
Originally Posted by
Daly
How in the world is there not a Kassouf thread on page one with the main event run he's on the the "bullshit" ruling Jack has put on him (or "well deserved" if you on the other side if it).
It’s a very difficult situation I got to say. Neither party ends up looking good here. I will say the “perp walk” at the end made him a much more sympathetic figure. Effell should have asked him to come to speak to him privately and said basically “Will, for both of our best interests we are not going to allow you to come back to the Horseshoe/Paris for the rest of the summer”.
He could have said we will revisit this decision next year and meet privately. That this is a “cooling off” period that needs to happen for both sides. Rather than this huge show of force But Effell is always so heavy handed. He basically had his goons do his work for him here.
I think you got to cut him off for this year at least. Like I said, I think it’s best for both parties. But they did it the wrong way.
I’m not going to diagnose Will and look, he had a very profitable couple of weeks regardless. But the lack of sleep he gets was certainly making him less & less able to have a reasonable conversation as the tournament went on. I don’t think I need a fancy degree to say he was pretty much full blown manic by the end of the tournament.
Now, I don’t know how many times someone at the WSOP warned him to tone it down before they all of a sudden seemed to go from 0 to 100 on him. If they did really try and failed I would give the WSOP some grace here. But it doesn’t appear that they did so. Like I said, both sides seem to handle this poorly. No one comes out of this looking good. From Kassouf, to PokerGO and to the WSOP. Just a poor look all around.
I think it’s clear the “perp walk” was the WSOP both trying to save face and feeding red meat to a few well known voices who really wanted the WSOP to drop the hammer on him. So they did it in a public and humiliating fashion to make up for mishandling the situation by not being more proactive in the first place.
The other thing I would note is if this wasn’t “Will Kassouf” and some unknown person was acting like him at the table they would of been penalized rather quickly and if they carried on, disqualified way before the money. That is truly my belief. They gave him a long leash because of who he is.
I am 99% that if I was acting like him they would have called the floor on my ass in relatively short order. I would have been penalized rather quickly and DQed if I carried on. I have very little doubt about that. It’s all a matter of how you describe it. Is it table talk, bullying, harassment, etc? However you look at it it’s flying to close to the sun and playing with fire. It’s so subjective that most people wouldn’t dare take the chance of being penalized or ultimately disqualified.
So my conclusion would be Will ended up winning here. He got his 300K, he wasn’t DQed and they were probably going to ban him either way after he cashed. So they did it in a way that made him more sympathetic. So he’s the winner and the WSOP is the ultimate loser here. But I am sure they don’t give two shits about it either way.
Really best thing for Will is to take some of that money and do some introspection and work on whatever he’s got going. The ban is really a blessing. But you never know a person’s personal situation and if they are in such a position to do so.