The case of the missing chips

I played in a tournament last night at the Horseshoe Casino (Tunica) that they call Wednesday Super Stack. Some tournaments let you start with 10,000 in chips, then rush the blinds up at a lightning pace. Because you begin with so many chips, they call it deep stack, but that's smoke and mirrors. (See Arnold Snyder's article here or buy his book to learn how to calculate whether a tournament has a favorable structure.)

Last night, the players started with 20,000 chips and the levels were 20 minutes with blinds going up at a normal rate -- so it truly was a good structure unlike some of the other so-called "deep stack" events. The buy-in was $110 of which $10 went to the dealers. This was one of the few tournaments I've played in which we didn't chop (split the prize money), and I finished second of out 33 runners.

Now that I've got the brag part out of the way, here is a situation that occurred: After nine levels, we had a 10-minute break. They were going to color up the black chips (worth 100 each). The blinds were going up to 3000/6000 with a 500 ante, so black chips weren't needed anymore.

I had 31 black chips, so I put them in three stacks of 10 each (worth a total of 3000) and tossed the other chip to the side. The normal procedure is that they will give you three orange chips (worth 1000 each), then race for the odd chip(s). This means the dealer will draw cards -- the more odd chips you have, the more cards the dealer gives you. In the race, you can win a purple chip (worth 500) if you get lucky and are dealt one of the high cards.

Sometimes, I stay and watch. The staff are usually pretty accurate, but mistakes can happen. I had to use the bathroom, however, so didn't wait around. Before I left, I put my card cap on top of my remaing chips with the stacks of black out in front.

When I returned, there were no orange chips. I asked the dealer what happened, and he said he didn't know because they pushed during the break, and he had just arrived at the table. The guy next to me said, oh they put them in your stack. Now this is a bunch of shit hot air -- they never do that.

It wasn't the end of the world as I had around 100,000 chips at the time, so an extra 3000 wasn't going to make or break me, but I'm just sayin'. I called for the tournament director and explained what happened. She called her assistant who had done the color up at our table. They acted like they believed me, but the three orange chips (worth 1000 each) were gone.

If you were tournament director, what would you do? What do you think their ruling was?

I'll post what happened after readers get a chance to leave their guess in a comment.