Every year, thousands of people turn up in Las Vegas for the glorious festival that is the World Series Of Poker. While that trip is still some months away for those planning to embark, their decisions about which events to play, can start being made now. The official WSOP schedule has landed, and there are some surprises in store. As expected, the series will take place between May 31st and July 12th, at the usual venue, but there will be a few changes to the tournaments on offer.
WSOP Bracelet
Featured and New Events
With the last Big One for One Drop being two years ago, poker fans have been looking forward to the return of the $1 million buy in tournament this summer, but interestingly, it has been omitted from the schedule. There is an ambiguous official explanation that it may well appear later in the year on a grand stage of it’s own. The popular smaller buy in “Colossus” will return this year with a with $7 million Prize Pool Guarantee & $1 million for 1st. Pot Limit Holdem has also been struck off the schedule altogether, due to fading interest.
On top of this, the innovation with event offerings continues – with a $565 PLO, a Mixed Draw event, and the reinstating of a team event, which hasn’t been seen at the world series since 1983. Despite the Big One of One Drop having been removed amid cryptic clues of it’s resurfacing – the $111,111 High Roller for One Drop is scheduled to take place this summer.
69 events will be hosted during the festival
More chips for Main Event and championships, Increase of places paid to 15%
Other alterations include a substantial rise in starting stacks for $10,000 buy in events, including the Main Event. Starting stacks of 30,000 have now been raised to 50,000. Also, the start times for play getting under way have been moved to a time one hour earlier. In almost all events, play will resume at 11am local time, and 3pm. Another rather large change that has been undertaken, is the payout structure for WSOP tournaments. Players will now be paid when they finish in the top 15% of the field, rather than the traditional 10%.
There have been many interesting changes to this year’s WSOP festival, and players will have plenty of time to discuss and plan for the upcoming events.
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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