WSOP 2026 Started With Minor Scandals & Debates

Nicky P / Nick Petrangelo Confusion

As soon as the WSOP started, Shaun Deeb complained on social media about the behavior of someone named “nickyp”:

Chris Brewer followed up his tweet with his observation of the same player:

The poker community knew it was Nick “Nicky P” Palma, who is notorious for acting unpleasantly.

But both pros forgot to write his full name in their posts, so when Will Jaffe joked that it was Nick Petrangelo — it had the unexpected effect of breaking Grok’s summary, accepting Will’s words as the only truth.

After that all summaries of this situation started to look like this, reminding people once again how easily AI can spread false narratives and made-up facts:

The mistake quickly spread across Twitter, prompting Deeb to issue a clarifying tweet that Petrangelo had nothing to do with it and that he was talking about another player.

However, the damage had already been done, leaving a slew of tweets online where Grok claimed that Deeb accused one of the most calm and reserved high rollers of behaving in a way that was completely out of character.

Complaints About Dealers From the Very Beginning

The WSOP wouldn’t be the WSOP if it started with great reviews of the dealers’ work.

One of the first things spread on X was the video where instruction card was dealt on the board to the mix of amusement and displeasure of players:

Game integrity at the WSOP is so bad that a “Rules Card” hit the flop in the first tournament. The dealers can’t even verify a deck. 😂 pic.twitter.com/cbQ4gbGMTc

— Man of the Library 📚 (@ManOfTheLibrary) May 26, 2026

As an addition, Jason Wheeler shared the dealer’s mistakes he encountered in the first 10 minutes of the WSOP:

• Dealer tries to give him 3 cards
• Dealer deals flop with action pre after being told not to deal flop because she missed the action
• Dealer tried to award pot to wrong player
• Dealer tried to award him the pot he lost

The main complaint from players was that the dealers lacked experience, which they did not even hide, often announcing to the table that they were dealing cards for the first time.

Fortunately, they didn’t manage to do anything criminal in the first two days — and many players rushed to defend the dealers online, sharing their positive experiences with the 2026 WSOP.

For example, Daniel Williams praised dealers working in the Employees Event:

And Michael Molenaar also commended how great were dealers in his games:

The general consensus among competent players is: give dealers a little time to get the hang of it, and they’ll do a great job. Do not rush to give them one star in the new WSOP dealer rating system — otherwise, they may be replaced by even more inexperienced people.

David Lappin Goes Off on Tournament Fees

While players complained about dealers, parking problems, and terrible lighting in the casino, David Lappin tried to draw players’ attention to the problem of the tournament fee size:

“Woah, that 1st WSOP event is a $456.50+$93.50! A 20.5% reg fee for a 30 minute clock monkey event is wild. Add to that, all the max late reggers (10bbs with 65% of the field gone) sniping a 25+% ICM-bump.

Recs in from start coz they actually wanna play poker are getting wrecked!”

He compared this event to those with close enough buy-ins from other major series, and here’s what he found out:

Although the rake at the WSOP turned out to be obviously the highest, the players focused their discussion not on this, but on the fact that David’s calculation of the fee was incorrect.

Along with other players, Lian Liu asked David how he came up with 20.5% if the rake here is actually 17%.

This has opened up an old wound in the poker community: how to calculate fee in tournaments?

Adherents of 17% use a mathematical standard where a percentage is a part of a total amount. So, the total amount is $550, including the fee of $93.50 — it means, the rake % here is 93.50/550 = 0.17 or 17%.

Proponents of 20.5% use a tax principle in which a percentage is taken only from the money paid into the prize pool and is treated as an additional amount on top of the buy-in. So, the total amount paid is still $550 but buy-in here is only $456.50 and a fee of $93.50 is calculated from it. That’s why the rake % here is 93.50/456.50 = 0.2048 or 20.5%.

In any case, both methods show that the commission is high — but it seems that WSOP players don’t care much about it. As Spenser Sembrat summed up: 

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