Each year, the WSOP in Las Vegas kicks off with a $500 buy-in Casino Employees Event, a tournament designed for casino employees such as dealers, floormen and cashiers. However, live poker media reporters have also been able to participate in this tournament in recent years, such as Chad Holloway, who was the 2013 champion of this tournament and won a valuable gold bracelet for himself.
The first problem surfaced as early as last year
The first controversies in this tournament appeared as early as last year, when the tournament was played by several professionals. At the time, the organisers argued that the commentators were employees, but often it is the professionals who commentate on the live streams.
The icing on the cake was that the tournament was played by a player who had no idea that the Casino Employees Event was only for casino employees. This player did not understand English well and simply lined up to pay the buy-in. In his words, nobody checked if he was really an employee and he entered this tournament by default. This raised the question of how many players had entered this tournament, which last year saw as many as 1,189 entries.
Will Daniel Negreanu play in this tournament?
This year, the WSOP organizers have announced 100 bracelet tournaments and the Employees Event is not missing again. This year, however, the name has changed and it is now called the Industry Employees Event. As you can guess, the tournament will be open to a wider range of people.
And this is where the biggest problem comes in. According to official information straight from the WSOP website, anyone who works in the gaming industry can play this tournament. With this move, youtubers, twitch streamers, podcasters, and even progressive coaches, for example, will also become eligible players.
So this year the Employees Event is open to YouTube professionals such as Daniel Negreanu, Kevin Martin, Doug Polk, Ethan "Rampage" Yau, Benjamin "Spraggy" Spragg, etc... Since coaches are also allowed to play, the vast majority of the world's professionals can play.
This whole issue was brought up by Kevin Mathers, who started a heated discussion on the social network X (Twitter). Under his post, a wave of ridicule and criticism of the WSOP was unleashed. Kevin Martin commented that he had just learned that he was actually employed by the industry, Andy Bloch stated that he used to run a WPT fanpage and thus mockingly asked if that counted too.
I heard back and poker bloggers, vloggers, streamers, etc are all eligible to play the Industry Employees Event. https://t.co/wNqes36AP4
- Kevin Mathers (@Kevmath) April 9, 2025
Commenters spared no criticism, calling the WSOP's decision ridiculous, stupid, wrong, unfair and most importantly, disrespectful to real casino employees. Several commenters also raised the question of how they will vet who is or is not eligible to play. They pointed to the fact that this move has effectively made this tournament an open-to-all tournament.
Doug Polk, of course, weighed in on the topic, stating, "Let the casino/card room staff have their own tournament. There are 100 other events that people can vlog about." Several other panelists agreed with his sentiment.
Let Casino/Cardroom employees have their own event. There are 100 other events for people to vlog about. https://t.co/t0FpB4tvee
- Doug Polk (Code Doug) (@DougPolkVids) April 9, 2025
What do you guys think, do you support these WSOP changes to the staff tournament or should this tournament be strictly for poker staff only? Let us know in the comments on our social media.
Source - Pokernews.com, X(Twitter), WSOP
