A new rule causes early controversy at the 2012 WSOP

Last year the World Series of Poker dealt with the “No talking about your hand” rule and the overwhelming backlash by players over the enforcement of that rule. This year the WSOP completely overhauled how that rule will be interpreted, and seeming appeased the detractors, but another rule that also involves talking has replaced it and is causing the controversy in 2012.

The rule in question is known as Rule 88, and was put in place to help liven-up the WSOP stream of final tables. At first the rule was explained as “asking” for players to verbalize their actions when they were at the final table of any WSOP event, but at some point between the WSOP Conference Call and the World Series of Poker getting underway the “asking” part of the rule turned into “requiring”, with threat of a penalty hanging over the players’ heads.

The rule has already caused a controversy (not even a week into the 2012 WSOP) as Jon Aguiar complained not only about the rule itself, but also about the WSOP officials not enforcing the rule until Daniel Negreanu was eliminated from the final table –calling into question whether they are showing favoritism to the big name players.

Aguiar’s comments, made via his Twitter account, sparked a war of words that pulled in a number of poker players, and even the WSOP Twitter feed and WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel. Without rehashing the entire debate (here is a quick rundown of what was said by both sides) I want to talk about the rule itself and what purpose it serves, if any.

Personally I’m against the rule being in place, but it’s not so important to me that I would draw a line in the sand over it. However, for players who have perfected their betting/checking/raising routines, and do not verbalize their actions or deviate from this routine this rule could potentially be a very distracting and debilitating problem.

The WSOP apparently feels that people watching the slow, boring, monotonous, live feed of WSOP preliminary events online are going to be casual viewers with little understanding of the nuance of the game; which to me shows an atrocious understanding of WHO is watching the live feeds of these events, and what they want from them.

The live feeds of final tables are for poker die-hards, and no matter how much tinkering, or what rules the WSOP puts in place it will never draw the interest of the casual poker fan. My guess is that the WSOP will stick to their guns on this rule throughout the 2012 WSOP, and reverse course before next year’s WSOP begins –as they did with the no talking about your hand rule from last year to this year.