The 2012 World Series of Poker has seen its fair share of highs and lows, and we’re only halfway through the summer tournament series. In this column I’ll take a look at the five most head-scratching moments/accomplishments from the first half of the 2012 WSOP.

#5 – Player on Player crime on Twitter

For poker players and poker fans Twitter is starting to look more and more like the NVG forum on 2+2 every day. First we had Casey Jarzabek and John Kim getting into a debated on the proper way to post a bustout hand, and from there it has descended into remarks about the quality of Andy Frankenberger’s game, challenge matches between Mike Matusow and Brian Hastings, Brad Booth’s ridiculous calling-out of Phil Hellmuth while Hellmuth was competing for bracelet #13 at the final table of the $10k HORSE tournament, and most recently a very heated clash between UK poker pros Sam Trickett and Andrew Feldman.

#4 – Verbalization Rule and Twitter-Gate

Twitter also played a role in the next entry on my list, which was the WSOP’s briefly enacted rule calling for players to verbalize all of their actions at televised final tables, or suffer a penalty. Fortunately the WSOP quickly changed course on this rule, but not before Seth Palansky and Jonathan Aguiar got into a Twitter dustup of their own.

#3 – WSOP Live Feed technical issues

Unfortunately another year of the WSOP live feed means another year of technical issues with the WSOP Live Feed, with the feed cutting in and out, often times making it unwatchable.

#2 – WSOP Live Feed the philosophical debate

In addition to the technical issues there is also a raging debate over the “quality” of the guest commentators the WSOP is using. Players have been overly critical of other players at the final table and a few have had noticeable conflicts of interest when it comes to giving unbiased commentary, as well as pimping their own pet projects while on the air.

#1 – The Reentry Debacle

The biggest fail of the 2012 WSOP thus far has to be the reentry debacle that occurred during Event #xx. Somehow multiple players (reports are conflicting as to how many players were actually able to game the system) were allowed to reenter the tournament multiple times on Day 1b of the tournament. The format of the tournament allowed players eliminated on Day 1a to reenter the event on Day 1b, but Will Failla and at least two other players were somehow allowed to reenter on Day 1b and reenter again when they were eliminated; making the tournament something along the lines of a rebuy event.

Tags: Andrew Feldman, Conflicts Of Interest, Dustup, Frankenberger, Game Challenge, Guest Commentators, Highs And Lows, John Kim, Lowlights, Mike Matusow, Pet Projects, phil hellmuth, Philosophical Debate, Poker Fans, poker players, Poker Pros, Trickett, Twitter, Verbalization, World Series of Poker

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2012 at 8:29 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.