10 things I learned covering the 2011 WSOP Part 2

Posted by Steve Ruddock on Jul 22, 2011 Posted in Poker News | No Comments »

6. The WSOP has over-complicated their rule book

With a number of controversies this year, including an out of left field debate during the Main Event as to what is permissible to talk about when heads-up in a pot, the World Series of Poker has hopefully learned a vital lesson: Rules need to be clear and leave very little room for different interpretations!

What really bothered me about the whole debate wasn’t so much that they had implemented a new rule –or more accurately decided to change the way they enforced an existing rule—it was the way that even after lengthy explanations players were still scratching their heads as to what the actual rule stated. Even more worrisome was that different tournament officials were giving different explanations of the same rule!

Hopefully the WSOP irons out these “troublesome” rules before the 2012 WSOP.

7. Good intentions does not equal a good rule: See Hard-Stop Rule

Another fiasco caused by a new rule was the “Hard-Stop Rule” which had the intention of preventing long nights for players and staff, but ended up causing an uproar when tournament officials strictly enforced the rule, and wouldn’t let players finish tournaments even during heads-up play, or wouldn’t call it a night early even if they just played down to the final table.

Instead we saw numerous tournaments stopped at odd points, which many players felt ruined the flow of the tournament.

8. A dealer can be so bad as to not notice eight cards are missing from a deck or that there are eight cards too many in a deck

These last three observations all go together:

I’ve actually noticed a single card missing when I was shuffling on one occasion, and many times have realized that the Jokers were not removed –AND I DON’T SHUFFLE CARDS EVERY DAY! So I am flabbergasted that WSOP dealers actually dealt hands with 44 and 60 card decks respectively!

9. Players can be so distracted as to not notice a dealer is shuffling a 44-card deck

This is almost as bad, since I can’t imagine not realizing there are eight cards missing from a deck!

10. Yet one particular player can notice an imperfection in a card that has been overlooked by thousands of others

It took a few tournaments for someone to notice a major flaw with the decks being used at the WSOP, which means thousands of hands were dealt at the 2011 WOP with marked cards! It wasn’t until Jon Turner noticed an odd mark on the 5 of Spades under the bright lights of the main stage that tournament officials determined virtually every spade between 2 and 5 in every deck had a defect!

Read Part 1 HERE

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