Monday, June 30, 2008

Changing and selective enforcement of WSOP rules?

Being something of a poker rules geek, I was interested in this report from Bryan Micon. Unfortunately, I find his story quite credible. Hellmuth's reported behavior is certainly consistent with everything we've come to expect from the jerk. And tournament officials can indeed be as arbitrary, dictatorial, and unhelpful as the ones described by Micon.

We should be able to expect a lot better from the poker world's premiere event, but, sadly, multiple stories from highly credible sources every year (see, e.g., this post about another horrible floor decision from early in this year's WSOP) leave me with the conclusion that we can't.

Harrah's should give out a printed copy of the rules to every player upon registration, so that when the floor people don't know the applicable rule, somebody at the table can point them to it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'd hate to see the lack of knowing the rules cost someone a WSOP win and/or cash on the count of there not being any rule book available to them.

I would have guessed that talking on a cell phone while playing wouldn't be allowed. oh well!