The U.S. Playing Card Company (as part of their Bicycle brand) designed a new card face especially for poker. The numbers in the corners are smaller and angled to make it easier to keep hole cards concealed, and the numbers on the face are larger to make community cards easier to read. They touted this as the first innovation in card face design since the 1960s.
Harrah’s Entertainment selected these newly-designed Bicycle cards as the official cards of the 2007 World Series of Poker (WSOP), taking place this summer. The press release is available at the WSOP web site. It contains the following comments:
“Our players deserve the best and this is just one more example of how we are working hard to provide them with nothing less” (Jeffrey Pollack, WSOP Commissioner).
“The WSOP participants will … recognize and appreciate the … innovative new Poker Peek face style” (Rob Clendening, Bicycle Brand Manager).
The new cards were revealed today at the first tournament of the series. Unfortunately, the players did not appreciate the new cards at all. The placement of the large numbers on the face made it difficult to distinguish between 6’s and 9’s. The small suits on the face caused some players to think mistakenly they had flushes. The complaints were so widespread that the new cards were replaced after a few hours.
The negative reaction has been reported throughout the internet on various forums and poker news sites: