A controversy erupted at the World Series of Poker Main Event yesterday.
There were 72 players left, with a $20,000 pay jump after the next elimination. What happened next was totally unacceptable.
A player went all in, leaving one chip behind. The other player in the hand said openly in front of everyone at the table, "I am going to let you tank for the pay jump."
At that point, we are no longer playing poker. We are trying to take equity from the other players in the tournament.
There are a lot of opinions going around about this, and I share many of them, including the idea that floor people should be nearby. The floor should enforce a clock sooner and not allow players to stall like this.
The floor doesn't want to play a major role in the decision-making on poker’s biggest stage. We want the players to decide who wins this tournament and make their own decisions, but that only works if they police this behavior themselves.
If you heard me speak at the recent TDA Summit, you know that I believe we shouldn't enforce rules on innocent people to punish the players who are angling. However, sometimes we have to step in.
Players have to police themselves
In this situation, two players are openly colluding, and a table full of players are doing nothing to stop it.
The tournament directors on the floor should be aware of this and step in whenever possible, but they can’t be everywhere at once.
What I don't understand is that I see so many comments and posts about cheaters and collusion. But when it's something like this, the comments all point to it being the tournament director's responsibility.
If players don't want things like action clocks forced on you in the late stages of big tournaments, they need to police themselves in situations like this and call it out immediately.
In my opinion, this is the same thing as if an entire table full of players on a satellite said, "Let's just fold until everybody's out, and then we'll all get a seat." That's something pretty much everyone would agree is open collusion, and needs to be punished and stopped.
This is the exact same thing, but worse. It's a huge pay jump in the biggest tournament that we have. I think every player at that table should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen.
Protecting the integrity of the game
As a tournament director, I want as little influence as possible over your tournament. But I am also tasked with protecting its integrity, and that is the issue here.
The spot that we are talking about here is one where I would need to insert myself.
I would be calling the clock immediately. I would be splitting the pay jumps if there were one. At the very least, this is a situation in which the new chip penalties issued by the TDA at the Summit this year would come into play.
If a player says to the entire table, "I'm not going to play poker until you lock up a bigger payout at the expense of everyone else in the tournament" – that is worthy of a penalty. In fact, that is worthy of a multiple-round penalty, maybe a five-big-blind penalty, because we need to disincentivize this behavior as much as possible.
As much as I agree that tournament directors should step in, players also have an obligation to police themselves, and they should not be allowing this to happen. If you witness it and choose not to speak up, you're enabling collusion, which I don't think any of us want.
I was very disappointed to see this happen on poker’s biggest stage.
Justin Hammer is the Live Events Director for PokerAtlas, an online tournament director for the Texas-based poker app Hijack, and a tournament director at Thunder Valley Casino Resort. He also works as a consultant and is a minority owner of Desert Bluffs Casino in Kennewick, Washington.
For more info visit PokerAtlas.com, HijackPoker.com, and bluffs.poker. Follow Justin on X.
