You make a good point here but we should still be protecting the integrity of the tournament. Any chips that are gotten in ways that don't explicitly follow the rules can have a drastic impact on the results of the tournament and should be avoided at all costs.
Spence,
Yes. It is our job to protect the integrity of the tournament and we'll do our best to achieve it.
However, perfect protection is impossible in all forms of competitions or sports. Referees will make wrong calls, external factors will come in play (
https://youtu.be/0uXZ3_A2nGs ), players will make dumb mistakes.
IMO, when a player that mucks a hand and does not receive chips he would have been given had he paid more attention,
is not changing the result of a hand.
The result of that hand is that there is only one hand, that hand was tabled and wins the pot. Period.
If you alert that player he is about to make a mistake, make him table his cards and give him half the pot that would have gone to the alert and attentive player,
now you're changing the result of the hand, now you're giving chips to someone that shouldn't have earned them and now you're being unfair, at least, in my personal definition of fairness.
Good positive discussion, by the way, folks :-)
DC