The World Series of Poker is always a staple event in the world of poker and for that reason people always eagerly look forward to the announcements that lead up to the start of the series each year. In 2010, the WSOP will start on May 28th with both the $500 Casino Employees No Limit Hold ‘Em tournament as well as the new eight-game mixed $50,000 Players Championship, so time is certainly starting to draw close to those events.

In order to make sure that people have as long a period of time as possible to prepare for the events, the WSOP directors are always eager to release information about the tournament series ahead of time. Just recently, they released the official WSOP rulebook for the 2010 tournament year.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of this rulebook is the way in which mobile devices at the table are governed. For chatting on a cell phone, the rules still forbid it at the table but allow it one table’s length away from the action. For text messaging and Twitter posting, players are allowed to do it at the table as long as they’re not in the current hand and someone else at the table isn’t receiving their posting. This is a significant change from the rules for the 2009 year and it reflects the growing importance of social media like Twitter in covering the World Series of Poker and other live poker tournaments.

Late registration and arrival also received a bit of an overhaul in the new rules. People that register after a tournament has commenced will be able to get into the action at the start of the next level and that means that a person registering right after a tournament starts could wait up to 2 hours for the blinds and antes to go up.

Furthermore, people that miss the first two levels in a tournament will have their buy-in returned and their chips removed from play. This is done to protect players that accidentally miss the action, but it also means that the always fashionably late Phil Hellmuth will likely be showing up on time to the 2010 WSOP Main Event.