Matt Savage is in Sydney. The WPT Executive Tour Director, the man who sets the rules at every WPT event and has spent 25 years thinking harder about tournament procedure than almost anyone alive, touched down at The Star for the first time since 2008 this week, walking into a card room where every dealer is doing the very thing he has been publicly debating for years: sliding cards instead of pitching them.
This morning Savage posted directly on the topic from the floor of The Star Sydney. His tweet, which has drawn 56,000 views: “They use a box for slide dealing in Australia @WPT and have for a long time. Do you like this or the dealer pitching cards?” It is the same question he has been asking the industry since his poker.org column in May 2025, now asked from inside the room where the answer is already decided. The timing is not accidental. Savage has a platform, and he is using it.
Australian casinos mandate shoe dealing when cards are slid. That is not optional, not a best practice, not a PokerStars initiative for select EPT stops. It is the law of the room. And Savage, who has been nudging the global poker community toward this conversation since before it became urgent, is running the WPT Prime Championship final day right in the middle of it.
WPT Australia: Where Things Stand
The 2026 WPT Australia festival runs September 10-30 at The Star Sydney, the most ambitious Australian edition yet: 36 events, two headline championships and nine WPT World Championship tickets up for grabs. Savage confirmed his return to Australia on X last week, noting it was his first visit since 2008 and his first time in Sydney: “Excited to return to Australia for the first time since 2008 and first time in Sydney for @WPT @TheStarSydney.”
The AUD $1,500 WPT Prime Championship got underway on September 17, drawing 1,036 entries across four starting flights. Cooper Feltham leads 141 survivors into Day 2 today with 1,153,000 chips, nearly double the average stack. Day 2 is underway as of 12:30 p.m. local time. The AUD $5,000 WPT Australia Championship runs from September 24-30, with both final tables livestreamed worldwide.
On the side event ledger, Rob Damelian has become the festival’s breakout story, winning two boomerang trophies within a week after coming from behind in heads-up both times. The Australian Poker Cup drew 441 entries and crowned Ireland’s Ross Coveney chip leader before the final day. The room is buzzing.
The Debate Savage Started
In May 2025, Savage wrote a column for poker.org responding to PokerStars’ decision to mandate sliding at EPT events. His take was measured and worth reading in full, but the core argument was this: sliding is the right call for integrity, and he supports it, but the barriers to making it standard globally are not trivial.
The integrity case for sliding is straightforward. When a dealer pitches a card, there is a moment during delivery where the face of the card can be briefly visible to a player with line of sight, the right angle, or the right technology. Pinhole cameras in rings, phones, buttons. The cheating methods Savage references are not theoretical. Matt Berkey documented an alleged cheating ring using exactly this method during an Only Friends podcast episode in August 2024. Mike Holtz sounded the alarm on what he described as widespread exploitation of high-pitch dealing at Las Vegas poker rooms. PokerStars responded by mandating the slide at EPT Barcelona and making it standard going forward.
The barriers Savage identifies are equally real. Dealers in the United States have been pitching cards for decades. The muscle memory is deep, the training is embedded, and a switch is not free: new felts, new card stock, retraining programs, time and money the average card room does not have budgeted. There is also the humidity question. Cards behave differently in a high-humidity environment, and sliding across felt in Texas in August is not the same physics problem as sliding across felt in London in October. Savage also raises an ergonomics concern nobody else was talking about: is sliding harder on a dealer’s wrist, shoulder, or back? Nobody knows, and the question deserves an answer before the industry commits to a decade of it.
Matt Berkey argued on his podcast that the switch was easy and every dealer could make it immediately. Savage pushed back. His challenge: “I invite you to show me how easy it is.” Send a video of yourself slide dealing at home or in your local casino. The point is that what looks simple from a player’s seat isn’t always simple from behind the table.
Australia Makes the Case
This is where WPT Australia becomes more than just a poker tournament. Savage noted in his column that Australian casinos mandate shoe dealing when sliding cards. That rule exists here not as an experiment or a gesture toward integrity but as a regulatory requirement. Dealers at The Star Sydney have been trained this way. The infrastructure, the shoes, the felts, the muscle memory, is built in. And the tournament is running. Thousands of hands have been dealt across 36 events without the chaos that opponents of the slide argue would result from flipping an American card room’s procedure tomorrow.
Savage is watching that happen from inside the tournament room. Whether that changes his thinking, accelerates the TDA conversation he said he would have, or simply confirms that the Australian model works in Australia while the American model works in America is a question he has not answered publicly yet. But the timing is notable. He promised to raise the slide at the upcoming TDA Summit. He is now at one of the few major poker venues in the world where the slide is not a debate but a daily reality.
The Bigger Picture
At its core, the pitch vs. slide debate is about how seriously the industry is willing to take cheating prevention. The pitch is faster, dealers are trained in it, and cheating by peek is rare enough that most rooms have never dealt with it. The slide is slower to implement, costs money to roll out, and requires the industry to admit that the technology-assisted peek is a genuine threat rather than a theoretical one.
PokerStars made their call in 2025. Australia has been living this standard for years. Savage is in the building. The WPT Australia Championship final table streams worldwide starting September 24. Whatever side of this debate you land on, Sydney’s evidence will be part of the conversation for a while.
What Do You Think?
Savage asked it from the floor of The Star Sydney this morning, and 27,000 people have seen the question. Now we are asking you. You have sat at the table. You know what it feels like when a dealer pitches a card cleanly into your hand and what it feels like when one slides across the felt. You also know what it feels like to wonder, even briefly, whether the player two seats to your left saw your card on the way over. Slide or pitch. Does the integrity argument change your answer? Tell us in the comments below.
FAQ
- Sources: Matt Savage / poker.org, SoMuchPoker, @SavagePoker on X.
- Article originally produced at poker.pro.
