Jim Reid is a longtime lover of poker, a member of the PokerOrg Player Advisory Board, and host of the popular RecPoker podcast.
Many of you have already heard about William Kassouf’s behavior in the WSOP Main Event and the penalties that he’s received for it.
I’d say there are three different elements to this, and they all have different issues and remedies: Stalling, chatter, and insulting or abusive language.
Personally, I believe that chatter and stalling have a natural place in the game of poker, that infractions of this type matter by degree, and that context should inform enforcement.
Today I’m going to focus only on these two issues because the third element, insulting or abusive behavior, is never appropriate and shouldn’t have to be part of a poker player’s experience.
Why is it a problem?
Aside from turning off new players — and modeling bad behavior for the players that decide they like what they see — Kassouf’s chatter and stalling negatively impact the playing experience of many, if not all, of the participants in his area. This is already a big problem for people like me who want the folks who play poker to have fun doing it, and it relates to several ways that we as a community already penalize players who contribute to a negative playing experience.
Most players know about WSOP Rule 80 for this already; players can call the clock if they think someone is stalling, and they will be given five to 30 seconds to take their action before their hand is declared dead and mucked.
But it’s hard to make perfect rules to anticipate every type of line-stepper, and when bad-faith actors continue to flaunt the spirit of the rules, we rightly allow floor staff to exercise discretion.
For example, depending on who you have played with over the years, you might not believe this, but the WSOP has a rule about how smelly you can be at the tables!
2025 WSOP Tournament Rules - rule 40d. 'This rule shall include, but is not limited to, any Participant whose personal hygiene has become disruptive to the other Participants seated at their table. The determination as to whether an individual’s personal hygiene is disruptive to other Participants shall be determined by WSOP Personnel which may, in its discretion, implement sanctions upon any such Participant…'
This is actually very similar to the Kassouf problem, except with him it’s not his B.O. causing the disruption: it's his rancid word salad that’s contaminating the air around him and impacting the other players in the tournament.
Now, if you are thinking, 'Geez, Jim, hygiene? That’s a bit of a stretch' — don’t worry; as amusing as that notion is, they actually also have a rule that specifically covers ‘excessive chatter,’ and it would be hard not to agree that this fits the bill:
2025 WSOP Tournament Rules - rule 48. '...Repeated etiquette violations, including, but not limited to… delay of game and excessive chatter will result in penalties.'
So what went wrong?
So if we already have rules against this kind of thing, why was Kassouf able to advance so far into the tournament without incurring more penalties?
Should there be more specific restrictions on how players that are not in the hand are allowed to impact the attention or focus of the active players? Every time I’ve seen several people at a poker table all talking over one another, a floor person has come over and told them all to be quiet because it’s disruptive to the other players.
Is it not disruptive when it’s just one person doing it? Would we allow every player at the table to talk non-stop whether they were in a hand or not? Of course not. But do we really need a new rule to prevent it?
Should there be more specific restrictions on all other players when the action is not on them or when it’s not their turn? This seems excessive, and just like with the example above, I would argue that we don’t need more specific rules; we need more consistent enforcement of the discretionary powers available to the floor.
Take Al Capone: the authorities never could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Capone was a crime lord or a killer, but they could prove that he illegally evaded taxes, and they sent him to jail for that.
Would they vigorously prosecute everyone who they suspect may have evaded taxes and send them to jail? No, just like they probably wouldn’t send you to jail for stopping to rest under a ‘no loitering’ sign for the first time. But it’s an option that is available to them if someone is repeatedly abusing the flexibility of the rules.
This is why the quality of the floor staff and their ability to exercise discretion are so important: some participants cross the line from making innocent mistakes to being bad-faith actors and intentionally and habitually acting out. This is why a player who stalls on every hand for three hours should be treated differently than a player who stalls for one hand on the bubble, even though you could argue that neither was a great example of good sportsmanship.
Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt and the spirit of the rule, but habitual line-steppers open themselves up to the letter of the law.
Deal with the issue early
Some people are suggesting that the WSOP officials went too far with their penalties. I happen to have worked with several of the floor staff involved and I have known them to exercise good judgment when interpreting the rules and dealing with edge cases like Kassouf and Martin Kabrhel, who also faced penalties for similar behavior over the series.
I don’t think they overstepped — if anything, I think WSOP officials should have stepped in earlier to begin the enforcement of the spirit of the rules and set the tone for Kassouf’s play throughout the entire series.
Maybe if he had been held to a stricter standard earlier, his antics towards the end of the Main Event could have been avoided?
But that also depends on the players themselves to do the right thing and get the floor involved when it’s called for. I’ve said many times that the poker community needs to do a better job of ostracizing disruptive players, and that’s not something the authorities can do without our enthusiastic support and initiative.
The dealer can’t call the clock, and the dealer can’t complain about the noise — or the smell — but the players can, and we all need to play our parts if we are going to reduce the number of ‘unhygienic’ players like William Kassouf at our tables.
