Obnoxious vendors and massage girls at the WSOP

I haven't yet set foot in the halls of the WSOP, so I am only going by what Brandon told me on radio.

However, I fully believe that his reports are accurate.

Brandon has played 3 WSOP events.

In all three events, he dealt with the following:

- Overaggressive hallway vendors who jumped out in front of him and obnoxiously demanded he listen to their sales pitch. When he told one of them that he was busy and needed to keep walking, the guy said, "Okay! But promise me you'll come back when you're done!" I also experienced this over the past 2 years, as did Brandon, but he said it was worse than ever in 2017.

- Massage girls tapping him on the shoulder and asking if he needed a massage DURING WSOP EVENTS. This has never happened to me before (or Brandon, for that matter), but he reported that it occurred all three times he played so far. While they didn't hassle him when he had cards in front of him, they were tapping him on the shoulder when he wasn't in a hand, and interrupting his concentration at the table.

Obviously both are unacceptable, but the massage thing is the worse of the two.

I have a fairly good relationship with Caesars VP of Marketing Seth Palansky, who is one of the three top managers at the WSOP (the other two being Jack Effel and Ty Stewart). I reported this to Seth, and suggested the following:

- Vendors should be told not to approach players walking in the hallway, and should only talk to people who seem genuinely interested in their product.

- Massage girls should never bother players at the table. If a player wants a massage, he/she should initiate the contact with the massage girl, and not the other way around.


Seth responded by telling me that he was very surprised about the massage girls, as he had not received any reports like that yet. However, he said that he contacted the owner of the massage company and asked him to reiterate to the girls what is appropriate behavior.

He did acknowledge that he had received other complaints about the hallway vendors, and told me that they are in the process of putting a stop to this.


To be clear, as none of these people are WSOP employees, I do not blame the WSOP for these situations. I am happy that the WSOP is willing to address the issues I raised, and that they're correcting the problems.