2024 WSOP!

Doubtful you can wire directly to a casino cage and walk away with cash. They will give you gaming chips, and the expectation will be that you use them to gamble in the casino. You can probably play for a short period and then cash out. They'll know, and will make a note of it, but unlikely they will do anything other than reject future wire transfers from you.

And that's if they accept the wire to begin with. There's a chance they reject it outright if you don't contact them first and let them know it's coming and why. As Akashenk mentioned, it is highly dependent on players card rating/tier.

The cashiers check info was discussed in this thread several pages back...if you email wsop first with the check info (and maybe a copy of it) then it will minimize the amount of waiting time when you arrive with the physical check.

Fwiw, Payfiniti is owned by Bravo. Thousands have used it so far during the series and if there were major issues we certainly would have heard about by now. I understand concerns about just giving out ss# and other info, but this is who wsop has partnered with for electronic payment processing, so it's going to be around for awhile.

There is indeed quite a wait.

Yes, it's crazy. They've had 20 or 30 years to figure it out. But then, the government does everything it can to make it a pain in the butt to move large amounts of money. WSOP would make a LOT of players happy if they started taking bitcoin.

I remember several years ago, Galfond was asking people on 2p2 how he could move half a mill to play on Poker Night in America, or whatever it was. Even now, for those insane streaming games at the Hustler, they showed a guy buying in with a million in cash!

I'm curious as to what people think of the laptop controversy from the Main Event final table. It was definitely odd to see Tamayo regularly consulting with Nitsche and his laptop between hands. I have a couple thoughts on it:
1. It's not specifically against the rules, so it's not cheating, and I can't blame someone for finding any edge, real or imagined, that they can get with so much at stake.
2. It doesn't look good. It's not a team sport, so seeing that much assistance from both people and tools in the middle of the contest was a little off-putting to me.

The rail can add a lot of excitement and fun to the final tables of these big events, so I wouldn't advocate keeping the players' supporters away from the action, but I would like to see a ban on coaching from the rail, similar to how it works in Tennis matches. Keep the coaching confined to breaks, maybe limit players from visiting the rail to times when they are involved in an all-in, and if there is obvious coaching that occurs, penalize them with a missed hand. At the very least they should not allow laptops or tablets to be brought in.

I think they were analyzing every previous hand on GTO Wizard.

I agree with your suggestion that players interaction with the rail should be restricted.

Tamayo anyway was more experienced and skillful player but coaching by rail should not be permitted.

And use of poker software or any outside help is restricted by the WSOP rules.

For future tournaments this should be seriously stopped.

It didn't look good, so the problem is indeed a question of perspective and how it should be changed ; as an example, the commentators could indeed shine it in a good light and treat it indeed like team sports where analytics are encouraged/seen positively. Instead of idiots tweeting it as lol cheating.

Good, very good indeed.

It’s hard to know what is and is not against the “rules”, because there is no easy to find and consistent set of rules. However, prior to every event this year, the WSOP made a point to announce this specific behavior could result in penalties and/or disqualification. So I don’t think it’s a stretch to surmise this was against the rules of the WSOP.

But rules become problematic when governing bodies do not enforce them in consistent ways. And that has always been the problem with floor rulings. Consistency.

If this were some random table in some random tournament, I think it would be fair to expect something like this falling through the cracks and being missed by the people running the event. But this was the final table of the Main Event. It’s hard to understand how it was missed. But as recent news events have shown, there are things that happen in life which defy explanation. At the end of the day, this situation is entirely the fault of the WSOP for not enforcing its own rules. They deserve all the criticism they are getting.

Aside from this, my personal opinion regarding any sort of cheating behaviors in poker is that it cannot be stopped or even slowed down unless draconian penalties begin to be doled out. They have to make it so the penalty for cheating is far greater than the potential benefit. I am always surprised to see players who have been caught cheating in the past are still allowed to play. I guarantee players who cheat at casino games would never be welcome back. Why is the standard different when players compete against each other instead of against the casino?

Follow the money trail. Because its not the casinos money (minus the rake)

That is obvious. But the question is, would casinos make less money by protecting the integrity of poker? I don’t think so. Likely the opposite would happen.