I Have My Limits: The Countdown to Get Down at The WSOP

Image courtesy of WSOP.com

It’s that time of year when poker players from all over the world at least contemplate coming to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker.

If you’re a poker pro, or just pro-poker like me, it may be business as usual to head to the Horseshoe/Paris death star every June and July, but all players, live and online, are tempted by the thought of what regs call “summer camp”.

Having been to an actual summer camp as a kid, I can tell you that it has nothing in common with the WSOP, except for having almost no women.

But summer is poker’s busy season, where everyone from Super High Rollers with backers and sponsors to Super Seniors with free time and retirement money is planning their trip to the Strip.

I’ll be 63 by the time the 2026 WSOP kicks off, and I’m busy checking airfares and hotel prices, in between checking my blood pressure and resting heart rate, also known as my heart rate.

There are thousands of very good or great players that come every year, but also many casual fans who have no idea how to play.

I’m not talking about satellite winners and online qualifiers. Those folks, and I’ve been one of them, had to qualify. They know the game at least a little bit. I’m talking about actual beginners.

How does this happen?

Well, let’s say you are Still-Has-DirecTV years old, so you’ve watched endless reruns of the WPT, courtesy of the total sports package. With every local sports channel in America, you’ve seen more poker than the eye in the sky at Binion’s.

You haven’t learned anything except the Royal Flush Girls’ names, but you’ve watched.

And while playing in the Main Event at the World Series of Poker might seem like a pipedream, when you think about it, it’s totally doable for a novice. Especially when compared to playing in, say, the World Series of Baseball, where there are a few more requirements and last longer bets can really get you in a lot of trouble.

To paraphrase the lotto, all you need is $10,000 and a dream.

We’ve all experienced beginner’s luck, but that’s more something that happens in independent trial games like roulette and predicting how many times Trump will say, “Never seen anything like it,” on Kalshi.

In poker, rather than beginner’s luck, a more time-tested rule is beginner’s suck. So, if you are one of these beginners, I urge you to study the game. Read a book by Ed Miller, Matt Mattros , or  Andrew Brokos. They all have different approaches that will be better than yours.

Listen to a podcast, like Tournament Poker Edge, hosted by fellow comedian/poker player Clayton Fletcher. Take the Tournament Course from my fellow Pokerati contributor, Jonathan Little, at pokercoaching.com.

These are all unpaid endorsements, except I’ve been paid by all of them at the table by using what I’ve learned.

New Rules at the WSOP

This year at the WSOP, there’s going to be some new rules. And plenty of old rule breakers. But I kid Ren Lin. As you may recall, Lin was found to have offered real-time assistance to a player at the final table of a GGpoker online tournament last fall.

Fortunately, justice wasn’t delayed as he was immediately banned from all WSOP events until the beginning of the next WSOP event.

In the movie, The Maltese Falcon, based on the classic detective novel by Dashiell Hammet, Sydney Greenstreet tells Humphrey Bogart, “I’ll tell you right out, I am a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.”

He apparently never met Will Kassouf. Kassouf, the controversial and widely disliked player, was also banned last year from the WSOP.

If you haven’t watched clips of Kassouf’s blather as he stalls endlessly, badgering his opponents and floormen beyond the boundaries of good taste and totally breaking the Matusow Meter, I envy you.

The Matusow Meter was, of course, established by a previous era’s Most Voluble Player, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, who, compared to Kassouf, now seems like a charming raconteur.

Kassouf was only banned for what remained of last year’s Series after he was knocked out of the Main Event in 33rd place. It was like sentencing a murderer to prison for life, the life of the victim.

The short ban did, however, deny Kassouf the sadistic pleasure of torturing players in that bad beat storytellers’ convention known as The Closer. The Closer, the WSOP’s version of a “Summer Saver,” is played at the end of the Series and is, of course, full of players who came up short and need to be saved.

It’s a quiet, grim affair in a emptied out, cavernous room. They at least didn’t have to sit next to Will “Diarrhea of The Mouth” Kassouf.  

My message to the WSOP, spelled out in seashells on Venice Beach, is, “86 9 HIGH LIKE A BOSS”. If you know, you know.

As I was saying, there are some new rules this year at the World Series of Poker. Last year, a controversy was created when the final table of the Millionaire Maker got to heads-up.

ClubWPT Gold, which has no relationship to the WSOP, had butt into the tournament by awarding player James Carroll an additional milly if he took down the bracelet. Never a brand to miss an opportunity for publicity, good or bad, the Club created circumstances that could easily be exploited.

Which is exactly what Carroll and his opponent, Jesse Yaginuma, did.

Prior to the beginning of heads-up play, they agreed that Yaginuma would dump chips to Carroll, allowing him to win the bracelet and ClubWPT’s gold, which they would secretly split.

As a result of their plot being uncovered, no bracelet was awarded in that event, and now there’s a new rule strictly banning third-party entities from putting these sorts of incentives on or under the table.

The rule will punish the players involved by totally disqualifying them from collecting or keeping WSOP prize money.

New rules are also in place to punish people, like Kassouf, who needlessly stall. There is already a ban on the type of real-time assistance that Ren Lin gave his buddy.

Finally, a new dealer rating system will be on the revised WSOP+ (now WSOP LIVE) app. I think there’s a good chance that this feature will break the Internet. There have long been complaints about dealers, but no easy way to register them.

See you at the Series.