More details on the WSOP Dealer Rating system
Will this lead to a massive increase in quality, or will good dealers get blamed for bad beats?
A few more details have been announced about the previously mentioned dealer rating system this year at the World Series of Poker.
The last few WSOPs were huge in number, which inevitably led to complaints about the standard of some of the dealers, many of whom were relatively new.
Yesterday, Jeff Platt and the WSOP Twitter account released a new video about the dealer rating system:
Our Dealer Rating System is coming to Vegas!
Using the new Dealer Rating System on WSOP Live…
• Players can rate the dealer at their table
• Ratings are shared internally with tournament staff
• Dealers with the highest ratings will earn rewards throughout the series… pic.twitter.com/SvVkmnQCeK— WSOP - World Series of Poker (@WSOP) May 7, 2026
You get to rate the quality of a dealer who was at the table with you, and the feedback will be shared internally with the tournament staff, so the highest rated dealers will earn rewards during the series.
Ratings for bad beats dished out?
Clearly, this is a well-meaning initiative that will certainly improve the quality of the dealers going forward, and it's good to see the WSOP addressing this, as they are the standard bearer for poker in many ways.
However, the initiative has drawn criticism from the poker community due to the fickle way in which poker players might rate their dealers.
There is, unfortunately, a not insignificant number of players who blame the dealer when they get dealt bad cards or a bad beat. This is not isolated to low-stakes events either. There are high-stakes players who are guilty of this.
Hopefully, there are some sort of controls in place to ensure that it is the quality of dealing, not card distribution, that gets rated in the WSOP Live app. Clearly, this is going to benefit the players going forward, as long as good dealers don't get punished unfairly.
