I watched at the beginning when they divided up all the chips. As you know there was a mix of chips, old and current El Cortez and some from Union Plaza. They didn't have enough chips and were taking chips from wherever they could find them. Any green chip was a "25"

I don't believe anyone at that table would have taken any chips and it is a simple error caused by the confusion of the diffident chips. Unlike any other tournaments I have seen or participated in the chips were never in a rack where you could look down and see the even rows.

Somebody may have started one chip short and never realized it.
Barry