WSOP 2016 Improvements

Every year, organizers of the world’s biggest poker festival try to improve on their practices guided by the new experiences and lessons learned during the previous year. This year will be no different in that regard, as some significant WSOP 2016 improvements have been announced.

Electronic queuing for payout

Some of the last year’s events attracted truly huge number of players. Once such event was The Colossus, which saw a turnout of more than 22,000 players. It goes without saying that payout lines at cashiers were a mile long and players had to spent hours waiting for their hard-earned cash.

One of the WSOP 2016 improvements will try to deal with this issue, at least to some extent, by introducing eQueue Payout Process. Instead of physically standing in line, players waiting for their payouts will be able to sign up to an electronic list and once it is their turn to get paid, they will be notified via message to check in at a cage.

While this may not be introduced for all events, it will certainly facilitate the smaller payouts, allowing players to spend their time in a more productive way than standing around for hours, doing nothing.

Headphones allowed until final table is reached

In the past years, players were required to remove their headphones once a tournament reaches in the money phase. Not unexpectedly, this was to many players’ dissatisfaction, as many of them, especially the young guns, prefer to listen to music while playing.

Thus, by popular demand, WSOP 2016 will be getting rid of this rule and allow players to keep their headphones on throughout the tournament. They will only have to remove them once the final table is reached, but that’s a good problem to have anyway.

It goes without saying that players who use the headphones during play are equally obliged to follow the action as their headphone-less colleagues, so any mistakes will be punished according to longstanding WSOP practices.

Better Twitter coverage

Twitter is the favorite social media platform for poker players and their fans. Thus, having a good Twitter coverage is a must for the biggest poker event of the year. Series’ organizes have realized this and have employed Kevin Mathers to take charge of @WSOP and @WSOPcom accounts.

Mathers has been a longtime member of the poker community and has become particularly popular for his quick responses to numerous questions that both players and fans address to his personal @Kevmath account. There is little doubt that, with his experience and knowledge, Mathers will do a great job on Twitter.

Other WSOP 2016 improvements

Apart from these three, there are also several other WSOP 2016 improvements which will make both fans and players happy. One of them is a brand new system for live reporting of the chip counts. The new application, called ‘Chipin,’ will allow players to update their counts quickly, using their tablets or smartphones.

Live streaming of the final tables will once again be available this year, accompanied by the commentary of Tatjana Pasalic and David Tuchman. This year, however, the team will try to get the audience more involved into everything that’s going on.

Of course, live reporting via WSOP blog will also be there for everyone following the Series, with the WSOP in-house team doing everything they can to bring you prompt and current information from different bracelet events.

Online registration process has also been revamped, as we reported yesterday.