The televised schedule for this summer’s 49th annual series in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suites Hotel is out. While I am always eager to see the World Series of Poker schedule, it is unlikely that I will be able to attend. But I always like to see what I will be able to experience vicariously. For those of you lucky enough to be heading to Vegas this summer, I’ll talk about World Series of Poker Highlights across the entire series, not just the glimpse those of us at home will be able to access.
Schedule Details
This summer the World Series will run from May 29 to July 17. There will be 78 gold bracelet events, and the Main Event will run from July 2nd to 14th. The WSOP is sticking with last year’s strategy of running the final table immediately following the rest of the Main Event. PokerGo and ESPN will both offer live coverage again this summer. Last summer the field of 7,221 runners was the third largest Main Event group ever. It will be interesting to see whether the field increases even more this year. Also this year, a full 13 events will start after the beginning of the Main Event. The WSOP has been moving more and more toward keeping folks in town into July.
Poker Central and ESPN plan to air live coverage as last year, and claim that there will be televised coverage start to finish every day of the Main Event. It appears that PokerGo will air coverage during the day, handing off to ESPN each evening. I have to say that I personally miss the days where we got an edited package covering more of the tournament that just the featured table. However, I admit that there is some excitement inherent in live coverage. ESPN will also offer coverage of the WSOP closer Big One for One Drop on July 16 and 17th. That’s always a fun event to watch.
Other World Series of Poker Highlights
This year the World Series of Poker schedule includes not one, but three super high roller events. In addition to the return of the Big One for One Drop with a hefty million dollar buy in, there will also be a $50,000 buy in and a $100,000 buy in event.
There are a number of low buy in PLO events this year, in response to the recent resurgence of PLO among recreational players.
There are some new bounty tournaments this year. Because everyone loves a bounty tournament.
The $365 Giant and $565 Colossus tournaments are back for those seeking lower buy in events to play.
The High Roller Events mentioned above will include a shot clock (an addition that I, for one, strongly support) and a big blind ante to help move things along. It is thought that these events are being used as a testing ground. If all goes well with these new techniques, they will likely roll out to more events next year.
If you are planning to attend the World Series this summer, we’d love to hear from you! For your convenience, Poker News has put together a handy Google Calendar containing the schedule of all of the events and linking to their structure sheets. Now we just have to wait for them to shuffle up and deal!
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