WSOP's New Dealer Rating System Raises Concerns Among Dealers

The World Series of Poker (WSOP) announced a new dealer rating system that will debut in Las Vegas this summer for the 2026 WSOP. In the eyes of poker room manager Kimberley Stone, it increases pressure on the dealers and does not properly reward the best ones.

The WSOP announced the new rating system on X, where Jeff Platt demonstrated its features. Players can now rate the dealer at their table in the WSOP app on a scale of one to five stars. Ratings are shared internally with tournament staff. From there, the dealers with the highest ratings are eligible for awards throughout the series.

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New System Will Increase Pressure on Dealers

Several reactions to the new system were of the same opinion that it will cause more issues than it solves. The announcement of the new system sparked much consternation among players and dealers alike.

PokerScout spoke to Lone Star Poker Series founder Kimberley Stone, who has extensive experience as a dealer and as a poker room manager, about her thoughts.

She immediately expressed her concerns:

**New dealers are easy to rattle by criticizing them or making them feel under spotlight. As pressure to be perfect increase – even for experienced dealers, mistakes compound and more errors occur. You are effectively putting every dealer for every 30-minute down under pressure to perform perfectly for 30 minutes.

Television producer and WSOP Circuit ring winner Matt Salsberg** echoed this sentiment, calling the system “particularly insane and actually cruel.” He imagined a scenario where a new dealer makes a mistake, and in response, the entire table whips out their phones to ding that dealer’s ratings.

Complainers More Likely to Use Rating System

She also noted how players who have negative experiences or who are more prone to complaining are more likely to use the system more often than players who are generally content.

**And let’s be real, complainers/haters will be the most likely to bust out their phone to enter a rating – not all these players saying they love the idea and dealers should be rewarded! Please. I hate to be critical here, but I will guess those that love this idea will enter a rating 2-3 times during the series. The numbers will not jive – helpful and positive to the negative and results-oriented ‘Karen’ types.

The best dealers often go unnoticed by players. The job of a dealer is to be effectively invisible and push the game along without issue. If a player does not think about the dealer once during a down, it typically means the dealer did a good job because they did not do anything that needed attention, such as a misdeal or needing help with a chip count.

Those dealers who hum along without issue could fly under the radar and miss out on the five-star ratings the app is designed to give. But a dealer who makes mistakes will almost certainly get poor ratings.

There is also the possibility that players will blame the dealer for things such as being dealt a cooler or being card dead. Ring winner Angela Jordison**, among others, mentioned that as a likely motivation for how some players will rate dealers.

WSOP Player of the Year contender Shaun Deeb also noted that it could become annoying for dealers to ask for five-star reviews all the time.

Cool feature but really don’t like bonus being given based on it every dealer will be saying rate me five stars as they are getting pushed it’s going to be very annoying all summer long.

Will It Incentivize Dealers to Improve?

On the other side of the coin, some players liked the idea and praised it as a great way to hold dealers accountable or motivate them to do better.

Seven-time bracelet winner Josh Arieh was one of those who said the system will not let dealers who do not care to just mail it in:

This is amazing! Dealers that care and try hard, get rewarded. Dealers that don’t give a shit, they are held accountable and correctly instructed on how they can improve.

Bracelet winner Faraz Jaka was also in favor of the system, mentioning how it creates a nice incentive for everyone to up their dealing skills.

Tiered System To Better Reward the Best Dealers

However, Stone does not believe the rating system on the app is good enough to reward good dealers and that the negatives outweigh the positives.

She told PokerScout her alternate idea to fully revamp the way the WSOP treats the best dealers, rather than an app rating system:

The biggest issue is the pay scale and the poor down rate. I have heard dealers report that the WPT down rates have been exceptional for the last couple of events at the Wynn, which is a similar event and venue scale-wise. So it’s clearly doable.

I have always suggested tiered pay scales based on skills, experience and knowledge of all the games. Require an audition style and written quiz that has to be passed to advance to the next tier.

Bring a system like this and exceptional dealers from all over the country will return to work this prestigious event.

Jeffrey McMillan

Poker Writer

Jeffrey is an Expert Sports and Poker Writer with poker being his specific scope for the better part of five years. He has worked in various capacities at the biggest poker events in the world, WSOP, EPT, local tournaments and more. He has worked with PokerNews, Poker.Org, 888poker and the WSOP itself through the years. Jeff is also a fervent follower of many sports, professional, collegiate and international, with a particular interest in tennis. He received a Master's in Sports Management from the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) and a Bachelors in the same field from Clemson University.