The WSOP should add a new event. The 28yr old douche survivor event.

It should run concurrently with the Seniors event.

Honestly, I think a multi-day tournament is an absolute public health nightmare, and if WSOP won't voluntarily cancel, they should be forced to by the government if things are still bad in a month or so.

Casinos in general are absolutely terrible for spreading disease, but a big multi-day tournament is the worst possible thing in a casino.

Consider the following:

You buy in for Day 1A of the main, which was on July 3 last year. You do well and run up a healthy stack. You are scheduled for Day 2AB on July 6. You go out on July 4th to party a bit and gamble and enjoy Vegas. July 5th you start getting a cough and running a low grade fever. July 6th the cough is worse but you're able to get up and about with some tylenol.

Are you abandoning your $10k entry and over $10k EV chipstack? That's a lot to ask of someone to stop the spread of a virus. But if you go sit down, you're basically dooming your table mates, and probably a bunch of others to get the virus.

Giving people tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of incentive to be in close contact with others even if they feel sick is an absolutely disastrous idea. If you were a normal casino gambler, you could stop when you felt sick, but a multiday tournament forces you to sacrifice huge amounts of money to follow even the most basic public health precautions of not being around a bunch of people when you're hacking up germs everywhere.

This creates a unique problem and might open up some lawsuits. If a person put up 10,000 to enter the tournament you just can't randomly move them from the table for some arbitrary amount of coughing and sneezing. There would have to be some new rule put in the WSOP set of rules. The players would have to agree that a tournament official had the discretion to remove a player due to excessive coughing and sneezing. But how in the hell could that be determined---6 coughs in a minute, 10 coughs in a minute. What if the person does not cover his cough or coughs in the direction of the dealer or another player after a bad beat?

I still prefer that the current ratio of live events to online events be reversed from 87 to 14 in favor of live (which is the case now) to 87 to 14 in favor of online (which is what I have been suggesting for some time now).

But I may have come up with the most GTO compliant suggestion of all:

All live events could have an online option. In other words, if a person wanted to play a 3k NLH event, he could choose the option of playing that event exclusively online. His incentive for doing so is that he would only have to pay 1/4 the rake of that of the live games option.

The final tables of the events should still be live but be in a very hygienic room without a live audience.

I think that this suggestion is the most GTO solution of all.

CFR by age

• 14.80% - 80 years or older
• 8.00% - 70-79 years
• 3.60% - 60-69 years
• 1.30% - 50-59 years

2100 entries in last years 1k Senoirs 60+ event.

Let's say that 10% get infected - looking from the experts this is a conservative number.

210 infected, so we can expect at least 8 deaths (possibly more when you factor in the over 70s playing).

However, as this virus has a long incubation period, these people will go home and infect their wives and friends too.

Plus we have all the other seniors events round town too.

And 5900 players in the 50+ Senoirs events.

Some people have said that due to the Vegas heat this virus might be killed that way; in my experience, the older guys tend to just stay at the Rio and not leave the building as they love the grind. The Rio will be like a cruise ship but on land.

Ban everyone over 70 and send them to the Orleans to play in their own WSOP supported event called "the Golden Seniors WSOP Championships".

FYI, life expectancy in the US is 78 years old.

If the WSOP does go ahead, one thing that they should definately do is at every break the players have to dump their chips in a bucket of disinfectant and dry them off. Allow an extra 10 mins every break to allow for this.

Also at the end of the day, chips are just counted, recorded and verified so the chips can be deep cleaned and you just come back to a fresh stack at your day 2/3 etc table.

And fresh decks every break too.

My reading is that the WSOP organisers are not planning to cancel this year's event, so the only thing that would change this is government pressure, or government intervention.

Are there any legal experts here who can advise me. If a player attends and catches Coronavirus and dies, could his family have grounds to sue the WSOP organisers for negligence, as this thread is full of health risks in playing the WSOP, so the risks are known in advance, so if the organisers carry on regardless it looks to my admittedly non legal eyes as though they are leaving themselves open to negligence claims.

And those who catch it, and then have to take a fortnight off work for isolation, could they sue damages for loss of income?

I highly doubt it. Even if the WSOP goes ahead, no one is forced to play (see how Partypoker/WPT are being flexible with any sat winners to transfer to future events) . One would assume that there will be a visible increase in cleaners, extra hand sanitisers and making sure every toilet/sink is wokring.

Maybe would be different if it was in a work place and the bosses didn't act/covered it up. I'd imagine any WSOP staff contracts this year will have a specific waiver regarding this virus included.

I would guess when you sign up for a tournament you have to sign a form waiving them of any wrongdoing if you die.

FWIW the life expectancy in the US for 70 year olds is greater than 78 y/o. DUCY?
I thought you regged in 2018, not that you were born then. Zing! Not that it matters.

Also, common legal concept of "ASSUMPTION OF THE RISK." As you point out, this thread contains a discussion of the obvious risks. If a player chooses to disregard those risks, why would someone else be responsible for that?

I do wonder if any of the smaller series will blind first and cancel or if they are all waiting for the WSOP.

The hit on the Vegas economy will be so so hard. Isn't the WSOP the only big event that t he Rio hosts? All the $100+ night rooms, the punting on the slots and the pit, all the restaurnts and bars. The poor dealers who have probably already paid for their flights and accomodation. The waitresses who earn mega tips. The AAD crew. The Rhino and the hard working ladies you see at the hooker bars.

Just seen that Twitch con in Amsterdam cancelled their event taking place early May. You'd have to imagine the amount of social interaction and the average age of the attendee is nowhere near to the risks associated with a poker tournament.

The Arnold Classic in Columbus Ohio was cancelled except for the actual physical events. They closed the EXPO down, which usually saw about 250k people go through each year.

The events are being held with only parents allowed to watch their children compete.

So just HOW many shares of casino stocks DID you short? You are even worse than the mainstream media at fear-mongering. What IS your motivation?

On the bright side...covidiots like you are making my travel costs go down. My steak dinner at Andiamo the other night cost me more than my trip to/from Las Vegas...

He gets everything else wrong, why would you EVER have expected that covidiot to be correct in his terminology about the ending of the world?

Good post; I hadn't thought of it this way before.

What is your hope here, that if you keep posting this, everyone will be convinced that you have the best idea ever and will shower you with praise?

I think it would be quite amusing if you were to explain what point you're trying to make with this information.

If I wanted to wait until Tuesday and was willing to fly Basic Economy, I can get one-way, non-stop out of Houston IAH for $54. That is just ten bucks more than I paid a week ago with two weeks notice.

(they charge you to select a seat, but you don't necessarily get stuck with a middle going Basic Economy)

It is certainly a more effective use of awards to forego the award travel and pay cash for a lot of the domestic travel...six day round-trip (non-stop) departing on a Saturday in June was $97.

Who cares about WSOP bracelets? In Britain we're playing heads up for rolls.

Unfortunately a Canadian in Ontario with the virus recently visited Las Vegas.

Sure, blame Canada. Everyone else does.

I'm hopeful of that, but temperatures have hit 32 degrees (89+ fahrenheit) in Singapore every day for the past two weeks [source], and the number of cases there has risen exponentially. It's been pretty cloudy there though and - as we learned ITT - clouds are the source of all bad things.

Tbf, this doesn’t disprove that it spreads more easily in colder temps. (I’m pretty sure humidity combined with temps actually does alter the spread). But, We’d have to wait a few weeks/months for the incubation period to catch up. Cause most of the current cases would’ve been contracted previous to that two week period.

If anyone believes that the heat will kill the virus, I'd love to hear how the science of this works, because I sure can't make sense of it, in the context of Vegas. It's not like the virus is some singular living being that's going to wander outside, die of the heat, and then no one in Vegas will be infected.

I would envision the scenario as everyone's hanging out inside in the AC, transmitting the disease to one another just like it's anywhere else - or worse, because they're all spending their time indoors gathered together in circulated air.

I could maybe see making the argument for it being different in a destination like Hawaii where the attraction is being outside, but aside from the small % of sunbathers at the pools, that's not why most people are in Vegas. And even most of those sunbathers will spend a lot of their time in the casinos.

It's a happy thought, but I don't see the desert heat making the least bit of difference.