The King That Wasn't

On Wednesday, June 3, at the 2026 World Series of Poker, Ricky Landais did everything right.

Short-stacked in Event #11 — the $10,000 GGMillion$ High Roller — he looked down at ace-king suited and jammed over a cutoff raise. Bobby James called with ace-nine offsuit. Landais was a big favorite. A double-up would keep his deep-run dreams alive in a field of 627 players still chasing a bracelet and a first prize north of $1 million.

Preflop was textbook. What followed was anything but.

Four cards on the flop

The dealer turned the flop and spread four cards: 6♦ 5♦ 4♥ K♦.

No burn. No pause. Just a king on the board that gave Landais top pair top kicker against James's ace-high — and a floor call within seconds.

Under Tournament Directors Association rules, when four cards hit the flop, the floor scrambles all four face down, randomly selects one as the burn, and the other three become the official flop. Matt Savage, one of poker's top tournament directors, posted the rule on X as the clip went viral:

If the flop has 4 rather than 3 cards, exposed or not… the floor will be called. The dealer then scrambles the 4 cards face down, the floor randomly selects 1 as the next burn card and the other 3 are the flop.

The king was selected as the burn.

The re-dealt flop came 4♥ 6♦ 5♦ — still a reasonable board for Landais, but James now had a gutshot straight draw instead of facing a paired board. The 8♥ on the turn gave James an open-ended straight draw. The 7♣ on the river made the straight. Landais was out in 22nd place.

WSOP commentator Joe Stapleton, watching from the broadcast booth: "This is one of the worst things that I have ever seen."

Why Twitter hates a correct ruling

Poker Twitter did not care that the floor followed procedure. It cared that Landais — a shot-taker in a $10K, not a regular in these events — lost his tournament life to a procedural dice roll after his king was briefly, visibly, on the board.

The outrage has layers:

The king was real, then it wasn't. If the four cards had spread in order, the flop was likely 4h–Kd–5d. Landais pairs. James needs runner-runner. Instead, the Kd went to the muck. Estimates put Landais at roughly a 75% chance the king would stay on the flop before the random burn selection — and still about a 72% favorite to win the pot even after the re-deal, before the 8 and 7 arrived.

The bad beat was double. First the procedural lottery. Then the river straight. Neither was Landais's fault. Both ended his summer.

The stakes made it worse. Twenty-two players left. Minimum cash: $41,942 — the second-biggest score of Landais's career. He walked away with exactly that minimum. James went on to finish 12th for $51,528.

Landais posted on X after busting:

Today's loss just doesn't sit right with me. I received a ruling that was not only idiotic but senseless. This is painful. I'm angered. To grind and be eliminated like this is sad.

Savage and the floor weren't wrong by the book. Landais wasn't wrong to be furious. Both things are true, which is why the hand spread so fast.

The rule is designed to remove judgment calls

The TDA procedure exists for a reason. Once four cards leave the deck, nobody can know with certainty which one was meant to burn and which three were meant to flop. Letting a floor person "put it back how it should have been" invites arguments, favoritism, and chaos.

PokerScout compared it to craps: a cocked die is a no-roll, full stop, even when everyone can see what number it would have been. Objective rules beat subjective fixes.

That's the intellectually clean answer. It's also cold comfort when you're the short stack watching your king get pulled off the feature table stream.

What this hand is actually about

Strip away the Twitter ratio and the hand is a case study in variance you cannot control.

Landais's preflop jam was correct. James's call was standard. Nothing in the hand history suggests either player made a mistake. The dealer error was rare. The floor ruling was by the book. The river was cruel.

If you've played tournament poker for any length of time, you've lived some version of this — not necessarily a four-card flop, but a sequence where you do the right thing, the process breaks somewhere outside your decision tree, and you still lose.

The lesson

There's no strategic fix for a four-card flop. You don't study your way out of a random burn selection.

What you can control:

• Recognize the spot was correct. Landais had one move with 340,000 chips facing a 120,000 raise. Jamming ace-king is never the mistake here.
• Separate outcome from process. The ruling wasn't "idiotic" in a rules sense — but your emotional response doesn't have to be rational to be valid. Bust-outs like this hurt. Acknowledge that and move on.
• Don't let one procedural beat rewrite your shot-taking. Landais was taking a shot in a $10K. That's the right mindset for a short stack with a premium hand. The summer is long. One burned king doesn't change the EV of making the play.

The 2026 WSOP will produce bigger pots, bigger names, and probably bigger controversies before July. But for the first viral hand of the series, poker gave us something rarer than a bad beat: a correct ruling that still felt wrong, caught on camera, argued about by the entire timeline.

The king was there. Then it wasn't.