offer pretty convincing evidence that there is a different explanation — bad math on the part of some of workers at the World Series.

I really like the way they went about solving the problem. We need more journalists like them.

(Hat tip to Scott Cunningham for the lead.)