Money for a peek
Throughout online poker history, there have been ways to see your opponents’ hole cards even if they did not reveal them in the hand. But those methods were limited, often restricted to a losing player’s cards in an all-in and call hand still appearing in the winning player’s hand history.
lets anyone pay money after the hand ends to see everyone’s hole cards
On Thursday, though, online poker sweepstakes site ClubWPT Gold unveiled a new option that lets anyone pay money after the hand ends to see everyone’s hole cards. It appears to cost three big blinds at most stakes, down to two big blinds at some of the highest stakes.
ClubWPT Gold bills it as a way to “never lose sleep over a poker hand again”:
It also appears that the fee goes directly to ClubWPT.
Poker pros let ‘em have it
While some poker players have jumped to ClubWPT Gold’s defense, saying that the “Reveal Hands” option is a way to prevent collusion, since potential cheaters will now have to tread lightly, the vast majority of people have excoriated ClubWPT over the new feature.
Poker Hall of Famer Brian Rast called it “one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in poker,” telling ClubWPT Gold to “GTFO” for “monetizing revealing cards for their own gain.”
moronic on so many levels”
Alec Torelli said the feature is “moronic on so many levels” and used live poker as an example of its stupidity: “Imagine the Wynn dealer exposing your hand because John paid her $30 in a $5/$10 game to show if you bluffed him in a $2K river shove. Wtf?”
The same day that ClubWPT Gold posted the video, 2025 World Series of Poker Player of the Year Shaun Deeb said: “The fact you haven’t canceled this yet is just awful awful marketing you were crushing it and long term going to kill your site.”
Vanessa Kade added: “It’s the player’s information to share or not, the site getting all the money from forcibly exposing information without the player’s consent is no good.”
The only way that the feature could be at all palatable, most pros have said, is if all or most of the fee goes to the players whose hole cards were revealed, not the house. In live poker, some players have pointed out, players often make deals to pay an opponent to show their cards after the fact, but of course, the casino is not involved.
If a player wants to show their cards, it should be up to them, not just someone who has money.
Controversy following ClubWPT Gold
This isn’t the first bit of controversy that ClubWPT Gold has courted this summer. During the World Series of Poker, ClubWPT Gold ran a promotion in which players who won special golden tickets would receive an extra $1m if they won any of a specific selection of WSOP events.
One of those events was the $1,500 Millionaire Maker and one of those golden ticket holders was Jesse Yaginuma, who won the tournament. But viewers were suspicious of his achievement, as he came back from a massive chip deficit heads-up against James Carroll, who repeatedly made questionable decisions.
After much suspicion and a subsequent investigation by the WSOP, it was determined that Carroll had chip dumped to Yaginuma, likely because they had made a deal that Yaginuma would win and then share the ClubWPT Gold prize with his opponent.
Some vilified ClubWPT Gold for the promotion, accusing it of knowingly risking the sabotage of WSOP events. The WSOP decided to let the players have their prize money, but no bracelet would be awarded and both were banned from the WSOP. ClubWPT Gold still gave Yaginuma his $1m bonus.
