The WSOP Main Event Starts TodayAll Day Ones will Be Finished by Monday |
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For the last five weeks, the Rio has been bubbling like big pot of poker goulash as players from all around the world have vied for the bracelets in tournaments that are capable of defining a poker player’s career. But the biggest one — the bracelet worth the most money, prestige, and worldwide fame — is still locked in a jeweler’s display box in the Rio.
The marathon for the main-event bracelet starts today with the first of the four day ones. Officially known as the $10,000 world championship of no-limit hold’em, it’s simply the largest event of the year in terms of both entrants and prize pool.
Last year, 6,358 players played in main event, and Jerry Yang was the one who won it and its $8.25 million top prize. The year before, it was Jamie Gold who was the last one standing in the high-watermark field of 8,773 players, winning a record $12 million.
The main event starts today with the first flights of players. The Rio can handle around 3,000 players in each of the four starting days, which run until Sunday. Play will go on all day until level five is over, when the blinds are at 200-400 with a 50 ante. After the four days are completed, the remaining players get a day off on Monday.
The next day, the players remaining from the first two starting days (days 1A and 1B) are combined and play another five levels. The players remaining from days 1C and 1D will do the same on Wednesday.
The next five days, the entire group will play poker’s most lucrative version of the last man standing, but unlike in past years, we won’t know who that will be until November, thanks to the dramatic change to this year’s main event that delays the playing of the final table for more than four months.
By the end of July 14, poker fans will know who the final nine players will be. Then, everything gets packed up and put away, and the players go back home with ninth-place money in their pockets and a ticket to the most desired final table of the year.
Then, on Nov. 9, the players will return to the Rio, where they will play down to the final two. The heads-up match begins late the next day and should be over in the early morning hours of Nov. 11. That evening, the entire final-table episode of the main event will be broadcast during a three-hour special starting at 9 p.m. ET.
Stay tuned to CardPlayer.com for complete coverage of the main event by our poker tournament reporting team.
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