Will Kassouf discussion

Pure Euro trash. The WSOP should have been ready for him after 2016 and DQd him long before it got to where it did. He should be banned from all CR properties.

If you've had the misfortune to be sat anywhere near this schmuck in any tournament anywhere you know this isn't just for the Main Event, this idiot does it at small events around the UK, non stop all day and all night talking. The fact he has a chequered past is hardly surprising. It's a shame because actually some of his catchphrases much like Martin;s can be hilarious but when it's repeated non stop and done in a sort of nasty way it just gets boring fast. The only saving grace is poker needs more characters, because it's been boring af the last few years, so any drama is entertainment and better than nothing.

Lines that are good are good when they're genuine and original. When someone says it for the 50th time it's just annoying.

Should be banned for life, you don’t physically threaten tournament.

He's a poker player that has a law degree

Saw a few takes like this. There is no way whatever edge he supposedly thought he was gaining was worth repeated one round penalties while on a short stack. I'm in the camp that he basically was crashing out due to a combination of stress, lack of sleep, maybe some pharmaceutical enhancement, whatever.

I give the WSOP TDs a ton of credit for not just DQ'ing him from the tournament and giving him every chance to calm down and have his tournament resolve itself normally. If he'd doubled up a few times, it would have gotten to a very difficult situation where they might have had to escort him out and he gets whatever his chip stack can afford to be blinded off until.

From the bigger picture...he's just another symptom of society always functioning on a set of written and unwritten rules, and those unwritten rules being good for everyone. However, if someone wants to say "hey it's not written so I'm not following it" (and this includes the Ike Haxton issue, the Millionaire maker headsup, or the Tamaya final table issue last year and many non poker societal situations that I won't mention), you end up in an awful situation. I'm sure the WSOP will put in more rules next year, and they'll end up being angle shot the same way because you can't cover every possible situation, or if you do, you end up with a tournament full of people calling the floor every two seconds over some nitpicky violation.

I once read a book by a major league umpire who detailed some of the weird situations he found himself in over the years where the rulebook just didn't cover exactly what to do, and he said that he always applied one rule to make his call: "Ultimately, who caused the problem? punish them." Seems like Jack Effel read the same book.

Anyone defending Kassouf is an antisocial weirdo.

Guy should be perma banned from the WSOP.

I wish everyone was on a 10 sec clock for pre-flop action. We’d all have WK to thank.

Typical nerdy angry attorney - hope he's banned for life.

Don’t be so mean to Khan. His shtick was annoying but I don’t recall it being horribly disrespectful nor being a massive tanker. But it has been awhile. Was Khan actually penalized?

I'm pretty sure the next year the WSOP put rules in place (known as the "Hevad Khan" rule) to reduce antics like his.

I don't ascribe this to ignorance. I think a lot of people are entertained by these things.

This isn't an indictment on modern behavior though...

It's been happening as long as people enjoyed watching lions rip Christians to shreds and black folks being lynched by the Klan.

At least Kassouf isn't enslaving or hanging anyone. Progress.

It is kinda telling to me that people in a forum devoted to poker make excuses how it's "good for the game" instead of caring about watching great players make nuanced plays on the biggest stage with millions on the line. That has always been the draw for me, not someone being an *******.

Poker has always had willing villains but there's a difference with Kassouf. Those players targeted one or two players to get under their skin - honestly, those one-on-one battles against a player was a lot more engrossing to me than some mentally ill player spewing vitriol indiscriminately.

And spare me the "it builds the game" nonsense. The average person who gets off on watching a mentally ill person implode on a poker livestream is not gonna jump into your local casino and be dead money for you to exploit. They're gonna snicker and click to something else.

Finally, being mentally ill is not an excuse. A lot of mentally ill people go about their lives not being flaming bags of ****, thinking that gives them some advantage in their pursuits. Most of them, actually.

that guy is certainly annoying and i would hate to have him at my table but all the talk about him being mentally ill is taking this a bit far.

Probably not the most well balanced individual but you armchair psychologist are super weird to me.

Personally i think he is an ******* who might have some mental issues or not. Who the **** knows.

In regards to his treatment at the event I think it was a good call to disqualify him from further events but it was unfair and not the right thing to put him in 10 second shot clock.

30 second would have sufficed.

Correction: black is spelled Black. Just sayin'

anybody acting like him or doing any kind of angle shoot or "Im gonna piss everyone off so they play worse" is doing it in lieu of actual strategic acumen and it's so obvious to see

If he’s just pissing people off to make them play worse, then why is he doing it to, like, employees at the casino cage? Does he think that if he gets them really annoyed at him, they’ll accidentally pay him more?

5 Replies and 0 OPs in 17 years just to use your 6th Reply ever to tell me to take meds? Cuz I responded to 4 separate Replies from 4 separate accounts that had spanned several days

Ok "bud"

The rules specifically say "excessive chatter". You might be able to talk away the "abusive behavior", but there is zero way to argue that he does not use excessive chatter as his poker strategy.

still find it so odd he has not commented at all on IG. Probably concerned he'll be banned next year too

*******s being banned is fine by me

I never once heard any Dealer, Floor or TD mention that
Or any of the 100s who (understandably) called Clock on him

I haven't looked at the rule book since like 2015 so if they added more specificity to "The Jamie Gold(en) Rule" after KasOOF's last appearance, that wouldn't shock me

Just never heard it mentioned once prior to his KO crash out fwiw

That is definitely true. But while he was LOUD AS HECK, I don't recall him being nearly in the class with the other two.

I only watched about 5 minutes of him but in that time he called a raise in the SB with 98 off with approx 20 big blinds. Then played passively till betting the river when the Ace hit which was much better for his opponents range and likely to be heavy in the hands he'd check back flop and turn.

None of that matters to him, he just wants to bluff and show nine high like a boss

But flops with nines are more dangerous, he showed Sturm the quad nines “stamp it and send it”