High Roller: Tony Burns: Stern but Fair

$25,500 Big 4 High Roller
$2,000,000 Guaranteed | Payouts
Level 16: 12,000/24,000  with a 4,000 ante
Players Remaining: 17 of 117

Action is hand-for-hand on the money bubble, and things have gotten quite serious. There’s a difference of more than $55,000 in real money between the next two eliminations.

Players must stay at their seats during this portion of a tournament, a rule that is in place in nearly every major event in the world. It helps ensure the integrity of the game at a most crucial stage, and it keeps the aisles and rails from becoming clogged with observers.

As hand-for-hand play started, Burns issued his standard admonishment against sweating the action at other tables.

A couple of the short stacks have chosen to test the boundaries of the fence, though, half-standing, craning their necks, or pretending to run to the restroom or the cocktail station.

Burns issued an addition warning a few minutes ago, the second in the past few minutes.

Anthony Spinella

Anthony Spinella is one of two shortest stacks left in the field, and he was one of the most egregious boundary testers. After the second warning, while a player was all in at an adjacent table, the wiry Spinella stood fully up on his chair to try to gain a better view, towering over the room.

“Really?” Burns asked. “Really?” Another warning was issued to the field, but Spinella wasn’t done trying. In between the next two hands he overtly disobeyed, walking directly over to the adjacent table to examine the stacks.

“Anthony, why don’t you take five hands?” Burns issued a penalty.

Spinella became incensed. He was under the gun with just 43,000 chips left, so the penalty would blind him entirely out. He claimed the instructions weren’t clear. After several minutes of pleading, Burns threw him a bone.

“In the best interests of the tournament, I’m not going to blind you out. But I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t give you a five-hand penalty if you don’t leave your seat again.”

That finally seemed clear enough for Spinella, and he obeyed the order this time.

A few of the other players found the humor. “I should be able to stand on a chair so that I’m as tall as Spinella,” Mike Leah quipped. “He’s totally getting the advantage because he’s tall.”

Spinella tried to loosen up Burns a bit in the moments after, as well. “Come on, we can laugh about it,” Spinella tried.

“We can laugh tomorrow,” Burns offered back.