Allegations of chip stealing at the Irish Poker Open recently flew at Will Kassouf, so the poker player has gone on the offensive, speaking with Doug Polk about the matter. While Polk did manage to get a few questions in edgewise on Tuesday, Kassouf kept up a pretty relentless wall of verbiage for the boss’s share of the one-hour interview.
Polk eased Kassouf into the interview with a recap of Kassouf’s (in)famous 2016 WSOP Main Event run. However, where the interview starts to get some meat on it is when Polk transitions to the story of Kassouf palming a friend’s chips in 2015. Kassouf’s deluge of words becomes far choppier at this point, as he slips into an account of his version of the event.
The interview then turned to more recent scandals, including this year’s Irish Open, where Kassouf was accused of going all-in, losing his stack, then making off with his chips before they could be collected.
After a long preamble, Kassouf’s explanation of what happened is—by his account—absolutely nothing. He claims that he left the table and the chips before not running from the card room. His theory for why his opponent was shorted in the pot was that his stack was most likely scraped into the side pot.
Polk manages to be an even-handed, if toothless interviewer, but it’s not clear that this interview will sway anyone’s opinion much on either side.