TDA Summit Recap with Matt Savage

and that's got some longer interviews on the podcast. Of course, you know, during the w soop we're able to grab people for some quick sound bites here and there. On some breaks, we're able to get winners. Of course after they you know, win bracelets, win a boatload of money, all that sort of stuff. But hopefully hear you know, we can start diving into some longer stuff with some specific people that I kind of want to have some conversations with. You know, the summer chaos is now behind us.

Things have calmed down a little bit, so that's going to be the goal, hopefully over these next couple shows, maybe even to carry us through the whole year. So hopefully you know now that I put that out there, I can actually deliver on it and not fail on that goal. First up, I was able to speak recently with Matt Savage. He's a good friend, listener of the podcast, he's an industry colleague. He's seen just about everything there is to see in poker. If you're on poker social media,

you likely know Matt at Savage Poker. He's constantly talking about ruling tournament stuff, this and that. He's the founder of the Tournament Directors Association, also known as the TDA, and that's really what I wanted to speak to him about. So the TDA, it has a sum at every two years, but as I told him, I always get the sense of the TDA summ that it comes. People talk about it for a couple of days, for a week, you know, it's on social media, there's some chatter, but then it

just goes away. Nothing really happens. There's not a ton of conversation about it. You know, a couple of years ago, by the some what's gonna happen again, There's some conversation about it, and then it goes away again, and this

cycle just kind of repeats. So hopefully this conversation that I'm going to have with Matt sheds some further light on what's happening within the TDA, how some hot topics and poker such as solvers, play clocks, face coverings, you know, big blind anti first or big blind first or anti first, stuff like that. You know how, that's all being discussed by different tournament staff members tournament officials around the world.

Before we jump into that discussion, though, I do need to remind you that the Poker Gol podcast is brought to you in part by storm x. The easiest way to earn crypto just head over to storm x dot io to activate cash back offers, then shop online as normal through eligible vendors. You can find that all over at storm x dot io and you can earn crypto cash back on confirmed purchases. There are a variety of

tokens available to earn bitcoin, dogecoin, and much more. Earning crypto doesn't have to be hard with storm x. Earning crypto is easy. Now that we got that out of the way, paid some bills of course, you know, got to take care of the housekeeping items. Let's get into that conversation that I had with Matt Savage. All right, it's my pleasure to bring in Matt Savage, WPT executive tour director, Poker TDA founder, and I will add all

around just kind of tournament director extraordinary. If there's been a ruling out there, this guy has probably seen it. He's probably ruled it. He might have even wrote writ the rule book on it. Okay, So Matt Savage, Welcome to the show.

it's like, what what happened? What's the result? What are what can things that players can expect or even you know, industry people like myself, What can we expect to come out of this? So we're gonna hit on kind of everything TDA related, you know, what people can expect. Maybe there's nothing to expect. I don't know, you know, I would like to know all that sort of stuff. So hopefully we can ask some good questions here and get

some some good answers. It's also pretty timely, you know, coming off the summer, that's when everything is focused on, of course the World Series of Poker, but poker in general is just very focused and the conversation is much louder. We have obviously the whole laptop gate thing coming out of the World Series of Poker. You know that was post TDA summit, so you know, all that sort of stuff.

I guess before we get into you know, some of the questions that I have and some of the topics I want to hit on, can you just go over like what the TDA is, when did it get started, how did it get started? And then big picture, what's the goal from the TDA.

to the World Series of Poker. First time I ever walked into the World Series Poker was in two thousand and one, and went up to the tournament director, Bob Thompson and his son Robert, and said, Hey, I would really like to try and get some poker rules standardized, like for tournaments, because we had Roberts rules out there, but we didn't have anything for tournaments, and like I said, they were different everywhere we went. So I said, let's try and get this done, and basically I was told

that's been tried you for, it's never going to happen. Well, luckily, Linda Johnson had this World Poker Industry conference that was going on at the time, and so I asked her. She was already a friend of mine, and I talked to her into adding an extra day where we just met with with tournament directors and carter managers from around the country. And that year we had twenty five and the idea really started from there. Basically, the goal of the TDA is to always standardize the rules in the

interests of the players. So the players when they go from casino to casino, property to property know what to expect when they walk in there and they see that they're using TDA rules, they know what to expect and it makes a better playing environment for all of those players and better for tournament directors, so they have a source and a resource to go to and discuss the rules.

as well, and it's a conglomeration of all of those people. Also, Linda and Jan are still a part of that, and of course Mike Bishop, who is our TDA administrator, who does a lot of the work to making sure that the website gets updated and all those rules get done and updated along with our TDA certification. And so maybe you know the main goal of the TDA this make standardization for all players and tournament.

Now we have a lot of interest and a lot of people that really want to step up and be on the board, but I think at some point you had to have too many. And we'll make those decisions over time on whether we need to replace people or have people step up and be a part of it. But my goal was always to get a global so, you know, having somebody in South America, having somebody in Asia, having somebody in Europe, and you know, you know the United States in Canada is something that I always thought

was important to the TDA. We've kind of achieved that at this point, so you know, covering all corners of the globe is super important.

players and I definitely want their input. Years past, we used to get people saying that it's made up of only tournament directors, but to be honest, most of the people that are tournament directors and most people that attend also play poker tournaments. So that's something that I always tried to get rid of because it wasn't true. But poker players are always invited to come out there, and I know it's a busy time of year during the summer, but I know that everybody's going to be in town

as well. So there are those players that do come to the summit and add their input, but most of that has done in advance, where players are sending me feedback and sending me information, sending me rules that they think need to be changed or could be possibly changed, and that's how I get a lot of our stuff for the TDA.

Japan last year. In my opinion, what I think we need to do is just have more of an international one every year and then have the main TDA summit in Vegas every two years. So I'm all about that. We have some people that are in Taiwan now that are looking to maybe do another one, even sooner than

the middle of next year, and I think we'll do that. So, you know, with poker being a real global game and it's really exciting to see that so many people care and are so passionate about the rules of poker, I think that we should do more of those, and I think that we will in the near future. I would love to do it in Latin America. Of course Europe as well would be a big hot spot. Even maybe India, South Africa or an Africa would be a great one

as well. You know, there's just so many people that care about the game, and you know, we get reached out to by everybody and you'll get pulled in a bunch of different directions. But I would like to make something more standards. So I do like that idea that you have.

popularizing that. But one of the things I felt really strongly about was that the Anti should come first, and ANTI is supposed to go first. It always has and

I still feel that to this day. But the fact that the World Series was doing it different than the WPT, the Asian Poker Tour was doing different than Poker Stars, really, to me is something that it's such a small part of a great addition to the poker industry that I wanted to get it all the same, and I pushed for it two years ago right there at the Poker Studio as well, and couldn't get it past the line.

This time, I really really pushed and pushed and pushed, and I knew that it was never going to be Anti first because the WSP wasn't doing that way, and you know some other big places Poker Stars had gone to Big Blind first. So I really wanted to focus on making it the same for everybody, and that was one that we got over the line, and I'm happy that we did that, and a lot of people were holding out to the bitter end, but in the end we all put that vote up and it got done.

Another one that has kind of become even a bigger deal since then was the use of solvers was the use of graphs at the table and the use of cell phones, and a big, big conversation sprung out of that as to what we're going to do. I always say that we're going to have this conversation every two years. It's going to come up again in two years, and just so happens that it comes up more and more

often these days. There are some scandals out there in poker that have not fully broken, about people using devices on the table to look at what the whole cards are when they're coming off the deck and seeing these things are going to break. And these are the things that the TDA is super focused on because you know, if one of those things happens and it becomes a pattern or it becomes more common, it really could ruin our game. And we all love this game. We don't

want that to happen. So cell phones on the table was one of the things we really talked about about getting those removed. I know that not everybody in the room could agree, and that's the way that TDA works. If we don't get everybody to agree one way or another, it doesn't become a TDA rule. But for me and my focus, I really believe that, you know, cell phones are going to have to be turned off when you're not in a hand and you can't look at them and see if you're looking at a graph or a

chart before the next hand begins. So that's one of those things I would really like to see happen. It hasn't happened yet, so I am really focused on using what the rule that the Wind has already. They have one in place where where solvers and charts are not allowed in the entire tournament area. And the discussion came up from David lappin what is the tournament area? Is it behind the rail, is it out of the room? Is it behind you know, when you're going to the restroom?

Is it Where is the tournament area? And that was just another discussion. I thought it was a little bit silly, but yeah, I think that using what the wind wind does is something I would like to bring to the WPT and of course to the TDA as well. It just didn't get settled this year, but it was a big discussion.

slot machine, sometimes poker tables. You can literally be a poker table, and then five feet away is just a regular walkway where like kids can walk on. So it's like, that's not a gaming floor, it's just a walkway. So like, can I literally just be five feet away from that table on my phone? Looking at a chart, you would think no, right, But if the rule is quote unquote tournament area, that's where it can get gray, and then people can be like, well, I'm not in the tournament area.

Yes you are, No, you're not, and then you can just kind of go back and forth. So it's it's tricky. I'm not sure there is a solution yet for any of this sort of stuff. It's hard. I know that we had the whole Jonathan Tomiow, Dominic Nische, Joe mckeean situation from the wsp Man event FALM table, and that's what everyone's pointing to. But I will also say that isn't the first time that this has happened to the WSIP. There was some photos out there, some videos out there

from earlier in the summer. Walking through the fields myself, I saw people on their stuff all the time. I mean, it's it's it's very tricky. Part of it for me is it's a question of manpower, Like there's just not enough tournament staff, especially if the wz AP as an example, or even the WPT at the wind or any other massive, massive tournament where there's like one hundred tables in play and there's five tournament directors. I mean, how are you

gonna police everything? And then and then it's does everyone know what they're looking for? What if they don't know what they're looking for? What if they disguise things? What if you say to a player, What if you walk up to a player, Matt, you walk up to me and you say, hey, I noticed you might be on a chart, and I see your phone. I say no, Like, what are you going to take my phone from me? No, you're not, Like, I'm not gonna let you. And I put in my pocket and I'm gonna say no. Liken,

Then what do you do? Do you just suspend me or give me a penalty based on an assumption that I might have been on something? What if I was looking at my stock chart that looked similar. You know, It's like it gets very tricky and very gray. I do think that there does need to be heavy enforcement on it. It's just like when does that enforcement get levied because it can be very tricky and not everything can be understood.

get out of the area itself. And again there are those even tournament directors out there, good friends of mine, that will say it doesn't help people as much as people think it's not that big of a deal. One guy even told me we should pass out charts to everybody that plays in the tournament and just get it out there in the open. I'm opposed to that. I think it's bad. Obviously, there's a lot of discussions about the opsticts how it looks. Is it cheating, is it

not cheating. I mean, I'm not on the side of it was cheating. I'm not on the side it was. You know, I was definitely on the side that it's optically bad. There are people that play in tournaments all the time that feel like they are less informed, less likely to win, less likely to be able to compete because these things exist. So that type of thing I really want to get away from the area. And I understand that there's a lot of coaches out there, there's

a lot of people that are in the industry. There's a lot of people that are trying to learn how to play poker better, which I am all for. I'm all for all of those things. I'm just saying that, you know, for that recreational player that doesn't feel comfortable in an event because some people are using these things, that's the person I want to protect. It's always a person I'm trying to protect in these things.

you're gonna do. So I know you're going to probably do things pretty correct in theory, so that I can just combat that. But I can also see the side of if you're someone who's just a complete recreational you're not really in tune with you know, modern poker theory and study and that sort of stuff. You just basically play to play. You see somebody using these things, you're thinking they're trying to get an advantage of you on you,

and it can certainly scare you away. And also just the the general fear that like people are putting out there on social media, Like if you're kind of just an onlooker from afar, you see all this sort of stuff and that can also scare people, you know, optically speaking, that can really scare people away. And I think that's that's a bad thing. You brought up the coaching aspect

as well. I mean it's almost like if I were to like go to a final table, let's say it's at the Dabissity, just because that's where all this stuff seemed to happen, that got a lot of conversation.

Versus if I go over there and Sean says, no, you need to start limping. Okay, I'll just start limping like And I'm using Shawn as an example because he's been a coach on Final table rails before, but like that, so then it's then it comes down to you know, where do you draw the line? Can you just never talk to a coach? Can you never go over to a rail? Are we going down the Poker Stars PCA route from years ago? We're sequestering people at a final table?

How does like when does it stop? Where does it stop? It's it's just a whole different can of worms that's being opened up.

and I think it was a better experience. You know, we don't see people running to the tables. Of course, at that Championship final table, we had six basically pros there right, so their their charts and their knowledge is all up there, so they're not going up there, But are they getting information from people on the breaks? Likely they don't have their phones at the table, so that's

one way to combat that. But at the same time, we didn't allow those laptops in the audience, and I just like I said, I think it makes for a better experience. You want to go there as a player and have people come and sweat you and be a fan and be a part of the excitement of that final table where you can win life changing money. But at the same time, do you need to have somebody there coaching you after every hand or in between hands. I prefer that happen on the break.

and you obviously talk about this sort of thing. But now it's right back in everyone's face on the biggest age in poker. So you know, what's the conversation like now? Is it constantly texting emailing about this sort of thing? What's going on?

I've never seen him so I animated in my life, so I was always good to see as well. But you know, like I said, those guys, you know he deserved to win. Was he getting coached? Yeah? But like I said, I would just like to see that stuff outside of the actual play of hands. And I think that was the issue for a lot of people, especially the recreational players that have reached out to me, you know, through text, through social media and all. They just didn't

like the look of it. And you know, that's one of the things that's important to the game of poke or is that we make things look optically good so that nobody feels like they're at such a disadvantage that they don't want to enter these big events.

they be implemented more more places? You know, it's easy to do them in the Poka Goro studio or at a Triton stop, or in some of the WPT events when the field's condensed to be a little bit smaller and it's more manageable. You know, are we going to ever see it in like a WPT World Championship or a WSP main event, when there's thousands and thousands of players in a field, Like, at what point should we institute clocks? How important are they in the longevity of the game going forward.

Poker Atlas and the Wind has Poker Outles. I think you're going to start seeing more clocks and more tournaments from the beginning. You know, we've also discussed this for WPT events. We now use them in all of our products, and we've reduced the amount of time pre to fifteen seconds. And originally it was a big whoa, what are you guys doing? You're doing this wrong. It should be fifteen seconds. But after people play with it for a little while,

they say, you know what, this actually works. And one of the things that people talk about is if you have fifteen seconds, should you be able to use that full fifteen seconds all the time? When it was thirty seconds? I said absolutely not fifteen seconds. I think that when those keysits suations come up, or when you're laddering and you use your full fifteen seconds, I have no problem with it. Giving a lesser amount of time extension chips,

I think is also important. You don't want people being you know, collecting them and then using them all at one time, where it might be a situation where that shouldn't be good. But I am one that also feels like that's okay. If you're going to give those time insensitiorships, it should be allowed. But to come back to your first point, I think we're going to see more of that, and I think it's a better thing for the game.

You know, you know a lot of amateur and recreational players don't like the amount of time that it takes. And to be honest, when we gave out those time extensionships early on on the World Over Tour, most of those recreational players said, I'll never use these. I never take too long. And you know, it's the more professionals and the people that are more focused on you know, those ladders, the ICM jumps and all those things that

are using them to their advantage. And you know, I while I would like to see the clocks you used to, you know, maybe enhance some of the play on the on the tournaments, I don't think they should be used as you know, a detractor to try and make things super slow and unenjoyable for everybody that's playing game.

always been funny to me. A lot of these guys, the players, you know, the high rollers and whatnot, who want to use as many time extensions as possible, their max time, all that sort of stuff, are used to playing online eight, ten, twelve tables, you know, snap decisions, and it's like, guys, this is one live tournament, Like can we just can we act? Like come on? You know, I think you can figure this out. You've probably seen it before hundreds of times, so let's just move things along.

to win a tournament. And I think even at the final table he was rushing decisions because he didn't want to use them. He wanted to have them all at the end, and the fact that he had all twenty when he got to the end, I thought it was quite an accomplishment but also a fun example of you don't need to use those things and use too much time to win a tournament.

something that they do in Jacksonville. Best bet they actually have a sign that says you can wear a mask, Sure, you can wear sunglasses. Okay, you cannot wear a mask, sunglasses and a hoodie. You can't wear three things, so you wear two of three. So that discussion came up. We couldn't come to an agreement on that, but I

think we'll probably be bringing that up again. So you know, for me, the sunglasses and the technology that's coming along with the sunglasses or something we're gonna be talking about again. People wearing headphones at the table. Is that something that we may have to remove and if we have to remove headphones at some point, or we're going to have to remove hoodies as well, so people can't obscure their

ears and see what's in their ears. So it's it's something that I think again will be a discussion in two years. Where are we at with that right now? I don't think that ninety nine point nine percent of anybody has anything the ferries when they're wearing headphones or using phones at the table, or using sunglasses at the table, or any of those things. But I do think there needs to become a point where we have to stop it.

It's annoying to a lot of people like me when you're playing in somebody that's wearing sunglasses, hoodies, a mask, a gate or Kevin coming up a scarf, all of those things and there's nothing you could see on them, on their face, on their eyes that you know makes it. You know, part of the game is getting tells from people. So people totally trying to obscure themselves I don't think

should be allowed. There are people that are on the fencing it about that and feel like anything should go and anything should be allowed, but I think that number is somewhere around twenty percent or less. So the fact that that's there, like I said, I think if they have rules in place, like again, I'll use a WIN as example, where you cannot have your face obscured at

the table. Completely obscured at the table is something that we're going to be leaning towards doing on the WPT anytime that I can have something to say over that, and you know it, you know, when somebody's doing something that doesn't look right or or has this kind of covering that shouldn't be allowed. So I'm happy to support all of those things, and I think that we will do more and more of that in the future.

You are asking to break an ankle. I'm telling you it is not fun.

do with that. And I still get a lot of people trolling me all the time, sending me videos of racks on the floor and all that stuff, and it's fun for them and they but I think in the end people are going to learn that it's something that it's something for you know, the staff, the people, the media that's on the floor, the cocktail waitresses are there serving, you know. It's just you know, a behavior you would want to see, and people throwing him under the middle

of the table. Somebody has to go down there and get that rack for more your stinky, nasty feet. We're all single all day and it's just not right. So I think that's a you know, kind of a funny one, but at the same time it's important.

the small blind or the big blind. If you are somebody that's getting moved to balance a table, meaning you're on a nine handed table moving to a six handed table, you must always take the single big blind if it's available. If not, you need to take the worst position. And the worst position is never the small blind. So that's the most common one that I get all the time. The other one is the single chip. Is it a

raise or is it not a raise? Blinds are three or six and twelve hundred and the first player throws out two one K chips. Many people feels like that should be a raise, but it's a simple ruling and that you remove the one of the chips from the pot. It's not enough to cover the bet and therefore it is not a raise. And so that's the example of

that I like to use all the time. You know, those chip rules and things come up all the time, But I think the biggest one is when can you take a hand and when can you not take it?

And the ruling is always or generally, if you make a verbal statement of call. You have to call whatever the amount is. But we do have certain situations and we always go back to TDA number rule rule number one, which is, you know, in the fairness and what is best for the game, we can make decisions that may not affect that mean, maybe the player had his handful.

Let's used Daniel's example for where he, you know, limped for five thousand, and Arthur raised to thirteen thousand and two, Plaeople folded, and then Arthur folded his hand in that spot right there. The dealer is supposed to stop and say, hey, Daniel still has a hand. You need to protect these cards from that player that's obviously folding in a spot where he shouldn't. So now what did Daniel say. He said, you know that we you know that's a terrible rule.

It was a terrible ruling by that floormant, who was, by the way, one of the best four people in the industry. Jordan Cutter shout out. So that's partially a dealer air, it's partially a player air. But in the end we give that player back the eight thousand that he raised, and then Daniel wins the anties, the blinds and the five thousand from Arthur. So is Daniel getting penalized in that spot? He says absolutely, I'm getting penalized.

And he said we shouldn't, you know, protect people, even if it's I think he says Aunt Betty back in Iowa, and I say, you should protect those people. And there are certain things where a dealer might scoop up a hand of a player that's moved all in. It's happened multiple, multiple times, and again dealer errors are going to happen. We don't want to, you know, really remount the dealer and think that it's something that is never going to

be happen in the game. So we want to do what's best for all players and try and protect the players from dealer mistakes as best we can. And I think we do that a lot on the TDA, and I think it's important.

dealer because he's winging it into the muck. I would really like to see a better enforcement of that for dealers. And yeah, I don't hate your idea. There are dealers, and you really don't want a dealer to have his hand on top of the muck because that could lead to some nefarious things over time. But yes, protecting the muck as best as possible maybe a case I like it. I like that.

been easy to just been like, hey, Archer, here's your handback. Okay, he still has cards over here, so let's continue the action and then go from there.

It's tough, tough, tough, tough to get the top dealers to deal these events. And you know, training, training, training, man, It's it's something that's it's got to be better. Enforcement of these rules also has to be better in all situations.

that sort of stuff. So yeah, I like those seats. You know, I don't have any sort of issue because I've I've been used to sitting there so many times that I know how to look at the other players. Some players, Oh, I can't see the guy in the nine seer. Orever, we'll just lean forward a little bit, like it's not that hard.

overly apologetic. I was like, listen, it's fine, it's one hand. It's not that big of a deal. I have no idea what the hand was, so just I was like, just count the cards to make sure that you didn't like just miss me completely, and if you have enough cards, then yes, just carry out with the hants. Not that big of a deal. But yeah, like I'm I believe that you should have some sympathy because these dealers are

working long hours, dealing hundreds and hundreds of hands. Mistakes are going to happen, just like when you're a player. I'm sure you've made a mistake, misclicking and betting the wrong amount, acting out of turn, whatever it may be, and the dealer doesn't blast you for it. No, that's not how it is. So like, just be you know, a little bit sympathetic with things. If it happens over and over again, I get it, you know at that point.

But also like at that point, I would I would advise players to just get up, find a foreman, say like, hey, listen, you know this dealer is you know, having issues with this, this and this. We had a dealer who like literally couldn't count the pot this summer, like in any hand. And eventually we were just like, listen, every hand takes seven minutes. It's just it's not fair to us. So can you just you know, get someone else in here? And the TV was like, yes, that's fine, great, I'll

find some one, got someone in, switched it out. There was no like exchange of words because everyone understood the situation. And that's how I think things should be going about, as opposed to this yelling at the dealer because that's not going to solve anything at all.

and it's going to stop now. And we you know, there at the Commerce when I was there up in northern California, we just didn't let the dealer abuse happen and people got removed and people got eliminated from tournaments in the past for doing things like that. Throwing cards to the dealer, which you don't see anymore, used to be a thing and used to be a common thing, and I'm glad that that's out of the game entirely. Good.

this game. Got more questions from dealers, from new players, from everybody, why is he allowed to double bet on four Street? And those are the things that are so ingrained in the mixed game lore that it's very tough to change. Should there be big blind anti in mixed games?

I think so, I think it would work just fine, but so many people are resistant to that and think that it's just such an integral part of the game, putting up your auntie every time, And it would make it so much easier for the dealers as well, if that was one thing, and you would never have to ask who didn't Danty, You'd never have to go to the campra. One of the things we found out of it big blind Anti. It made it so much better.

So yeah, it's something that could change at some point, but just not yet.

our website fixed. I want to get our training certification upgraded, and I would love to have a level two of certification. And so many people around the world take that certification test and it's only ten dollars, but what it does is it shows the people that you work for and the people that you're working for that you are taking your learning of the rules seriously and that is an important part of your job and what you're doing. So

I would love to see some improvement on that. And definitely just anybody out there that has any questions or wants to be a part of the TDA, please reach out to me. I'm pretty accessible on all things social and would be happy to plug you in with somebody in your area of the world to make that happen.