Flop at WSOP had two of the same card on it -- then people were reportedly threatened with bans for taking pictures

Very bizarre story out of the WSOP today. Apparently this occurred at the Mystery Bounty event, and NOT Day 1A of the Main, which was taking place at the same time.

https://twitter.com/DeMaci_Poker/sta...20975501369344

https://twitter.com/loltaxes/status/1543723368473432069

https://twitter.com/Gags30poker/stat...20960863322112

https://twitter.com/Mixilplik_/statu...54794426781697




Coverup worse than the crime?

Did the WSOP really threaten Caesars bans if anyone took pics of this and posted to social media? Or was it a coincidence that the "no flash photography or video, or you get banned" announcement took place in the same event where this deck fail occurred?

I wasn't there, but I will give some analysis in the next post.

Sooo... where to begin with this one?

This is just absolutely bizarre. The faulty deck is the least of the problems here. This has happened before at the WSOP, and at other tournaments. It's not good that this occurs, but it's a fact of life in poker that every once in awhile such a thing will happen.

If WSOP simply apologized for the bad deck (or even just ignored it and let people snicker at it on Twitter), this would be a non-story.

Unfortunately, their apparent bizarre reaction to the situation has made the whole thing look 100x worse.

However, at the same time, you know how the rumor mill goes. Lots of times people make up stories, or fill in blanks with made-up narrative, and suddenly we have an inaccurate picture of what really went down.

So did the WSOP really threaten to ban people from Caesars properties for posting the above picture with the double three of spades on the flop? I'm trying to piece that together.

Continued next message...

Not wanting to just take the peanut gallery's word for it (because I've seen anti-WSOP hysteria get out of control in the past, and the narrative morphed), I put out some feelers on Twitter.

A guy who was apparently there provided some:

https://twitter.com/tjreidpoker/stat...72843015790592
https://twitter.com/tjreidpoker/stat...84611016527872
https://twitter.com/tjreidpoker/stat...85685035134978


So it looks like, from this guy's account of the situation, this is what happened:

1) The LOL double-card flop happened, and word spread quickly.

2) A floorwoman or middle manager panicked and worried that this would embarrass the WSOP on social media. She decided to attempt to suppress the incident by telling everyone that they'd be disqualified and banned for taking "unauthorized photography" of the tournament area, attempting to cite a little-enforced rule there in order to take control of this situation.

3) Everyone booed and got outraged, and she quickly modified it to "no flash photography and no video", which I'm not sure really does much to prevent this, but perhaps she thought that would be some kind of middle ground to still scare people out of this.

4) This simply created far more outrage than there otherwise would have been, as the attempt to cover this up was the big problem -- not the erroneous deck itself.



I think the above is likely what occurred. In my 17 years of playing the WSOP, I've never once heard any kind of announcement about a ban for taking pictures/video. Clearly it had to do with this situation.

Bad look.