All in all, the 2022 World Series of Poker has been relatively controversy-free. There is always something every year, but overall, it seems like the WSOP’s first year on the Strip has gone pretty smoothly. There IS always something, though. On Sunday, eyebrows were raised and feathers were ruffled over a slightly wacky misdeal.
The scene was the $1,000 buy-in Million Dollar Bounty event. The low buy-in already made it a gigantic field (the third of four starting flights is today) and with a mystery bounty of $1 million one random player’s head, the tournament was guaranteed to be filled with action and excitement.
But on one hand yesterday, the flop came down 5-3-3. Well, to be exact, that was 5 of Clubs, 3 of Spades, 3 of Spades. You read that correctly, two of the same card were dealt on the flop.
Now, that is certainly weird. It’s not something you see every day. But hey, shit happens. And with the gajillions of hands dealt at the World Series of Poker and the bazillions of decks used, there was bound to be at least one deck that was faulty. It’s unfortunate that it got through a deck inspection, but again, shit happens. The hand was declared dead, players got their chips back, and everyone went on with the tournament.
Where there has been some controversy was in the apparent response of floorperson after the minor hubbub resulting from the strange duplicate card. According to poker player Christopher DeMaci, a floorperson threatened players with disqualification if they posted a picture of the misdeal on social media.
Now, that seemed a little strange to me, as a) I’ve never heard of such a weird response, and b) it seems like a pain to enforce. Someone will have to comb through every social media platform, find every instance of the photo, and then match up accounts with players in the tournament.
But, of course, Twitter reacted how Twitter will react.
Then, last night, poker pro and founder of PokerFraudAlert.com Todd Witteles posted a request to Twitter, asking for corroboration of the floorperson’s threat. More than one person replied, saying that there was a ban threat, but it was not exactly as it sounded.
Players were allowed to take pictures of the goofy flop (and, presumably, share them widely), but they were not allowed to take photos with a flash. Terrance Reid, who said he was there in a media capacity, explained that they were told they “can take pictures, just no video or flash photography.”
And it was with that rule came the ban warning.
That said, Reid explained that the reiteration of the no flash/no video policy came as people were taking snapshots of the misdeal, so it was poor timing. He also felt, however, that the floorperson was “trying to discourage spreading of the photo via indirect reciting of policy,” even if the ban had nothing to do with posting pictures.
Image credit: PokerGO.com