Poker Peek Cards Receive Just Slightly Less Than Enthusiastic Welcome at WSOP

Just a wee bit less than that, really.

C.C. was the first to mention it in one of his PokerWorks blog entries, but hell didn't really break loose at the WSOP until play began in the WSOP's Event #1, the $5,000 mixed-limit event. Then the news flew everywhere. At issue were the "revolutionary new Poker Peek cards" introduced by U.S. Playing Card under a deal with Harrah's, and the cards weren't all they were supposed to be, by a long shot.

What they were were a confusing mess. The first photo I saw of the things was via a link sent to me by Short-Stacked Shamus, and I guffawed in laughter. Pauly had a little bit better photo up later, courtesy of PokerNews, and I'm reproducing just a snippet here as a tease --- I highly recommend you click on the tiny photo and view the more detailed version of the cards as shown over at PokerNews. (Photo snippet courtesy PokerNews, of course.) Seriously, you need to see these cards in the context of a board display to really grasp how much of a train wreck these cards were. T.J. Cloutier was quoted early in the play as saying that the cards were definitely not the ones the players had approved.

And they were summarily yanked as soon as a few cases of KEMs could be scrounged up (from the local Harrah's properties, most likely) and brought into play. However, the larger events such as the casino-employees event and the $1,500 NL event starting on Day 2 meant that the Poker Peeks couldn't quite be dispensed with; there simply weren't enough replacement KEMs on hand to cover the WSOP's needs, though trucks from distant climes are rollin' into the desert as this is written.

Still, one gets the distinct impression that this is one endoresment deal that the WSOP's not too happy with at the moment...