Aside from the ridiculous Facebook/Google login required to see WSOP updates, the series has gone fairly smoothly thus far, mostly avoiding scandal and embarrassment.

Compare this to last year, when we had controversies about bad structures, bad playing cards, pre-reg difficulties, a poorly-handled card marking scandal... and 2016 seems downright dull. (Yes, I know it's still early.)

But we do have some pissed off people about a new event, called the Top Up Turbo.

This was a fairly stupid $1k NL Holdem tournament, with a gimmick tied to WSOP.com's online poker site. You would start with 5,000 chips, but would also start with an additional 5,000 if you either:

1) Won a special sit-n-go at WSOP.com
-or-
2) Won a special sit-n-go live at the Rio
-or-
3) Paid an extra $1000 to get the 5,000 chips if neither of the above two applied

Some players were willing to fork over the extra $1k, until they learned this:



Yes, the "top up" buyin was also raked -- a brutal 10%.

In a way I understand why the WSOP did this (those who had to win the chips paid rake), but it just makes for bad PR and pisses people off. Some pros chose to sit out the event entirely, with some calling it a "scam".









And indeed, the event was a failure.

It received only 667 runners, which was the lowest number of entries ever (by far) for a $1k WSOP event.

Of those 667:

  • 235 won their extra 5k chips online
  • 99 won their extra 5k at the Rio
  • 81 forked over $1000 for the extra 5k chips, paying that $100 rake
  • 252 just didn't get the extra 5k, and started out with half the chips compared to about 2/3 of the field. I was surprised that this many people were okay with such a huge disadvantage.


The event embarrassingly paid just $9506 to Vinny Pahuja, who finished 9th and made the final table. Ouch.

Clearly this one won't be returning next year.

Once again putting nickel-and-diming over image and customer satisfaction, the WSOP netted a paltry $8100 extra by raking the $1000 top-up. Not exactly worth all the controversy and bad PR it generated.