When Chance Kornuth made a guest appearance on the Raise Your Edge podcast this week, he shared a suspicion about how the WSOP’s televised feature tables are put together.
While the serial winner stopped short of alleging foul play, he insists the seat draw that saw him moved to the feature table on Day 5 of last year’s Main Event did “not feel random to me”.
And once he took his seat at the feature table, alongside players he felt were “literally made for TV” – including Nicholas ‘Dirty Diaper’ Rigby – it wasn’t long before he made what he feels was one of the biggest mistakes he’s ever made in the Main Event.
Facing a pre-flop all-in for his entire stack, Kornuth quickly elected to call with 
, only to run headlong into Rigby’s 
and hit the rail. Click the video at the top of this page to view the entire hand.
Rigby, standing, and Kornuth were two of the biggest stacks at the table“Obviously it can never be proven, they would never admit it”
Speaking with Benjamin Rolle on the podcast, Kornuth laid out the situation as he remembered it from last summer. It was Day 5, and his table was breaking.
“The Floor is shuffling the cards for a table break…the dealer passes them out and he looks at me and he says, ‘If your card has X on it, you’re at the feature table’, and I’m just so f**king sure that I’m going to be at the feature table.
“We're in this tournament, the Main Event with 600 people left, and the last 10 people that get moved to this feature table are literally made for TV, like myself, other elite pros, big fish. And I look at this, and I’m one of the best in the world at pattern recognition, and I could just see that this would not feel random to me.
“Obviously it could never be proven, they would never admit it, but I think there’s at least a high chance. Whether it was rigged or not, mentally I was very hung up on it.”
As you can see in the interview (the topic is raised around the 31-minute mark). Kornuth doesn’t lay the blame for his tournament exit squarely on the seat draw. He was unsettled, but also unwell, and admits to being somewhat “wrapped up in the lore that is Rigby”. Yet the thought that any seat draws in a tournament are manufactured or rigged is one that would concern any player.
The WSOP denies any manipulation
PokerOrg reached out to the WSOP for comment and got a statement from Ty Stewart, Executive Director of the WSOP, with a firm denial that any behind-the-scenes manipulation was going on.
“Integrity of play is, has been, and will always be of the utmost importance to the WSOP,” Stewart told us. “Whether it’s the length of levels, blind structures, or many related decisions in WSOP tournament play, the play itself always dictates production versus the other way around.
“Certainly, during a multi-table event, production constantly monitors which tables might be interesting for viewers and rotates them to the feature table, but we’re not manipulating draws.”
What do you think? Have you ever played on a feature table, and did it affect your play? Let us know via the usual PokerOrg social channels.
