it was until they required everyone to buyin with their player’s card for STS. I can’t remember the exact year.

Maybe 5 years ago.

Guy hired by WSOP to open bounties in a jack sparrow costume trespassed by CET for the prop guns included in the costume after he busted the main on day 5

Common sense ruling the day once more

I get the rule, but JFC Caesar's/WSOP. This is lunacy.

WSOP will always have a lot of bad dealers. Any tournament series that big will not be able to bring in enough competent dealers for a temp job. They would have to pay a lot more, which means they would have to charge higher juice.

STT's used to collect at the table, but I suspect cash got lost from time to time before it got to the cage. Cage is now the only entity that handles the cash. Yes, it "worked" before but there would be lots of shoving and near-fights as 30 people want the 10 seats. They tried a system where people lined up and they gave out cards when a table opened, but some of those cards went missing as people took them home for souvenirs. It's also aggravating to the players because they had to commit to stand in a certain line and couldn't change their mind to play a $275 if they're in a $175 line. I've played those things since they were in the Amazon room, and the current system is the best compromise.

The registration software is ancient (think DOS screens) and poorly developed. They aren't going to re-write it. It's like the y2k thing, it's too deeply embedded and would affect too many other systems. The company would be much better overall to revamp it all, but as a lifetime IT worker, I can tell you IT is a cost center to the corporation, not a profit center. Spend as little as possible on it is the prevailing theme.

I agree that the overall job was excellent. I think people tend to focus on things that go wrong and don't give enough credit for the vast amount that goes right. The scale of operations is in a different league to any other event, and I am amazed that most things go so well.

One constructive criticism that I would offer is that they could do with better signage about which desk to visit for what purpose, and in particular indicating when events have been cancelled. I wasted a lot of time when I was directed to the wrong line. In the first few days of the Main, a number of Deepstacks were cancelled, and I know I was not alone in queueing only to reach the cage before finding this out.

A simple noticeboard showing cancelled or moved events would be easy to manage and save much more time than it takes to do.

He wasn't hired to keep wearing the costume after the bounty tournament. Are you sure he's being completely honest?

I played with this guy at a tourney and he was EXTREMELY full of himself and FOS, so I wouldn't be shocked in the least if the public story is missing a lot of information.

I wouldn't expect that from the WSOP any time soon.

Did they post any notice on tweeter?

I’m always impressed by the sheer amount of things going on at WSOP and how well what has to be a logistical nightmare gets pulled off

I think they have to do more for their cash game players though. Can’t just have 20 cash games going with lists of 80-90 for nlhe and only one table of certain games such as OE and mix. It’s impossible to get into a game if you aren’t a diamond or seven star with only one game going.

Either pay dealers more or cap the daily deep stack. But I think the dealers left in droves during the series and cash games didn’t have nearly enough dealers even though the deep stack was cancelled

They could just go with all NLHE all the time and only do other games at stakes found in the King's Lounge. That would probably make more money and cause fewer dealers to quit. I play the other games and I am always conscious of this fact, so I always feel like they are doing players like me a favor by not prioritizing hold 'em.

You could try coming early and starting the game.

I’m not sure what you are saying, I think they should allocate enough dealers to be able to provide at least 60 cash games

And if there’s enough interest for games like mixed and OE start the second game of that variety as opposed to the 15th 1/3 nlhe

As it was this year, if someone wanted to play mix and weren’t a diamond or 7star they basically had to show up at something like 4am and hope a seat was open

They didn’t have enough dealers to gracefully handle the large field events as it was. And those will always take priority over cash because of revenue and perception reasons. There aren’t too many people who show up at the WSOP and say, hey, this line at the cash table is ridiculous. However there are thousands of people who show up and talk about the length of the tournament lines. Some of that is their registration process, but it also has to do with the availability of tables and dealers.

It's a tournament series. Cash games should be the lowest priority.

To anybody who played this year, how far was the walk from Paris room to Ballys room compared to say Rio's regular poker room to the big rooms where the WSOP was actually held?

Not bad, IIRC. The Paris rooms are not far from the little connector hallway that runs between the two. Walk through that, across a little of the back of Bally's toward the elevators, turn right, the Bally's rooms are just a little way down that hall. I'd guess ~1/2 mile (?). Maybe 10 minutes.

I am a walker by nature, so others may think it's a long way. To me, it was short.

WSOP at it's inception was mostly meant to gather poker players intrigued by tournaments and then hopefully fleece them at the cash games after they bustout

Of course WSOP events take top priority, but you don't really need three different $200 daily deepstacks in a day or whatever they were doing. I would imagine they make more on a cash game table than a table of players at a deepstack. The dealers make more money on cash game tables too.

But the dealer situation did get so bad they did cancel some deepstacks, so yeah those days cash is out of luck

Feels shorter to me. Paris ballroom to Bally's event center is quite a short walk.

Rio poker room was on the total opposite end of the property. Had to play the Colossus there in 2019 and it was a trek when they perp walked us to back pavilion.

I felt like it was shorter than the other guy mentioned as well. More like 5 minutes tops. But of course, everyone walks at their own pace. And there can be congestion during breaks.

It will be interesting what it’s like next year after they have learned some lessons. I also heard rumors of a number of significant changes to the Ballys side of things coming up so it might be a somewhat different experience in the future.

Crazy what happened in Paris at the WSOP yesterday. Goes to show how dangerous the easy flow of bad information can be.

So weird. Every year it seems the fire alarm goes off in one of these events. Some people look up but otherwise it’s as if nothing happened. A few years ago there was an earthquake. Same thing. Chandeliers were swaying. No one even batted an eye after a few seconds.

But here, a few uninformed and potentially irresponsible tweets go out and all of a sudden you have a stampede a mile away from a relatively innocuous incident. Goes to show how tuned up people are by the media and the images/information we consume throughout the waking day.

There are players who insist they heard what sounded like gunshots at Paris/Bally's.

Brianr - I AM an accountant (CPA with a dusty shingle ) and you are correct.

Hunt4sky - Yes you can deduct any gambling losses or buy in from your wins BUT and it is a HUGE BUT only if you are itemizing your deductions. The VAST majority of people under the current standard deduction and limitations on deductions for Taxes no longer itemize. If you do not itemize then ANY GROSS winnings are taxable whether they are documented by a W2G or not. However from a practical sense only W2G amounts are typically reported. In theory you could lose $20,000 NET playing slots and still be required to PAY tax on your reported winnings. Realize the Tax law is the Tax law and doesn't have to make common sense or necessarily be "fair".

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc419
https://www.irs.gov/help/ita/how-do-...s-andor-losses

Thanks appreciate this, and correct. I made my statement under the assumption that anyone that plays tournament poker regularly would be better off itemizing or has other deductions (as I do). Standard deduction is not that much (something like $12k) and I would think someone that plays a lot of tournaments and pays a lot of entries (like most of the people at WSOP) would rack up a pretty sizable gambling wins/losses that would make it advantageous to itemize. Probably a bad assumption.

I would definitely say less than 10 minutes tops. I stayed at Bally’s and was able to get to my room from Paris on breaks in about 6 minutes, which was me literally walking into my room. The Bally’s poker areas were maybe a couple minutes from the elevators.

Maybe so. Who’s to say what someone heard or thought they heard. And it is reasonable to imagine a small number of people freaked out and this led to other people following by example. But still. There was no obvious threat inside the Paris ballroom. Even folks like DNegs (who continued his abysmal run at the WSOP this year by suffering what appeared to be one of the worst injuries from the melee) stated that if he had just stopped to look back and assess the danger, he might not have been hurt the way he was.

It’s really lucky no one was seriously injured or killed. I mean, if somebody fell the wrong way, or suffered a heart attack or something and died, what would the conversation be like today?

I’m not sitting here perched on a pedestal saying I would not have done the same thing. That’s impossible to know since I wasn’t present. What I am saying is, if I had done the same, it would have been wrong. I would have been disappointed in myself.

How many times do we hear about people dying tragically during real emergencies, not because of whatever was causing the danger, but because of panic. This was not even remotely a real emergency. But it easily could have turned into one. Critical thinking, self control and yes, concern for others’ well-being, seemed to go out the window Saturday night. One would think the bombardment of pictures and stories of crises all around the world would make us think about these things and how we would react. One would think they would make us better prepared to deal with crises. Seems like the opposite is true.

Hopefully this situation will help the security and other personnel at the WSOP be better trained to deal with stuff like this. Hopefully players will be better prepared too.