World Series of Poker Announces Wsop 2020 Dates
The World Series of Poker offered a holiday gift for poker players around the world this month with the release of its core dates for the 2020 WSOP.
Aussie poker players can now begin planning their summer trips to Las Vegas. The WSOP announced its start and end dates, along with details for more than a dozen key tournaments.
General WSOP 2020 Details
On December 11, earlier than in most past years, the World Series of Poker delivered some key information for players as they look to 2020.
The 51st WSOP will take place at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. For the 16th year in a row, the Rio Convention Center’s ballrooms will fill with more than 500 poker tables.
Doors to those ballrooms will officially open on Tuesday, May 26, 2020. The first of the 51 days of the action will consist of cash games, with the first bracelet-awarding tournament beginning on May 27.
Speaking of cash games, there will be sections for low-limit players, medium limits, and high-limit players. Cash games will run 24 hours per day throughout the series. There will also be single-table satellites nearby, as well as daily non-bracelet tournaments with buy-ins as low as $75.
WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart said, “We can’t wait to open our doors for the 2020 World Series of Poker. … We look forward to welcoming poker players from all over the globe back to the Rio in Las Vegas to award gold bracelets and hundreds of millions of dollars.”
It should be noted that all events on the entire WSOP schedule must be approved by Nevada gaming regulators before anyone can buy in. This means that individual event online pre-registration likely won’t open until March or April.
WSOP Main Event Details
The primary attraction of the WSOP is always the Main Event. That will be no different at the 2020 WSOP as well.
The $10,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Championship – better known as the Main Event – will be a freezeout, as usual. It will kick off on Wednesday, July 1, and a winner will emerge on July 14. Everything in between will play out as follows:
- Day 1A: Wednesday, July 1 at 11am = first starting flight
- Day 1B: Thursday, July 2 at 11am = second starting flight
- Day 1C: Friday, July 3 at 11am = third starting flight
- Day 2A & 2B: Saturday, July 4 for players surviving Day 1A or 1B
- Day 2C: Sunday, July 5 for players surviving Day 1C
- Day 3: Monday, July 6 for all Day 2 survivors
- Day 4: Tuesday, July 7
- Day 5: Wednesday, July 8
- Day 6: Thursday, July 9
- Day 7: Friday, July 10 to play down to the final nine
- Day off: Saturday, July 11
- Day 8: Sunday, July 12
- Day 9: Monday, July 13
- Day 10: Tuesday, July 14 to play to a winner
The final three days of action will be televised in the United States and online on ESPN or ESPN2. There will also likely be livestreams of the action on PokerGO for players in Australia and around the globe, though this is yet to be announced.
Players will begin their action with 60,000 chips and levels of 120 minutes each.
A new and somewhat controversial feature of the 2020 Main Event is that registration will remain open through the first level on Day 2 on July 4 and July 5. Many players feel that late registration alters the event and the playing field, but the WSOP seems prepared to move forward with it.
Featured Events with Dates
Several other tournaments are already on the schedule, complete with dates and some details. These are all No Limit Hold’em events and will line up on these starting dates as follows:
- May 27 at 3pm: $500 Casino Employees w/1 reentry (25K chips, 40-min levels)
- May 28-31 at 10am: $500 BIG 50 w/1 entry per flight (50K chips, 50-min levels)
- June 5-6 at 10am: $1,500 Millionaire Maker w/1 entry per flight (25K chips, 60-min levels)
- June 12-13 at 10am: $1,500 Monster Stack w/no reentries (50K chips, 60-min levels)
- June 17 at 11am: $1K Ladies Championship w/1 reentry (20K chips, 60-min levels)
- June 18 at 10am: $1K Seniors Championship w/1 reentry (20K chips, 60-min levels)
- June 19-20 at 10am: $1K Double Stack w/1 entry per flight (40K chips, 60-min levels)
- June 22 at 10am: $1K Super Seniors w/1 entry per flight (20K chips, 60-min levels)
- June 22 at 2pm: $1K Tag Team w/no reentries (20K chips, 60-min levels)
- June 24-25 at 10am: $400 Colossus w/1 entry per flight (40K chips, 40-min levels)
- June 26-27 at 10am/5pm: $888 Crazy Eights w/1 entry per flight (40K chips, 30-min levels)
- June 29 at 11am: $1K Mini Main Event w/no reentries (60K chips, 30-min levels)
- July 4-6 at 12pm: $1K Little One for One Drop w/unlimited reentries (40K chips, 60-min levels)
- July 10-11 at 12pm: $1,500 Closer w/1 entry per flight (25K chips, 30-min levels)
The WSOP included some notes about a few of the events.
Those with multiple starting dates reflect multiple starting flights.
The Ladies Championship will be listed on the official schedule as a $10K buy-in event, but this is a tactic used in the past few years to deter men from playing the tournament. The general buy-in is $10K, but anyone showing female status is offered a discount and will pay only $1K to play.
As for the Seniors Championship, players must be 50 years of age or older to complete. The Super Seniors, on the other hand, requires players be at least 60 years old.
The Tag Team tournament costs $1K per team, and each team must be comprised of two players.
As usual, the Crazy Eights event will play eight-handed, sticking with the theme.
While all tournaments will add on a tournament fee, the Little One for One Drop will add a single fee of $111, all of which goes to the One Drop Foundation. The charity was launched by Guy Laliberte, longtime poker aficionado and philanthropist, to provide “access to safe water and sanitation for the most vulnerable communities through innovative partnerships, creativity, and the power of art.” The Cirque du Soleil founder’s efforts with One Drop extend around the world.
Looking Back
The 2019 WSOP, which served as the 50th anniversary of the series, doled out $293,183,345 in prize money. There was a total of 187,298 entries in the 90 events on the schedule. And players attended from 118 different countries and nations.
The Main Event in 2019 was also the second-largest ever, delivering 8,569 players and their buy-ins to create a prize pool of $80,548,600. Every one of the nine final table players won at least $1 million, with Dario Sammartino of Italy finishing second for $6 million and Hossein Ensan of Germany winning for $10 million.
Perhaps the most memorable WSOP Main Event for Aussies happened in 2005 when Joe Hachem of Melbourne won it for $7.5 million. His win is widely credited for the Aussie poker boom in which the game explode online and in poker rooms around Australia.
Last year was a memorable one for one Aussie poker pro in particular. Rob Campbell won two gold bracelets and cashed in several other tournaments, for which he accumulated points on the Player of the Year leaderboard.
When it was all said and done, Campbell was declared the 2019 WSOP Player of the Year.
