The guy had been in a large-field tournament at Venetian the previous day, and made it into the money. He was tracking carefully the bustouts, hoping to stretch his short stack into the next level of payout. But he didn't make it; he was the last one in whatever the current tier was.
Eliminations were happening quickly enough, though, that he thought he might actually be able to get the higher payout simply by loitering a bit. In other words, if somebody else busted out right after he did, said person might head straight to the podium (or wherever they were coordinating certification of payments) and take the lower-tier amount, following which our storyteller could claim the next spot up in the money.
I couldn't tell from the pieces of the story that I heard whether his plan succeeded. Doesn't much matter to the moral: the guy is a cheating scumbag that should be banned from poker in every casino for even making the attempt.
In small fields, this won't work. But in large fields, with many table in operation at once, it's easy to see that there could be enough slop or lag in the system to get away with this. There is always some delay in dealers alerting the floor about an elimination, getting the seat card collected, having somebody recount how many seats are now open, etc. It would not be too difficult for the order of two eliminations to get reversed--especially if the earlier one were deliberately stalling, trying to make it happen.
I wondered about this starting from when I was present for Cardgrrl's cash in the WSOP this year. She was eliminated on the first hand played at her table after the money bubble, but was officially recorded as the 9th one up in the money. She didn't stall in getting to the payout line, but the hand did take an unusually long time to play out. Still, I was surprised that that many got there before her. It appeared to me that there was no mechanism to prevent somebody from holding off for a while in the hopes of wrongfully sneaking up into the next jump in the payout structure. Maybe the tournament staff are more careful to get the order right when they know there is a jump about to occur, but maybe they don't. I have no experience in or direct knowledge of such operations.
Anyway, last month was the first time I became aware that it could be a problem, and last night was the first time I became explicitly aware that there are scummy poker players who will try to exploit any such defect in the system to their advantage. (Seriously, the guy had NO shame. He was bragging to his dealer friend about how clever he was to be doing this, and what a sucker the other guy would be if he wasn't paying enough attention to get the higher payout he had earned. These people make me sick.)
So this is just a word to the wise, in case you're playing in a tournament large enough that this could become an issue: Pay attention to the order of eliminations (even though you have about a hundred other mental priorities right at that time), and try to make sure that the tournament staff are doing the same.
