Healthy Competition? A Closer Look At The $48.5 Million* Gamble In The BahamasWorld Series Of Poker Aims For December Dominance, But Players Still Split |
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The World Series of Poker certainly can’t be accused of lacking ambition. The NSUS-GGPoker owned WSOP certainly brought that ambition in droves in the second iteration of WSOP Paradise in The Bahamas.
The poker world was put on notice in July when the WSOP made the eye-opening announcement that they would be returning to The Bahamas for another version of WSOP Paradise. But the real sting in the tail was the $50 million guarantee Super Main Event, the largest guarantee in poker tournament history.
This was of course, undoubtedly a response to rival brand World Poker Tour laying claim to the month of December with a $40 million guarantee WPT Championship at Wynn Las Vegas which ran in direct competition with the first WSOP Paradise in 2023.
The WPT missed that $40 million guarantee by $2.4 million as their ambitious aim came up just short. But that didn’t stop the WSOP from going $10 million larger on their guarantee.
The $25,000 buy-in WSOP Paradise Super Main Event had four opening flights scheduled. A total of 2,000 entries were needed to reach the guarantee while anything fewer than 1,900 entries would break the record for the largest overlay ever. (The Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in 2014 had a $2.5 million overlay.)
With low numbers in the early flights, especially the low day 1C turnout, there was growing concern that this ambitious event would end up going down in flames with the largest overlay in history and potentially put the future of the event in jeopardy.
But there was a groundswell effort from GGpoker to close in on the guarantee and get as close to it as possible. The main push came from the online flight, which very few people knew the exact numbers of as it was kept under close wraps. As it turns out, there were 600 online entrants, which made up a whopping $15 million of the prize pool.
Eventually, after much fanfare and speculation, the final numbers ended up being 1,978 which created a $550,000 overlay. Still a significant hit, but nowhere near the catastrophic amount that had been feared. (The prize pool was actually $48.5 million, with $1.5 million going to dealer and staff fees.)
The tournament even still turned a profit, collecting $1,000 from each entry for a total of $1,978,000 in rake. In fact, the 15-event series collected more than 10.4 million in rake overall, plus another $2.5 million in staff fees.
Factors Leading To Overlay
While the overlay was not nearly as bad as it could have been, there are still several things to assess as to why it did indeed overlay and why there was a fear of it being greater.
While live poker is in a healthy spot right now, there is still a finite amount of players out there who are willing to play a long tournament series at high buy-ins. And WSOP Paradise was just one of three major events going on simultaneously.
There was also the WPT Wynn series, which backed off their massive guarantee and instead held a $5 million freeroll for the players. The Las Vegas series was much more accessible for many Americans and the EPT Prague series which was much more convenient for many European players.
The Bahamas is somewhat difficult to get into, with more limited flights. With Atlantis being located on Paradise Island, north of Nassau the city, there are also fewer options for lodging, as it’s most likely on property or bust for a player who is going to come to play for multiple days.
The property itself is very nice, but also more tuned for couples or families with children. So players who are looking to go for poker alone may prefer elsewhere. There is also the fact that many poker events over the years have been played at the Atlantis so there may be a case of burnout for some who have been before in the past.
That left a fewer pool of players for the WSOP to draw from. A problem alleviated by the fact that the WSOP allowed for multiple re-entries in most of the tournaments.
As evidenced by the Super Main Event buy-in of $25,000, WSOP Paradise was more geared toward the high roller scene this year, even partnering with the Triton Poker series for a couple events.
While the summer WSOP in Vegas does a good job of catering to the mid and lower stakes player demographic, WSOP Paradise did no such thing, with no events lower than a $2,500 buy in. That of course limited the field to players with larger bankrolls.
And finally there is the simple fact that prices on Paradise Island in The Bahamas are just very high. It may not seem like a big deal to high rollers paying many thousands in buy-ins for poker, but things like cost of meals can still be a deterrent and a blow to morale.
It is almost impossible to find a solid sit down meal for less than $30, providing no comfort after an early exit at the tables.
Who knows what the WSOP will do in December moving forward. As of now, players remain relatively split between all three series. Is the poker world big enough to sustain such a division? I guess we’ll find out when the schedules for 2025 come out if any of the tours are willing to give up any ground.
*Photos by WSOP
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