Lexy Gavin-Mather is a poker author, influencer, and also hosted Poker Night in America. I'm guessing she's around 40 years old, and she's married to Bob Mather, a former PI who has moved onto other businesses. Bob is a recreational player. I don't really know Lexy, but I've had some conversations with Bob, and I generally like him. Bob is about 20 years or so older than Lexy, but that doesn't have anything to do with this story (nor does Bob himself). I'm just giving you a bit of background.
In general, Lexy seems easygoing and doesn't typically involve herself in drama.
Anyway, because of the very large number of dealers needed for WSOP, they basically take all comers. Therefore, some dealers are good, some are okay, and some are horrendous. The dealer in this particular hand was one of the terrible ones.
This hand featured an all-in of Lexy's 77 versus another player's TT. The other player had her covered.
Unfortunately, just as the dealer burned and spread the flop, he was interrupted by a floorman before he could turn over the cards. The floorman made a mistake interrupting the hand, but the dealer should have, at minimum, turned over the flop if he really wanted to pause the action to speak to floorman.
I believe the below video of this hand was taken by Lexy:
https://twitter.com/2littlemice/status/1939741399529722167
After the dealer idiotically mucked the flop, everyone (understandably) flipped out, and he pulled it back out. When he spread the flop, there were 4 cards! Oops! 7 was in the door, and the rest of the flop read J25.
The dealer was about to get rid of the 7, but Lexy directed him to keep the 7 and get rid of the J, giving her a huge edge in a hand where she was a big dog preflop, and indeed she doubled.
If you watch it a few times, you'll see that the 7 was most likely the top muck card, and NOT the J.
People on X were angry about this.
Mike Dentale said it well:
https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1939764776403706281
Lexy attempted to defend herself, and of course Bob backed her up:
https://twitter.com/BobMatherPoker/status/1939824573425565920
The majority of dealers do a fantastic job. This particular situation was challenging. I saw a 7 in the window and honestly thought that was the original flop (the table agreed- even the person with TT). I didn’t have the ability to rewind and watch in slow motion. Looking back at the footage, I can see the argument that the 7 came from the muck. I do believe that this dealer was too inexperienced to be dealing.
The vast majority of people on X believe that the 7 was from the muck, and are giving Lexy a hard time for directing it to stay.
The correct solution here, once the dealer put the flop in the muck, was to do a complete reshuffle of all cards (other than the 77 and TT), and start running out the board from there. So it would be reshuffle-burn-flop-burn-turn-burn-river.
But that's not what happened. It's not clear why the floor didn't intervene here. What a mess.
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