Crazy Dealer Stories from the 2022 WSOP

08:11
04 Jul

Players have moaned about dealers as long as poker has been around. They can get blamed for dealing a player a bad run of cards, not changing chips correctly, and even interpreting a hand incorrectly. Mostly unfair, it has to be said.

But that’s not to say there hasn’t been many a catastrophe involving a dealer where it was undoubtedly their fault. This year included.

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Dealer Travesties

The first major mistake that came to light was in the $500 Housewarming event. During a break a dealer was instructed to “colour up” the chips, meaning to exchange the smaller denominations into larger ones.

Feeling that they understood what this apparently simple request entailed, the dealer then racked all of the chips together, organising them into the separate colours!

The tournament was delayed for more than one hour as surveillance camera footage was reviewed to replace each player’s stack correctly.

Can all my friends check-in and and let me know you're OK after "The Great Color Up Catastrophe of 2022?" #WSOP#markedsafefromcolorupdisaster

— Doc ♠️❤️♣️👑 (@DrAlexChauran) June 3, 2022

Another dealer was preparing for the start of his shift and spread the deck of cards across the table to check that all was correct. After thinking they had spotted a missing ace of spades a floor supervisor was called over but the dealer soon wished they hadn’t bothered.

The supervisor immediately spotted the missing card still sitting in the rack but also realised that the deck spread across the table still contained the two jokers.

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Phil Hellmuth Has His Chips Swiped

We aren’t sure who is responsible for this next tale but it could have been another dealer at work.

Phil Hellmuth was down to the final 21 players in Event #38: $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Single Draw Championship and racked up his chips as the final four tables were broken down into three.

Off he went to the bathroom, leaving his chips where he had been sitting, but upon returning he discovered them all gone, apparently now merged with the stack of Farzad Bonyadi.

Hellmuth spoke to PokerNews to give his version of events.

"We went on break and I'm kind of smart, I knew it was going to take them a while, so I went to the bathroom, but I left my chips in a rack and then Scott Seiver said leave Phil's chips in a rack. And then one of the other players took them and put them in his stack."

Eventually, the eye-in-the-sky confirmed what Hellmuth’s correct stack was and the tournament continued after only a 20-minute delay.