Has Collusion Cheating Been Down at 2018 World Series of Poker?

WSOP Collusion Book

The answer to that question is an absolute yes. And decreased collusion at the WSOP has been the trend for more than a decade, especially during the main event.

Why is that so? you may ask?

Simply because there are just too many entrants at the main event, which makes it statistically improbable to obtain a big enough advantage with collusion play to make it worthwhile.

Back in the late 90s and early 2000s collusion play at the WSOP was endemic, even at the main event. This is because the fields were much smaller than today, just a mere fraction of the multi-thousands of entrants we now see each year.

In my 2006 book Dirty Poker, for which I took a huge amount of negative criticism from the poker community, I pointed out how professional tournament collusion teams involving big-name players were taking down several tournaments at the WSOP.

They were able to do it mainly by chip-dumping in order to get key members of their collusion rings to advance as the limits went up. I showed how the numbers of both repeat final-table players and tournament winners defied probability when you compared the degree of difference in skill between the top players who were mainstays of the WSOP.

Adding to that the huge luck factor intrinsic to poker, it was just impossible that collusion rings weren't the best strategy for taking down tournaments in the WSOP.

But today the fields are just too big, thus professional poker tournament collusion teams now play smaller tournaments.