WSOP 2017 News: Negreanu misses the gold again; Marked cards an issue at the One Drop

The 48^th Annual World Series of Poker continues with lots of exciting action happening daily. The latest story was on one of poker’s most vocal players, Daniel Negreanu, who once again ran very deep but came painfully short of seizing his first gold of the series.

On other WSOP news, there has been an ongoing twitter thread regarding the issue of marked cards discovered at the recently concluded High Roller for One Drop event. While an explanation has already been provided by the WSOP, players continue to remain skeptical.

Here is a read below on those latest stories.

Daniel Negreanu denied the gold by Abe Mosseri

Hours ago, Daniel Negreanu went head to head against Abe Mosseri for the title at Event #9: US$10K Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship and in just a handful of hands, it was all over. Negreanu was stopped short in 2^nd place while Mosseri captured the coveted gold bracelet.

This defeat was a brutal one for Negreanu who had his sights set on winning the first of his three WSOP bracelets goal this year. Maybe the next event will be the charm. Days ago, Negreanu also came close to a victory by finishing 3rd at the US$10K Tag Team event. Now following it up with a runner up finish, he is clearly at the footsteps and knocking on that golden door.

Second deep #WSOP run leaves @RealKidPoker just shy of bracelet #7 as Abe Mosseri wins $10K Omaha Hi-Lo https://t.co/kY5Vu9BQp6 pic.twitter.com/FwaSOtvN8i

— PokerStarsBlog (@PokerStarsBlog) June 7, 2017

Another mile marker for Negreanu is to cross 100 cashes at the WSOP. As it stands, he has well over ninety WSOP cashes throughout his career and according to his blog, he just needs eight more ITMs to achieve this. With two cashes already in the bag, that’s only six more to go!

One of Negreanu’s most challenging goals could well be winning the WSOP Player of the Year title for the third time.

In his blog, “I’m currently the only person who has won the award twice, once in 2004 and then again in 2013, and I’d really like to get to 3 before anyone hits 2! I know I can do it, and my playing schedule is tailored with this specific goal in mind: Avoid the big field small buy in no limit hold’em events, focus on the $10k+ schedule.”

Last month, Negreanu listed 40 events he was interested in attending at the WSOP. With the series only a week in, he has quite a bit of road to tackle. If he stays as sharp and focused as he intends, then we likely be seeing him post more high marks and possibly a gold to go along with it.

Place	Player	Earnings (USD)
1	Abe Mosseri	$391,313
2	Daniel Negreanu	$241,851
3	Yarron Bendor	$166,895
4	Fabrice Soulier	$118,340
5	Ilya Dyment	$85,702
6	Ray Dehkharghani	$63,419
7	Anthony Zinno	$47,975
8	Mike Matusow	$37,120
9	John Monnette	$29,391

Marked cards at the WSOP for One Drop event raises questions

The cards at this final table are marked, we are not going to continue until we have a real deck

— gN Doug Polk (@DougPolkPoker) June 6, 2017

Controversy continues with the discovery of conspicuous markings on cards used at the WSOP 2017. At the final table of the US$111K High Roller for One Drop event – with five players remaining – the game was briefly halted due to complaints that the deck was marked. Eventual winner Doug Polk tweeted,

“We are taking a break in the One Drop, I looked down at my cards and discovered there were white dots at different patterns for each card.” He followed it up with, “The cards at this final table are marked, we are not going to continue until we have a real deck.”

Unsurprisingly, this tweet along with a couple from eventual fourth place finisher Haralabos Voulgaris sent a mad storm of followers up in arms expressing their disbelief.

“Marked cards at the WSOP? How could this happen? At this level, could someone really be cheating? To make matters worse, it took some time before they finally found a clean RFID deck.”

With answers somewhat demanded, it was later clarified that the problem had to do with the shuffler. However this answer didn’t seem to suffice; if anything, it added more skepticism.

From Polk, “This is an important story. Some of it was from the shuffler but also there were unique dot patterns on each card.”

Voulgaris also tweeted “Cards had speckled shiny dots in what appeared to be distinctive patterns based on value of the cards. Was not a function of shuffler imo.”

One possibility, though not acknowledged by the WSOP, is bad manufacturing. Card manufacturers produce large quantity of cards so defects may appear from time to time. If this were indeed the case, then it would be very bad for the organizer because diligent checks must always be made prior to a newly introduced deck, most especially at the RFID final table. If defects go unnoticed except by a player, then the player can use this flaw to his or her advantage and later be accused of cheating. Let us not forget Phil Ivey and his court troubles. Ivey won millions (with a partner) in Punto Banco by capitalizing on the defects in the cards.

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More: The Day That Phil Ivey Won £7.8m From Crockfords Casino

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But whether it was a manufacture defect or it was the shuffler, what players find most unsettling is that it happened at the prestigious WSOP. Even if it does not involve cheating per se, it is still an issue. And it’s not the first time that this has happened at the WSOP.

In 2006, Andy Bloch received a ten minute penalty after he crushed a card during a HORSE event to express his frustration at being denied a new setup. That series was troubled with many complaints due to the amount of marked cards and poor quality of the decks. Let’s hope that this recent discovery was just a one off at the ongoing series.

Article by Triccia David