You are the Tournament Director: Cheating at Stud?

Situation: In a WSOP Seven Card Stud event players are just returning from a break. Only four players are at the table and the dealer deals the hand. The player in the seven seat is dealt a pair of sevens in the pocket. The player in the eight seat has not yet returned and his door card is a seven. Very quickly the player switches the door cards. The player sat next to him sees this but is too shocked to speak up immediately. The hand plays out to conclusion and the player wins the pot with trip sevens. The player who saw him switch the cards now speaks up and his opponent, who has just lost a big pot, says ‘I thought that I saw him do that as well, but couldn’t believe it.’ You are called to the table. The dealer did not see or remember the cards. How do you rule?

Matt Savage Matt:
Well first of all I would try and go to the tape but that’s obviously not available in this situation. Again this is one of those tough decisions where if the dealer didn’t see this and one player says he might of seen it and the other one says he did see but that’s the one that lost the pot, it becomes one of those situations where you need to speak up at the time of this infraction. If you don’t then you are just as guilty as this other player. Therefore I would definitely warn this player that has potentially pulled this off that I will be watching him and at no time does he get any air with me on any ruling that you know to speak of and that you know I will actually have surveillance keep an eye on him. The chips stay where they are unfortunately.

Thomas Kremser Thomas:
If the dealer didn’t see anything and I can not prove how else what has happened I have to give the player the benefit of the doubt and would give him the pot.

Jack Jack:
I would go to the surveillance camera and if actions were true I would disqualify player in seven seat, recreate the pot and give players back money because it was a fouled hand. Upon disqualification I would remove seven seats chips from play.

Liam Flood Liam:
I would go for the camera. If there were no camera, the player with the three sevens wins the pot. If the camera shows he did it he’s out and not allowed in this or any other tournament.

Mel Mel:
Good god never seen this happen before but if I ever played with a cheat I wouldn’t want them at my table. If you can verify from 2 players that it happened , then I would kick them out of the tournament. Cheating is not on.

Marty Wilson Marty:
I can only go on what the dealer’s information is. I can’t go on a player’s after the event. It should have been stopped before. My action would be to base my ruling on what the dealer’s seen. I can’t be told after the event. The hand stands.

The Mob Verdict

A similar situation to this did actually happen in a WSOP event a few years ago.

Our tournament directors are generally in agreement here. Someone should have spoken up at the time and in the absence of any evidence it is hard to do anything but let the player concerned keep the chips.

Obviously if there was camera evidence and the player did switch cards then he should be disqualified and barred with the chips being returned to the losing players.

Matt’s answer is the most complete and it would definitely be right to warn the player that he was being watched and to keep a very close eye on him in the future.

Mel’s answer is interesting. Often if more than one player can independently confirm what happened in any given situation then that could be taken and acted on. This situation, however, is so severe that it probably isn’t right to do that here and the problem is that some players may say that they saw something simply to lose the player. For these reasons we go with Matt’s ruling.

Click Here to Comment on This Article