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All the WSOP 2026 Controversies

Author
Juan David Vargas Quiceno, aka Vargoso
Published
6/1/2026
Updated
6/1/2026

The 57th World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Nevada has been going for about a week now. While the biggest events are yet to come, there have already been a number of controversies to talk about this series, such as the new dealer rating system, cell phone rules, and Alan Keating no-showing the $25K NLHE heads-up event.

Controversies Wsop

The 2026 World Series of Poker has officially kicked off — in fact, six events have already concluded. 

All the biggest tourneys on the schedule are yet to come. So far, Chinese player Yang Wang got himself the biggest score: he took down the $5,000 8-Handed Pot Limit Omaha event for $595,388.

But that does not mean that there has been nothing to talk about at the 57th WSOP.

As we all know, people in the poker community are not coy about sharing their grievances, perceived or real, with the world. When they do, they usually use the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) as a venue.

So, let’s take a look at what issues have been raised by players at this year’s WSOP already.

The New Dealers Rating System

At the beginning of May, the WSOP announced that they would be introducing a brand new initiative for the new series, per which players will have the chance to give ratings to their dealers in the official WSOP app.

The inspiration for this was the popular ride-sharing service Uber and food delivery service DoorDash. Both major companies found that service significantly improved after they gave their customers the option to rate their driver or delivery person in their apps.

However, in the case of poker dealers, this is not quite such a clear-cut story — as some players pointed out.

Card dealers often catch the blame for the run of cards. Anyone who has spent some time in poker rooms knows that some players have the habit of keeping track of which dealer dealt them how many good or bad hands, and especially which dealer dealt them a brutal bad beat.

Evidently, the dealer has absolutely no control over the hands that they are dealing — unless they are a card mechanic, in which case outright fraud is taking place. A proficient dealer has a pretty big chance of receiving a bad player rating, especially in a lower buy-in event with a high number of amateurs taking part, simply because one of the players happened to run bad at their table.

However, we do not want to give the impression that the reaction to the new WSOP dealer rating system has been all negative. It has been a decisively mixed reaction so far.

Unclear Cell Phone Use Rules

Ever since the Mike Postle scandal of 2019, cell phones and other mobile devices have been getting additional scrutiny at the poker table. Add to that the 2024 WSOP Main Event heads-up controversy, when the eventual winner Jonathan Tamayo routinely consulted his coaches Joe McKeehan and Dominik Nitsche with laptops in the rail in between hands.

So, some level of control of devices at the poker table is certainly warranted. However, the organizers also need to make sure that the recreational players, the essential parts of the poker ecosystem, do not feel like they are being scolded in an elementary school classroom for checking their phones.

The result: inconsistent announcements at this year’s WSOP about cell phone usage at the table, as noted by poker pro Allen Kessler, among others.

Tournament Fees

Irish poker pro David Lappin can be credited with raising this issue. He noticed that the first event on the schedule, the $550 No Limit Mini Mystery Bounty tournament, had a $93.50 registration fee, which is 17% of the total buy-in (Lappin miscalculated it in his original tweet).

The WSOP does not denote how much of the buy-in goes into the prize pool vs. how much is the tournament fee on the tournament schedule on their official website, so players beware. 

Alan Keating No-Showing the 25K Heads-Up Event at WSOP 2026

The event that has got the most attention at this year’s series thus far is the $25,000 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em event, which drew some of the biggest names in poker. Among those big names who registered was Alan Keating, known for his wild, creative playing style on high-stakes livestreamed cash games.

This time, however, he was out of the 25K heads-up tournament without playing a single hand — he simply did not show up despite posting the buy-in. His opponent, Piotr Krupa, just sat there while the stack in front of an empty chair was blinded out.

Two days before the event, Keating appeared on a $100/$200 NLHE cash game stream at Doug Polk’s newly reopened Lodge Card Club in n Round Rock, Texas, where he bagged himself a $1 million winning session. After such a score, letting a $25K bullet go to waste may not seem like such an egregious idea to him. However, some people still felt that he was being wholly irresponsible with his money.

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