Is it time for blind rollback in live poker events?

The final table of the "Deepstack" event was very shallow, which suggests it's time for the WSOP to employ a popular GGPoker feature.

Overnight, the $600 Deepstack event concluded at the World Series of Poker, after a bumper field of 4,622. The event was won by Karapet Galstyan for $259,829 and his second career bracelet. 

As the final table was taking place, ACR Pro Rob Kuhn pointed out how incredibly shallow the finale was. The chip leader only had 17bbs, and they were playing for a remarkable amount of equity considering the $600 buy-in. 

They need to bring final table roll backs to live poker

This is sooo shallow and too much equity pic.twitter.com/8vUsled0AD

— Rob Kuhn (@RobKuhn_) June 2, 2026

All of which was quite comical when you considered that this tournament was named "DeepStack". However, this is not a criticism of the structure. It's a reality of tournament poker that large field deep stack events conclude very shallow (and some hyper turbo format tournaments ironically end quite deep) because the players do not bust soon enough. 

Having said that, I agree with what Kuhn said: that this is precisely the sort of format that would benefit from a blind rollback at the final table. 

Easy GGPoker branding

First and foremost, the main reason I would implement blind rollback in World Series events is simply because GGPoker are now the owners of the WSOP. 

Blind rollback is a GGPoker feature, and implementing it would be a perfect branding opportunity for the new era of GG/WSOP. 

It's also a very player-friendly innovation. As Koon suggested in his initial tweet, I doubt any of the final table players were ecstatic about playing so shallow for what is likely the biggest equity spot ever in their poker career.

We have written about this before. Ironically, the players who suffer the most from blind rollback are the short stacks. Because while it's unfavourable being a short stack, the shallower your stack, the easier it is to play. However, few players would actually agree with that, and in the interest of giving the players what they want, I suspect most would go for blind rollback. 

Player and operator friendly

Another reason to implement blind rollback is whenever there is a live stream of the final table. Quite simply, the operator and the viewers would want deeper stack play, not 9bb effective stacks pre-flop all-in every single hand. I can only imagine the World Series of Poker wants to showcase "real poker" when they are broadcasting to the masses. 

While I am in favour of implementing blind rollback in live poker tournaments, there are certainly events that would suffer if they used it. 

First of all, any event where the final table comes back relatively deep. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Just as nobody wants to see a final table that takes forty minutes, nor does anyone want to see a final table that takes twenty hours. 

I would also never blind rollback "regular tournaments", i.e., tournaments that don't come with a major accolade like a bracelet at the end of them. Nobody wants an extra five hours added to a Daily DeepStack tournament. In fact, most people just want to take their equity and go home, which is why these sorts of tournaments end in deals a lot of the time. 

But to go back to my initial point, blind rollback is a fun feature that GGPoker introduced to tournaments quite some time ago, and to me it makes sense to implement it in live events like the World Series of Poker. I think the players would prefer it and if a final table is going to be streamed, surely the operator would too.