Poker Writer
The 2025 World Series of Poker has been an eventful one, including some unfortunate moments in which dealers have made themselves characters in the story. To some extent, dealer-related controversies are an unavoidable part of the series due to its logistics.
However, the number of complaints from players this year raises the possibility that the series might have hit a new low for overall dealer quality. Even the dealers themselves are noticing.
PokerScout spoke with one experienced dealer who travels with the WSOP Circuit. He didn’t want to be named, but had this to say about this year’s staff:
There are just too many that I have never seen before. I don’t know what type of training they have, but there are so many who are clearly brand new and uncomfortable with every routine we have on and off the tables.
Good Help is Hard to Find, Especially at Scale
The WSOP is a vast undertaking, requiring hundreds of dealers and floor staff to manage the multi-thousand-player fields. Finding the dealers to man the hundreds of tables in simultaneous action each day of the series has always been a challenge. Inevitably, it requires hiring many dealers who have seldom, if ever, dealt in a poker tournament before.
Dealing poker correctly is not as easy as it might appear from a player’s perspective. Distractions abound, and the rules are full of edge cases that a dealer should be prepared to address.
The daily schedule at WSOP is gruelling in its own right. PokerScout’s dealer contact explained that inexperienced dealers are unfamiliar with the routines for tournament breaks and struggle to manage their schedules throughout the long days. Exhaustion then compounds their lack of confidence at the tables.
That has already led to several significant and contentious errors. Perhaps the most publicized of these was captured on video by Lexy Gavin-Mather. It went viral, in part because the player who shared the video was the beneficiary of the mistake, but believed she was in the right.
I honestly don't know what to say. pic.twitter.com/VB4czf8M7Q
— Matt Kiefer (@2littlemice) June 30, 2025
In this video, the dealer, distracted by the floor, flips the burn card along with the flop, then ends up mucking the wrong card. The card that most viewers agree should have been mucked completes a set for the player. The intrusive floor staff and incorrectly “helpful” players did not help the situation either.
Though several people besides the dealer are arguably at fault here, the video spurred others to share their own stories of terrible experiences with dealers at this WSOP. It’s a moment that has come to be seen as a microcosm of the whole series. However, the complaints didn’t start there.
Complaints Began Early
As early as May 28, the second day of the series, poker pro Christian Harder was griping about the quality of dealers on X.
It’s hard to fathom how bad the dealers are in the Horseshoe today. I feel bad for all the ones that have dealt to me today because they are trying but they have no business dealing WSOP events (yet). It sucks for everyone.
That comment echoes PokerScout’s dealer contact’s claim that the logistical demands of the series have the WSOP thrusting new dealers into events too quickly.
However, quality has not seemed to improve as the series has worn on. Complaints have continued to roll in. On July 6, as the Main Event got underway, Casey Sandretto went on X to say:
It’s insane to me that paying $10,000 to play the Main Event at the WSOP gets you an entire day full of rookie dealers that constantly make Day 1 dealer mistakes. I understood during the Mystery Millions. We’re almost in Week 6 now.
The Main Event, of course, features some of the largest field sizes of the series, and therefore requires all hands on deck. Yet for many of the players putting up the $10,000 buy-in to play, it’s the biggest and most expensive event of their lives. They don’t want it compromised by dealer errors.
Popular player and CoinPoker ambassador Patrick Leonard outlined multiple mistakes by an exhausted dealer at his table. He said that the standards absolutely must be higher:
One of my guys hands from wsop today.. dealer requested to go home 3x in her shift at the table. She misdealed 3x and 5 other times had to be stopped from players. She just grabbed his cards here and he couldn’t react (I still think he should somehow!)Has to be better standards. pic.twitter.com/NmtcbKnjeu
— Patrick Leonard 🫡 (@padspoker) July 6, 2025
Are Dealer Issues a Solvable Problem?
The demands of the WSOP make it difficult to find dealers. Nationwide, there are enough, but many good dealers choose not to go to the WSOP because of what a grind it is. It guarantees a lot of hours for those who want the work. However, it’s exhausting, and not everyone finds the pay worth the trip and the multi-week commitment. There is also competition from other poker venues in Las Vegas, which also require dealers. That cuts even further into the staff available for the WSOP.
One solution would be to try increasing the pay. However, the number of experienced dealers in the country is still limited. Moreover, players might object if those costs were passed on to them in the form of higher tournament fees.
Nate Silver proposed a harsher idea on X, suggesting that players could be asked to rate their dealers using the WSOP+ app that was introduced this year.
I’m reluctant to suggest this because dealing poker is a really hard job (even done a little bit myself) but maybe you need a mechanism on WSOP+ for players to report the really bad dealers. Like the bottom couple of percentiles. Maybe each player gets one bad dealer token per event.
Several people agreed with this idea. However, others pointed out that players are sometimes overly critical of dealers as it is. Encouraging negative feedback could create an abusive situation for dealers who are already coping with long hours and, in many cases, a lack of respect from players.
There is no easy fix to the issue. What seems clear, however, is that it’s only likely to get worse as the series grows larger. Its new owner, GGPoker, will likely want to grow the fields even further in the coming years. Hopefully, it also has some ideas to mitigate the accompanying dealer issues.
