Harrah's Tunica Ring Winner Disqualified from the Main Event
During the last level of Day 1a, we heard mumblings among tournament officials that some sort of infraction had occurred. From what we could piece together, Drew Mcilvain, who won WSOP Circuit Event #3 $555 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em here at Harrah’s Tunica less than a week ago, had colluded with another player and executed a chip dump.
We believe the hand in question saw the small blind either limp or raise, Mcilvain move all in from the big blind, and the small blind call off a fairly decent stack with . Mcilvain revealed and the board ran out clean. The small blind made a hasty exit while the rest of the table looked on in disbelief.
Now we're not sure of all the details, but it seems the players in questions had some sort of conversation that may have been overheard by other players. Whatever the case, tournament officials reviewed tapes and conducted a short investigation while the Mcilvain, a 23-year-old food and beverage manager from Temecula, CA, sat out.
At the end of the day, tournament officials confirmed that there was an infraction, though details were not revealed, and Tournament Director Bill Bruce revealed that Mcilvain would be disqualified from the tournament and his 83,400 stack taken out of play. In addition, the incident was turned over to the proper authorities.