Should coaches with solvers be allowed on the rail?


After Jonathan Tamayo’s rail consulted him between hands with a laptop running a solver, we look at how damaging that could be for the game.

The aftermath of Jonathan Tamayo’s Main Event victory has been marred by the discussion of using coaches and solvers on the rail of the final table. Footage has gone viral of Dominik Nitsche and Joe McKeehen consulting a laptop with a solver, to let him know he had played previous hands correctly or not.

Almost everybody in poker was up in arms about this. Most more for the optics rather than the potential to cheat, but nobody was happy. It wasn’t helped by a defiant Nitsche who was more than happy to wear the role of Villain on his sleeve after the feedback. 

If it interests you, brew yourself a coffee and head over to poker Twitter. Everyone has chimed in on this one.

Not cheating, but not good

poker
Jonathan Tamayo

To be clear, what they were doing was not cheating. It looks like Tamayo was checking whether he had played a previous hand correctly, he was not gathering information for the next hand. Had he run to his rail mid-hand that would be a different matter. 

It could certainly be the case that by consulting the sims, after a few instances, he spotted patterns where he should change his strategy. This, however, is no different than having a coach give you pointers from their observations, which is currently allowed and has happened for years. 

For me personally, getting live updates on how I played might be more of a distraction than a help. I’d rather forget the hand that just happened and focus on the rest. I’m not sure how helpful it actually is to have another player grading my play after every hand. 

Tamayo’s team were unlucky in one respect because stuff like this has happened for years now on the rail. At a minimum players have shown their friends showdowns from the stream, but likely there will have been feedback if certain hands were played correctly. The one difference this year is the poker world has woken up to the speed and potential threat of lookup databases. It is much more of a hot-button issue in 2024 than it ever was. 

Not cheating, but not good

While I have no doubts this wasn’t cheating, it likely was against the rules. This was an announcement from the start of the WSOP which confirmed as much:

Again, this is a rule that has been inconsistently enforced and what Tamayo’s team did was seemingly allowed to happen at the final table, in full view of security staff, the production crew and the whole poker world. So I think it would be unfair to penalise Tamayo after the fact when he should have been given a warning as soon as it happened. 

So it’s not cheating and if it is against the rules, it has been so poorly enforced this year we shouldn’t penalise Tamayo for it. Having said that, this needs to be stamped out in poker and next year’s WSOP should ban solver tech of any kind on final table rails. Phones can easily be restricted at concerts, this should not be much of an issue to enforce at a final table. 

I think it should be banned for one reason, and one reason only, which is that it looks tremendously shitty to outsiders watching the final table. It is way too difficult to explain the nuances of what you can and cannot do with a solver to a recreational player. People who are new to the game are always incredibly suspicious in particular about the potential to cheat with online technology. Stuff like this just reinforces that and let us not forget that this has been a year with a major bot and super user scandal. This puts amateur players off from playing poker, plain and simple.  

The rails are one of the things that makes the WSOP broadcasts so entertaining so let’s not get too strict about them. We can’t stop people telling players they played a hand well. We can take a much harsher stance against the use of technology on the rail. It’s not cheating, but it is clearly horrible for the game. 

What are your thoughts on this issue? Let us know in the comments:


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