Those Pesky Marked Cards
It seems like every year in the biggest buy-in events at the World Series of Poker, there are allegations of marked cards. It's like it's not the World Series of Poker without that.
Sure enough, John D'Agostino just found a marked card at Table Orange 323. The table was playing one of the stud games and one of D'Agostino's hole cards had a small "chip" taken out of it near the corner. D'Agostino stopped the deal before it was complete to call attention to the card. He asked if he should just flip it up, as he had not yet been dealt his door card.
The dealer called the floor over to the table but continued the deal before the floor arrived, giving D'Agostino a third card, face up.
"I guess not," D'Agostino said to nobody. "How can I play this hand now?"
"You know you're playing with two cards, right?" said Tim Phan. When action came to D'Agostino he closed his hand. Then he turned up the marked card.
"Shockingly it was an ace," he remarked as he showed the ace of spades. "Who could have guessed?"
"Guys, there's better ways to mark cards than to rip the corner off."
The defective card was quickly substituted out and play continued.