World Series Of Poker snafus

I’ve been seeing these rumors about screwups at the World Series all over the place for days, but today one of my favorite poker writers just let them all out in a rant.  Conveniently they’re in one place so I can just link to them and if you’re interested, you can read them.

In short, they’ve:

  • found marked cards and refused to replace them in tournaments until players screamed,
  • changed formats for events minutes before start, making some tables 11-handed instead of 10, or 10 instead of 6,
  • turned some events into rebuy tournaments and then back again,
  • stiffed dealers on their pay,
  • had incompetents making floor decisions,
  • lost players chips during breaks, causing them to be ejected from the tournament.

I’m thankful I’m going out after most of this will be resolved.  My experience in the way media cycles work is that this will take a solid week to explode and resolve unless CNN puts it on air and it hits the mainstream media.  If that happens in the next week, it will be resolved within 48 hours after it hits the news cycle.

The most embarassing thing is that CardPlayer articles about these screwups have either been squashed before being written or been pulled off the CardPlayer.com website after pressure from Harrah’s management.

It’s not like we thought CardPlayer was a real journalistic endeavor anyway….