2024 World Series of Poker May 28th to July 17th ***No Spoilers***
The 2024 WSOP will take place at Horseshoe Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas from May 28 to July 17, 2024, with the Main Event running from July 3 to July 17. The Main Event – poker’s undisputed freezeout world championship – will have four starting days, beginning on Wednesday, July 3. Players may also register directly on Day 2.
If they’re cheating online then they’re scumbags. That’s not arguable
How Tamayo won the main is completely distasteful bullshit but when you’re playing for lifechanging money and (I think I read) one of your backers is the guy on the laptop I can’t sit here saying anything other than ‘well griff got jobbed but technically nothing happened that was illegal’
And to your earlier point, if Tamayo actually pulled **** that was illegal, why wasn’t that en
Oh I fault wsop way more actually bc they should have enforced their own edict.
But with that said they did this knowing wsop said this type of thing isn't allowed figuring at worst they'd get a warning.
How is that really any different than running RTA at home or colluding knowing in reality nothing is going to happen to you?
I agree wsop should have stopped but id love if they banned these guys from playing going forward which is well within their rights.
Oh I fault wsop way more actually bc they should have enforced their own edict.
But with that said they did this knowing wsop said this type of thing isn't allowed figuring at worst they'd get a warning.
How is that really any different than running RTA at home or colluding knowing in reality nothing is going to happen to you?
I agree wsop should have stopped but id love if they banned these guys from playing going forward which is well within their rights.
You’re not wrong
More than anything else it is absolutely wild this happened in plain sight with people knowing this was exactly what they were doing and not a single thing was done about it. My point is more if you can do this, everyone knows you’re doing it, nobody’s going to stop you from doing it, and you get 10 million dollars for doing it, what is going to stop you from going down that road if that’s the road you’re going down?
Maybe someone has already posted this (forgive me for not reading back), but does anyone else find it completely hilarious how many people are stamping their feet and insisting "poker is not a team sport"?
...do these people believe that everyone has 100% of themselves in every tournament?
Like, the toothpaste has LONG been out of the tube on this.
If Tamayo broke no rules (which is my best understanding), all you can do is decide whether the rules need to change in the future.
I'm personally not all that invested. Live NLH MTTs are far from my bread and butter. In terms of what's "good for poker" overall, I'm not sure you can prove much.
My most passionate take (which is not all that passionate) is that I would prefer tournament organizers handled the swapping and selling of pieces themselves. Like I suggested earlier in this comment, this idea that everyone always has 100% of themselves is unhelpfully misleading and I think the added transparency (plus the practical matters of taxation/etc) would be a positive.
But again: this frankly isn't my world. I just found it ridiculous that people actually find it unacceptable that others had a financial interest in Tamayo's result (because this is a super common scenario at live FTs). If "poker isn't a team sport" people had their way, would Alex Foxen have been forbidden from offering any insights to Kristen at the FT had she made it, given their presumably intertwined finances. (Like, even if their marriage has them keeping totally distinct money individually--which is definitely something some people do--there's an implicit intertwining just because their lives are intertwined.)
In terms of tools other than your own brain being available... idk, you can make different arguments, but I think it's hard to know where to draw the line.
The 2024 WSOP rules only forbid using external resources while you are in a hand. I think that anything between that and completely "sequestering" ALL play (not just FT play) is pretty hard to make a completely compelling argument for. Any argument you could make for a final table you could probably also make (and might need to make) for a bubble, which would be far more difficult to enforce, especially for a large field.
And by the way, all of this handwringing kind of assumes that the most advantageous thing you could base your strategy on is solver output.
Maybe I'm showing my own ignorance here (I'd be surprised; I've used both Monker and GTO+ a ton to study in my modest poker career), but--especially if you end up heads-up against a recreational player--strictly going to solver output to guide your play seems... I dunno; it just seems a little unnecessary unless you really need some reminders of what you "should" be doing.
And I don't think a lot of people appreciate how heavy the scare quotes around "should" are. Solvers show us mutually unexploitable strategy given a particular game tree, ranges, etc. That's all. No more and no less.
If your inputs (tree, etc) are not PERFECTLY realistic (let alone node-locking for a player who is far from unexploitable), your outputs just aren't going to be a perfect guide at all.
A valuable resource? Sure.
Just like how MLB hitters do research on a pitcher before facing them. But there's a difference between having that information available and having someone give you some kind of indication when a certain pitch is coming. One is unremarkable, the other is cheating like what the Astros did.
And if players can't consult anything mid-hand, I don't see how the rules allow for "cheating" or advantages that go beyond what MLB hitters might do as research in the dugout.
Or is baseball also "not a team sport" because of the romance of 1v1 pitcher vs batter? Because that's basically exactly the argument these "not a team sport" people are making: "it's only one name per page on Hendon Mob just like it's only one hitter at the plate at a time against one pitcher, baseball is a solo mindsport QED how can you not be romantic about no crying in baseball's three true outcomes".
So can I legally use a solver between hands to look up my next spot or not?
Feels like no one knows for sure.
So the last three years we’ve had some kind of controversy in the final three or heads up that lessened the quality/entertainment.
2022 - Attenborough absurdly long decision making including the 18 minute tank. (Some people made a big deal out of this at least)
2023 - a pretty clear chop between the final three, which caused three very deep stacks to play wild and loose with some bizarre table talk/reactions during hands.
2024 - Tamayo rail RTA coaching.
If Tamayo broke no rules (which is my best understanding), all you can do is decide whether the rules need to change in the future.
Here it is, was said before every tournament except the first couple.
Isn't this saying that he did in fact break the rules if he was using solver software in the tournament area?
So the last three years we’ve had some kind of controversy in the final three or heads up that lessened the quality/entertainment.
2022 - Attenborough absurdly long decision making including the 18 minute tank. (Some people made a big deal out of this at least)
2023 - a pretty clear chop between the final three, which caused three very deep stacks to play wild and loose with some bizarre table talk/reactions during hands.
2024 - Tamayo rail RTA coaching.
Don’t think 2023 is true or at very least it could have happened without a chop, IIRC 88 jammed when flatting would have been awkward, it happens. Most of money is in top 3, so once make top three greater sense of playing with house money.
I also know a guy who would know and everything he indicated to me suggests no chop.
And if I was in that spot I’m not sure how comfortable I would be with chop agreements
Tamayo clearly broke a rule of unclear consistency and priority.
If it isn't in the rulebook (it isn't; the written language is very different from the announcement) but it's announced once per tournament (or even more) but never enforced, how is there any basis to say Tamayo actually broke the rules in any important sense?
If it isn't in the rulebook and it isn't enforced at the final table of the Main Event, I'm going to say it's not a rule in--again--any important sense.
Edit: to be clear, they can make a choice and change/enforce this for 2025 (or the Bahamas/Circuit/whatever). I don't actually care. But you can't point to the rulebook and--if it's some discretionary ad hoc thing--they clearly used their discretion to not enforce/implement this "rule" at the FT of the ME (when enforcement should theoretically be stricter than at any other time). Like, this is just demonstrably true: if the WSOP thought dude's buddy having a laptop (with Monker AFAIK) was a problem, they would have done something about it. And they didn't. De facto not a rule imo.
Don’t think 2023 is true or at very least it could have happened without a chop, IIRC 88 jammed when flatting would have been awkward, it happens. Most of money is in top 3, so once make top three greater sense of playing with house money.
I also know a guy who would know and everything he indicated to me suggests no chop.
And if I was in that spot I’m not sure how comfortable I would be with chop agreements
Yeah you may be right. I remember Shaun Deeb flatly denied any chop had happened. And you’re right about having to do some pretty big trusting when you are unofficially swapping millions of dollars in this case.
I guess it was just pretty stark the difference between the year before with long long agonized decisions and the 2023 almost snap decisions for a lot of chips from both Walton and Jones.
Tamayo clearly broke a rule of unclear consistency and priority.
If it isn't in the rulebook (it isn't; the written language is very different from the announcement) but it's announced once per tournament (or even more) but never enforced, how is there any basis to say Tamayo actually broke the rules in any important sense?
If it isn't in the rulebook and it isn't enforced at the final table of the Main Event, I'm going to say it's not a rule in--again--any important sense.
Edit: to be clear, they
A lot of players played the entire series under the impression that you couldn’t use solvers anywhere in the tournament area at the risk of being DQed.
Maybe someone has already posted this (forgive me for not reading back), but does anyone else find it completely hilarious how many people are stamping their feet and insisting "poker is not a team sport"?
...do these people believe that everyone has 100% of themselves in every tournament?
Like, the toothpaste has LONG been out of the tube on this.
If Tamayo broke no rules (which is my best understanding), all you can do is decide whether the rules need to change in the future.
I'm personally not al
Sadly this is just live player cope. If you can play even close to how a solver plays you would destroy the competition. Try to play a solver heads up and see how much you get wrecked without the solver being node locked at all.
As far as the all or nothing stuff you suggest, the EV of any tournament is highly concentrated in the final table. Therefore the highest interest is in protecting the integrity of the final table. Now that’s just for sequestering, we can still be vigilant and enforce the rules. For instance, we can ban all laptops in the tournament area, and force players to walk away from the table to talk to anyone that’s not in the tournament or part of the staff. The point isn’t to make it impossible to cheat, but rather to make it more difficult to cheat.
Tamayo never touched the device. Nitsche maybe you could suspend for a year.
Any suit has to be against the World Series of Poker for not enforcing their own policy
A lot of players played the entire series under the impression that you couldn’t use solvers anywhere in the tournament area at the risk of being DQed.
Yep. Imagine had this happened at any other time during the series. Like say Day 1 of the main if someone had a buddy by the rail running sims and the guy would go check with him every few minutes within full view of everyone. Zero % chance it would have been allowed to go on.
Having a team of people using solvers and telling you info when you take a few steps to the rail is the same thing as using it yourself.
I’m very confused by the reaction ITT. The modern poker player is about self interest above all else and a mindset of ‘if it isn’t explicitly forbidden that means it’s allowed.’ You can make the argument about ‘ecosystem’ and all that other bullshit but the reality is if even one person is legally exploiting edges then you’d be a sucker to not do the same. You don’t like the rules to allow this? Find a way to get the rules changed then. The guy is playing for $10 million, is in a HU match for $4
It was explicitly forbidden with warnings that it could lead to DQ. Your argument is invalid.
Also as a poker player my interest is in getting a pound of flesh from these GTO nerds that are destroying the game with their RTA and sims. These pricks can’t even keep it in their pants between hands. They make me sick. You think they aren’t cheating online either then I have a bridge to sell you.
The only justification anyone could come up with for why the laptop stuff on the rail should happen is "it was allowed"
Simple solution, don't allow it.
I guess you'll still have Pads relaying his super computer sims to someones ear piece but at least it wont be blatantly out in the open
Don’t ban electronics on the rail just make it a massive fee to have them. You want a laptop there? Fine, $1mil please. Pad or cell? $500K. Whatever.
Or ban electronics and jam/block cell signals and RF.
Bunch of comments in here from Dominik and many others about it.
Nobody on the rail can have a phone/iPad/computer seems like a pretty simple solution but what do I know
I don’t think the poker media world was anticipating this strong of negative reaction to it. That above post seems like it trying to be “cutesy” about it. And PokerGO was also posting positive things about Tamayo’s team. The avalanche of negative replies has taken them aback.
LOLOL!!!!! Thanks for toughing it through the end of the series!!!!!!
I don’t think the poker media world was anticipating this strong of negative reaction to it. That above post seems like it trying to be “cutesy” about it. And PokerGO was also posting positive things about Tamayo’s team. The avalanche of negative replies has taken them aback.
They forgot that we're living in peak outrage culture where people want a reason to feel angry about everything. There's a tendency to manufacture drama out of any situation ("PokerGo sucks!" "How are they not covering the razzdugi final table?" "This announcer is the WORST").
Perfect storm when it collides with characters like Nitsche and McKeehan who are the embodiment of everything that, according to a certain perspective, "ruined poker" (GTO/nerd/hoodie/robot/no personality). Gives some folks an easy opportunity to air grievances and vent frustrations.
I'm no lawyer, but I don't think the hot air will amount to anything except perhaps a small rule adjustment moving forward. To me, talking strategy with your rail between hands is not RTA or violating the one player per hand rule. You can say it's a bad look for the game to have people rushing over to a computer after every hand, which I'd agree with. Blatant cheating it is not though.
I'd guess that Kristen and Alex were talking strategy between key hands. I mentioned Shaun Deeb helping Tony Miles in 2018. Nobody cried collusion in these situations. Suddenly Dom has a laptop and it's a huge problem? Silly. He wasn't at the table whispering decisions into Tamayo's ear. There's no rule that says you can't talk strategy with your rail between hands. There's a long tradition of that. Look at Johnny Chan and Jamie Gold colluding on the rail in 2006:
Should we ban Johnny from the WSOP? Or only if he has a laptop open?
