Almost a week on from Jonathan Tamayo’s WSOP Main Event victory, the poker world has not moved ‘onto the next’. By now, the WSOP hangover dictates that players of all levels refocus their attentions on the next tour, the next big festival with major titles on the line. Not this year. If 2023 was the year of Team Lucky, the 2024 WSOP Main Event may forever be remembered as ‘Laptopgate’, the year that a solver provided more questions than answers in the aftermath of the biggest World Championship in poker history.

Rail Team Assistance

The post-match interview may not have focused on it, but ever since a photo surfaced of Jonathan Tamayo’s rail having GTO solvers running on the WSOP Main Event final table, the subject has dominated the discussion. With players such as the former 2015 Main Event winner Joe McKeehen and German pro Dominik Nitsche on his rail, Jonathan Tamayo was in great hands. But that wasn’t all he had in his corner, with a GTO solver running in assistance to his strategy too.

While Tamayo’s victory owed more to miraculous cards than it did to strategy – a dominated ace won through during the final table’s latter stages – the debate has raged for the past few days on whether Tamayo’s technological advantage was an unfair edge or merely a distasteful element to an overall pleasing spectacle.

To say that the poker community has caught fire discussing the boundaries of taste would be an understatement. Players such as Daniel Negreanu, Alex Keating and Dara O’Kearney have all chimed in since the final table was broadcast around the world. Opinion is divided, but the general poker public is negative about Tamayo and his team’s tactics. But are they right to be?

Did Jonathan Tamayo Break WSOP Rules?

“Do not use any type of poker solvers at any point in time at the table or in the tournament area.”

The scene was set in spectacular fashion. A total of 10,112 entries – the biggest in WSOP Main Event history – and a top prize of $10m was on the line. At a final table dominated in different stretches by Jordan Griff and Niklas Astedt, Tamayo needed to cling on at several points, and with as much desperation as he did when he folded pocket queens. Did he manage to do so with the help of the laptop and those infamous solvers?

It’s possible he did, but the amount of help they provided seems less important than the look of using a laptop to the outside world. When Dan ‘Jungleman’ Cates calls it ‘A bad look, not cheating but will dissuade [recreational players] from joining. It’s [on] WSOP to prevent this bad look for its and poker’s image’, you know that something is wrong about the way poker has been perceived through this incident. According to some, Tamayo hasn’t broken the rules. However, Daniel ‘Kid Poker’ Negreanu referenced an announcement made during the WSOP – in another event – where tournament staff said:

“Do not use any type of poker solvers at any point in time at the table or in the tournament area. If you’re found using one of these poker solvers, there’s a possibility of being disqualified from this tournament.”

Whilst the word ‘possibility’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that paragraph, Negreanu feels that the ruling is clear. “I remember hearing that announcement being made several times, so I’m not sure how this doesn’t break that rule. Based on my understanding of the rule, looking at solvers or charts in between hands isn’t allowed. Someone else running solves in game and then telling you in between hands also should not be allowed. No-one at the table said anything as far as I know, but had they asked the floor for a ruling, I don’t see how they would have been allowed to continue.”

Poker and Wider Community Pile On

“If I had confirmation that they were there running sims, I may have mentioned something to the floor.” ~ Jordan Griff, WSOP Main Event runner-up.

Dominik Nitsche declared in the aftermath of the final table that he was not only happy with winning big thanks to having a ‘piece’ of Tamayo, but that he enjoyed the trolling of ‘Laptopgate’ on X. That riled up many other players and poker fans worldwide. One of them was high stakes cash game player Alan Keating.

“I can’t comment on whatever is on that laptop,” he said. “I will share that I was with a dozen friends last night watching the final table playing on the background and not a single one of them thought whatever is on that laptop was tasteful or within the spirit of the game. I’m glad y’all won money for yourselves but the experience we had watching reinforced the idea that tournament poker isn’t for us.”

Nitsche snapped back: “What’s funny is that you acting like an absolute clown on stream to get whale action in private games isn’t exactly anyone’s definition of ‘the spirit of the game’ either. I prefer competing over sucking up to rich guys.”

Keating said, “You know nothing of what you speak” in response.

Dara O’Kearney said tonight that he was hired to essentially do the same ‘solving-coaching’ as Tamayo’s rail and while he admitted that ‘Going from hand to hand definitely does strike a lot of people as wrong’, he had a lot more to add to put nuance on the matter here.

In an interview with Doug Polk, Jordan Griff, who lost heads-up to Tamayo, said: “I thought that if they were doing anything nefarious or against the rules that it would have been called out or caught on. But when I’m at the table in that moment, I’m focused on playing. I’m not focused on, ‘ooh does he have a solver?’ I’m there to play my game. I think using RTA is going to give an advantage. If I had 100% confirmation that they were there running sims, I may have mentioned something to the floor then.”

The fallout from Jonathan Tamayo’s victory may well last into the next stop of the world Series of Poker, as it now travels to Europe and then the WSOP Paradise festival. Whether the argument can be ‘solved’ or not is the question. Unlike some of Tamayo’s decisions, the answer to that question may take some time to arrive at.