Lesley Thornburg Disqualification Story

Published on March 7th, 2008 11:12 pm EST

Now I've heard of players being disqualified during a tournament before. It happens all the time.

Maybe a player keeps using excessive and profane language, and the tournament directors finally decide to boot him.

Or maybe a player is switching tables and decides to put his chips in his pockets. It happens.

But this is the first time that I have ever heard of a player being disqualified during the final table of an event.

It was a $300 prelim event at the World Series of Poker Circuit series in Atlantic City.

Apparently Thornburg was being loud and obnoxious during the first day of play in the event, and had been given two warnings on the first day. No one wanted to play at his table, as he was being loud, obnoxious and derogatory towards his fellow players.

Anyways, there are seven players left in the tournament. Thornburg gets all of his chips into the middle holding A-7, where he is dominated by the A-Q of his opponent, Andy Santiago. Thornburg sucks out.

In a hand just a short while later, Thornburg called the all-in raise of Edward "Yank" Sullivan holding pocket fours. Sullivan held pocket sevens, but a four came on the flop and Sullivan was eliminated.

Thornburg was now chipleader, and completely lost his mind. According to various published reports, Thornburg started tossing his chips into the middle of the table instead of stacking them. Tournament officials issued several warnings, which Thornburg again ignored.

The end for Thornburg came when he pushed half of his chips in the center of the table and then said "All-in". Tournament officials had had enough of his antics at this point, and decided to disqualify Thornburg on the spot, automatically awarding him the fifth place prize money of $19,206.00.

According to various reports, Thornburg was forcibly removed from the casino. I am assuming that he will likely be banned from the casino as well.

I have never heard of a player at a final table being disqualified, let alone the chipleader. Lesley Thornburg receives the vote for Texas Holdem King Idiot of the Day.