Reporting at the WSOP: An Exposé

Featured image from WPT gallery on Flickr.com

It all started out ordinarily enough. On Twitter (or X, as it’s now named), readers could find a tweet exclaiming that there was an opportunity to apply to become a poker reporter. 

Intrigued, I read the job posting. It provided at the time of this writing that “[t]he PokerNews Live Events team is expanding and looking for passionate poker writers to join our roster of live reporters…. PokerNews is the exclusive live reporting partner of the World Series of Poker[.]” 

PokerNews sought candidates to join their team for “the upcoming 2025 WSOP in Las Vegas, plus other exciting events this year.” The posting provided that “[l]ive reporters are compensated with a day rate on a per-event basis. You’ll join a team that travels to worldwide events all year long to bring live updates to our readers. Additionally, PokerNews compensates live reporters for their travel time, accommodations, and living expenses throughout events.”

The Interviews & Subsequent Tweets

I liked the sound of the opportunity, so I submitted a writing sample and had my first interview. During the first interview, I confirmed that food, lodging, and airfare would be covered for my time at the summer WSOP and that I would be paid a per diem rate. Specific amounts were not discussed. I was told to expect long hours. 

After submitting three PokerNews-style reports on previously broadcasted hands, I received an email for a second interview. During this interview, they informed me that during the summer WSOP, food and airfare would be covered, but lodging would not. I pressed back to confirm if I heard correctly and was again told lodging was not covered. Expected work hours were approximately 11 a.m. to 1-3 a.m., which amounted to approximately 14-16 hours per day.

Pay was $175-200 per day, and the lead interviewer said, “Let me know now if the pay is too low,” so they wouldn’t “have to take the time to determine if [my] schedule would work with [theirs].” This meant that if you worked for 14-16 hours, on the high end, you could expect to make approximately $14 per hour (i.e., $200 for 14-hour days) to the low end of $11 per hour (i.e., $175 for 16-hour days).

When I explained that the average wage for a reporter is approximately $20-$25 per hour (i.e., approximately double what PokerNews offered), they laughed. 

At the time of this writing:

• The minimum wage in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the WSOP is hosted during the summer, is $12 per hour.
• The average hourly wage for reporters in the United States is around $27.42, with a range typically between $23.56 and $31.97, according to ZipRecruiter in March 2025. 

On Sunday, March 7, I wrote to my contact from the first interview that I was passing on the job, noting the conflicting lodging information and that the offered pay was half the national average. I did not receive an email back. Two days later, I shared my interview experience on X, and the post went viral. 

Within hours of the tweet going live, PokerNews reached out via direct message, stating they thought “something went wrong during communication?” For the first time, I was informed of a $3,500 stipend, which was “[u]p to the [reporter] to decide how they spend that money.” I was told that PokerNews “give[s] people a 10/15% bonus on their day rates at the end of the [WSOP] for completing the summer.”

I told PokerNews that I didn’t mind sharing about the stipend on X, which I did immediately after we finished messaging. They asked if I would like to have a call, and I agreed. 

During Monday’s call, I asked a lot of questions that led to vague or confusing answers. The $175-200 per day rate was for “inexperienced” starting reporters. I was “liked,” had experience, and “could expect more.” I was now being told that the numbers were a “starting point for negotiations.” 

When I asked what someone with my experience could expect, they would not say. The pay was presented as gross income, not net income. This meant that reporters were responsible for their own taxes. I asked what the pay range was for a returning reporter. They would not say. I was informed that the amount of time I would be required to work each day could be as short as 4, 8, or 10 hours. As explained to me, the stipend process was confusing.

On the one hand, I was told to expect $3,500 to cover food, lodging, and airfare. On the other hand, it sounded like a pro-rata rate could be applied, such that it might also lessen the amount depending on the number of days (or perhaps hours) worked. When I asked where reporters lived during the WSOP, PokerNews told me the University of Las Vegas offered dorm rooms for $30 per day. 

At the end of the call, no concrete offer was made, and I did not rescind passing on the opportunity. I thought having an interview process that WSOP broadcaster Norman Chad compared to “the bad end of a three-card Monte scam” would be the end of it. But there was more to come.

On Thursday, March 13, I shared on Twitter that I was approached to write a piece about the treatment of reporters in the poker industry. I asked current and former reporters to reach out via direct message. The response was overwhelming. 

Here is what I learned to the extent sources allowed me to share. 

Historical Context 

Low pay was not always a staple at PokerNews. I spoke with BJ Nemeth, who has been reporting on major poker tournaments since 2004 and worked for PokerNews at the WSOP in 2007 and 2008. 

The 2007 WSOP was Nemeth’s fourth WSOP; thus, prior to beginning to report for PokerNews, he had already been reporting on the WSOP for three years.

Notably, 2007 was the first year that PokerNews had the official WSOP coverage. According to Nemeth, PokerNews Editor-in-Chief John Caldwell had to build a strong team from scratch. That was also long before Black Friday hit in 2011, so there was still a lot of money flowing into the ecosystem from online poker sites.

“Poker writers were in demand to provide WSOP content,” said Nemeth, “so PokerNews had to pay competitive rates.”

Nemeth negotiated a good salary that covered his expenses to drive from Atlanta to Las Vegas and find his own accommodations for seven weeks. Nemeth says he had a good experience with PokerNews back then, but “it was a different company under different management in a different era of the game.”

As one confidential source who worked more recently with PokerNews shared, “PokerNews is bound by the amount that WSOP pays them to provide coverage, and given my experiences working WSOP Circuit events versus other stops, the Circuit always felt like they cut the most corners for reporting. Blame the WSOP for raising the rake while making reporters work for wages I can find working menial jobs at home.” 

Recent Experiences of Reporters

Pay

Generally speaking, to cover the summer WSOP, the pay rate was $150 to upwards of $275 or more per day. Sixteen-hour days were “standard.” Stipends varied or were non-existent, although many received $3,500, which amounted to approximately $70-$100 per day if you worked the seven weeks, depending on if you included days off whereby reporters were still in town and had costs.

At least one reporter shared receiving less than the full stipend during the summer. They were given a pro-rated amount because they worked less than 7 weeks. Another shared that “it’s not uncommon for reporters to be broke.”

When it comes to the bonus reporters were told to expect at the end of the summer, one source recalled that “it’s important to note that the end of the summer ‘bonus’ simply brought you up to the advertised higher end of the rate of pay. To be clear, this means that if you miss even a few days for being sick due to long hours, you will not receive the higher end of the pay scale and will thus earn the lower rate offered.”

They shared that “The pay was better at the [abroad] stops. The hours were easier. PokerNews had systems to track players in real time (so you’d know, for example, who the player at table 6, seat 1 was at any given moment). Without the need to ask players their names, there was so much less verbal abuse from players.”

Lodging

Reporters are on their own to find lodging, subject to what remains of their stipend. One source who asked to remain anonymous so they don’t get blackballed conveyed that they were able to work with the $3,500 stipend by sharing and splitting an Airbnb with other first-year reporters and exclusively eating “low-quality” food options available in the dealer’s break room.

Dorm rooms that were referenced during my interview stopped being available for reporters this year on March 3, 2025, according to the University of Las Vegas’s website. Further, renters would need to rent a minimum of 60 or more nights to use the dorms, which equates to $1,800. Reporters then needed to get to the WSOP, which may have occurred by bus or carpooling.

If reporters continued working after the summer WSOP, rooms varied from “ones on site at the casino to off-site hotels, i.e., nothing egregiously good or bad.”

A Typical Day

As provided by several sources but summarized succinctly by one, “Around 15 minutes before an event started, reporters would walk the room and scout out popular names such as pros, celebrities, and notable names from prior tournaments, and use this time to prep opening chip counts.”

“From there, basically the ‘keep the balloon up’ concept of content creation occurred.” This meant that reporters were expected to produce one piece every fifteen to twenty minutes for an entire tournament. Good reporters would turn in six or more hand histories per hour plus at least one round of chip counts.

Breaks to eat were rare. One reporter shared that “[i]t can also be really hard to get away and eat when you’re working a long day without anyone to tag you out after 3-4 hours, let alone 8.” Another shared how they’d eat breakfast while writing the introduction for a tournament before rushing off to the casino.

An additional reporter shared that “We generally don’t take breaks when the tournament takes breaks; this is time we can catch hands up, prep chip counts for the next level, or catch up on bustouts/payouts we may have missed. If your tournament has a dinner break, you can take a break then, but it seems like dinner breaks are starting to be phased out of tournaments; this means reporters will see their only true ‘breaks’ phased out, as well.” 

One source explained how articles are written. “As a live reporter, you have to write an intro for the tournament you’re covering and have that published approximately 90 minutes before start time. WSOP tournament start times can vary from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Your day always begins around two hours before your tournament start time and quite often ends 16-17 hours later.”

When the play is over, reporters would have to go around and gather chip counts as the remaining players bagged chips for the night. After that, reporters have to write a recap of that day’s action. Reporters then have to wait for their recap to get approved by PokerNews editors before they can finally shut down their computers and go to bed. “If you’re fast with writing your recap and the editors are fast to approve, you might be done at around 2 or 3 a.m. the next day. It could be longer, though.”

For example, “[a]t the WSOP, tournaments often get paused as they sort out payouts and other things in large-field tournaments. So a 14-hour day for the players turns into a 15-hour day, and a reporter’s day turns into 17 hours or more. You could get lucky and get a very short day as well, though, as there’s a lot of variance for tournament end times. If PokerNews deems that your day was too short at the WSOP, they’ll assign you to help with another tournament.”

One reporter explained, “A short day at the WSOP is anything under eight hours. It may have happened once or twice for me during the 2019 WSOP. When it did happen, I would get assigned to another tournament until my day got to around 12 hours at least.”

“A short day at the WSOP is anything under eight hours. It may have happened once or twice for me during the 2019 WSOP. When it did happen, I would get assigned to another tournament until my day got to around 12 hours at least.”

For the summer, reporters were generally assigned approximately 35 days of work, or five days a week, for the series. However, some recalled working more than the maximum amount of days set forth in the contract. One reporter who worked more days than the contract provided did not press the issue on extra compensation for the extra days worked. 

Reporters’ Relationship with Management

Feedback here was mixed. Generally speaking, reporters shared how praise was rare. Sometimes, management berated reporters harshly.

One reporter shared how they worked long and hard. “Other new reporters were justifiably complaining about the long hours, low pay, and lack of respect from both players and management.” They took extra shifts; originally scheduled for 35 over the summer, they ended up working 44. “I worked 14 straight days, ranging from 11 to 18 hours. I did not complain.”

Reporters were instructed to keep their heads down and to be a “fly on the wall” at tournaments. One source shared, “We were not allowed to say anything that could affect the action, even if we saw something like a pot going to the wrong player. You could and would get fired for breaking this rule.”

Several sources confirmed that “Every summer, a decent number of reporters would quit after a few weeks because of how difficult it was.” One person who has worked in the industry since approximately 2019 stated, “I have seen probably 2-3 reporters a summer just up and quit a week or two into the series because of the long hours that are not clearly defined by the company during the interview process, but also because of lack of payment, meaning the reporters couldn’t pay rent wherever they were staying.”

Positive Experiences

As one reporter shared positively, “PokerNews is the largest and most seen poker media site. If you’re trying to make a name for yourself and your work, PokerNews can absolutely help you there. Many well-respected industry pros got their start with PokerNews, including people who are now in several high-ranking roles at the PokerGO studio and PokerOrg.”

Another reporter recalled that the days were “long” but “fun,” and they “went into it eyes wide open regarding the hours.” They “finished articles for winners as the sun broke over the horizon many times.” They shared how PokerNews was “kind enough to let me come in a couple of hours later the following day if the next event I covered had an early start time.” They positively reflected that “[a]ll in all, I loved my time at PokerNews and would do it again. I think your rookie year is an opportunity to prove yourself, pay some dues and break into the poker world, and just experience the magic of the WSOP for the whole summer.”

One current reporter with PokerNews shared how they “love working for PokerNews. I was a poker fan for a long time, and the fact that I now have a front-row seat to the same events I followed at home all those years still seems a little surreal. I haven’t had any issues dealing with PokerNews about anything. I wouldn’t give up this job for anything. I consider myself lucky to be able to do it.”

Conclusion

Whether or not you agree with how reporters are paid and treated in light of the hours worked, one thing is clear: they deserve our praise for the reporting they do.

The job is long, hard, and generally thankless. When they must write conclusions of events while the whole poker world is watching and judging, they are performing this feat when they themselves are most fatigued. The least we can do is thank them for bringing us the news about one of our favorite things – poker.