For those that haven’t read my last few blogs, my friend who I am staking at the WSOP lost chips and nearly went bust in a WSOP event to a guy WHO WAS NOT EVENT IN THE TOURNAMENT. The floor ruled that my friend John lost his chips “in good faith” to the man next to him who sat at the table by mistake and the dealer somehow did not catch the error, giving the man chips to play in the event. Days after the event, my friend John escalated the issue to the WSOP top dog and gave him a few days to talk it over with his subordinates. That is where the story left off for those who are just now reading about this.
After John spoke with the top dog at the WSOP, he took down his number and said he would call him back with a decision. A couple of days went by and they never called, so John decided to track them down at the Rio today. Apparently the fact that someone nearly went broke from one of their prestigious events to someone NOT IN THE EVENT didn’t mean a whole lot to them because they actually had talked about it but didn’t even bother to reach out to John. When John approached them today, they basically just told him that he was unfortunate, but there was nothing they were going to do. John was seeking a refund in tournament chips from the event, but they said they “weren’t going to go around refunding every person who has a complaint about their events.” Really? The WSOP considers a random person sitting down and nearly busting one of their participants a “complaint?”
Their reasoning was that if they did give John a refund it would open Pandora’s box and people would be rushing to get refunds every time a dealer had a misdeal or something. This is an absurd stance to take. In any game or sport, shit happens. In golf they call it “rub of the green.” Sometimes an official is going to get a ruling wrong. Sometimes something really unlucky is going to happen like a batter hits what would be a home run only for it to hit a bird and drop short of the fence. In my days playing golf, birds have flown down and picked up a ball after I hit a putt that was going dead in the center of the cup. That has happened a few times to me actually. Leaves have blown onto the green and deflected my ball away from the hole. Shit happens. But there is “rub of the green” and there are things that can easily be prevented. And when they are not, someone should bear responsibility. Having someone sit down at a WSOP event who is not even in the tournament and nearly bust a participant is not a minor mistake. Refunding the victim for their lack of control over their own events is not going to open Pandora’s box for God’s sake. There are mistakes and there are massive fuck ups. This is pretty firmly in the “massive fuck up” category, I don’t think many people will deny that. It is just not the same as a random misdeal or incorrect floor decision.
Anyway, John and I have done all we are going to do. We are not going to go to battle with the WSOP or boycott or anything like that. What’s done is done. But I do feel their decision should become public so everyone can know how things are done over at the WSOP and how little they care about anything other than making the most money they possibly can. While the WSOP may like to claim they are the ones who host the most prestigious poker tournament series in the world, that is really just good marketing. Because they do absolutely nothing to make it that way. They cut costs at absolutely every turn. If they wanted their events to be so prestigious, why not have competent dealers? Why not have a freakin rule book that covers every possible situation the way golf does? That way arbitrary rulings that apply no logic (such as the one made against John) couldn’t happen. Although, I say that, but apparently the people at the WSOP don’t think logically because there is no way on earth you can tell me that it is logical to believe that when you are hosting a world championship event that you can be nearly knocked out of the event by a non participant and think that is fair or at the very least, unworthy of even a second shot at the event.
Shoot, as I type that, I just blew my mind even more haha. I mean think about that. My friend nearly went BROKE to a guy NOT IN THE TOURNAMENT and all we were appealing for was a second chance at one of their events. We weren’t asking for anything more than that. Just a second shot at one of their events because we got cheated out of the first one. Their response, “No, that would open Pandora’s box.” Hey WSOP, how about running your events half decently so there wouldn’t even be potential for Pandora’s box? Did you ever think of that? Maybe take a chunk of the tens of millions of dollars you make and actually hire people who are competent, which includes not only the dealers, but the floor as well. You can start with the head guy. Because I don’t know how the floor is going to make good decisions when the head guy has absolutely no grasp of what is fair or reasonable. Actually I don’t know that. He may just be greedy. It’s certainly one of the two. He is either really greedy or really lacks the capacity upstairs to come to reasonable decisions. My guess is it’s probably a bit of both.
Anyway, I went to Portland, OR for a couple of days and I am flying back tomorrow to play in the main event. I am going to make my annual $10,000 donation to the WSOP main event fund all so I can at least look at myself in the mirror. That’s really the only reason I play that dang tournament, because I know somehow, someway I will lose my chips to either some donk play or some cooler and go home $10,000 poorer. It’s just the way it goes in tournaments. I have played a jillion tournaments and never had one good thing happen to me in one event ever. Thank God for cash games haha. I can’t wait to get down there and play some of those. There is nothing more exciting to me in poker than sitting about a 1,000 blinds deep and playing what I like to call, “real poker.” I can guarantee I will never sit down at a cash game table and go broke to someone with no cash!!!