Confused Poker Player Spews Off Stack in WSOP $50K After Unknowingly Folding Hand

A poker player in the $50,000 buy-in World Series of Poker (WSOP) High Roller flopped a set and lost to an inferior hand. But not because his opponent pulled off a sick bluff.

Motoki Jinno lost a strange hand during Wednesday's Day 1 session, and it sent the Japanese high roller into a downward spiral that ended in a pre-dinner break elimination.

Ryan Feldman, who was seated at the table, tweeted out details about the incident. PokerNews reached out to the Hustler Casino Live co-founder to find out exactly how it all went down.

Poker Player Benefits from Opponent's Confusion

Feldman, among the Day 1 chip leaders late in the session, said Jinno had been playing mostly tight until he lost an unfortunate pot. The hand he's referring to saw a board of 10x6x5x4x, and Jinno faced an all-in bet from Omer Smidt.

Smidt had announced all in, as did the dealer who sorted the all-in player's chips. Action returned to Jinno, who sat silently as the time bank expired. The dealer then began spreading Jinno's time bank chips. After the last time bank chip was needed, the dealer grabbed his cards to indicate a fold.

But Jinno was confused about what had happened and presumably thought his opponent was deep in thought. He announced to the dealer, "I raised," disputing the fold. Feldman said Jinno likely didn't know what the all-in button was for or didn't see it in front of Smidt's chips.

The floor was called over and ruled that the hand was dead. Smidt took down the pot with QxQx and was thankful after Jinno's 6x6x for a flopped set was exposed.

Tilt Works Momentarily

Feldman had only spent a short amount of time at the table inside Paris Las Vegas, but had observed Jinno as playing somewhat tight. That all changed after the controversial hand.

"He came back to the table and just started firing every hand," Feldman said. "He was opening big, raising to 15k under the gun at 4k big blind and snap-calling three-bets."

Jinno's tilt play worked in his favor for a while. In one hand, Alex Foxen three-bet jammed all in for 68,000 with A♣K♥. Jinno then moved all in for about 150,000 with J♠6♠, forcing the original raiser off the hand. The board ran out J♣6♥6♦2♥8♥ to send Foxen out the door.

Jinno won another lucky pot with 6x5x offsuit when he jammed all in on a flop of Ax7x5x, running into Feldman's 7x7x. The turn was the 4x and river the 8x to give the tilted player runner-runner straight for a double-up. But the luck quickly ended when Jinno moved all in from an early position with 8x2x and lost to Feldman's AxAx.

Jinno, who has $175,000 in live tournament cashes, didn't rebuy in the High Roller. There were 185 entrants, at the time of publishing on Day 1. Registration remains open until Day 2.