2015 WSOP Gets Underway Next Week With Plenty of Changes
LAS VEGAS -- The 2015 World Series of Poker (WSOP) gets underway May 27 here and there are lots of changes in store for the 46th annual event, which is to be held at the historic Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino, just off the famed Vegas Strip.
WSOP spokesman Seth Palansky tells Gambling 911 in an exclusive interview that the biggest change is that the WSOP's signature tournament, the Main Event, which is a $10,000 buy-in, no-limit Texas hold 'em tourney, has been restructured for 2015 to allow more entrants to collect from the prize pool.
"Participation in the Main Event should be up this year, with this year's new wrinkle," Palansky said. "We'll be paying out the top 1,000 finishers of the Main Event. That's almost 50 per cent more than usual. This ensures more winners and should be a nice elixir for attendance gains."
Last year's WSOP Main Event, which had 6,683 entrants, paid cash prizes to the top 693 finishers.
The winner of the 2014 Main Event, Martin Jacobson of Sweden, earned $10 million.
Because prize money will be more widely distributed at this year's Main Event, this year's Main Event champion won't earn as much money as Jacobson did, Palansky said.
"With a strategy to more broadly distribute the prize pool, the WSOP Main Event will still award a massive prize to its champion," Palansky said. "If participation numbers are the same as 2014, the 2015 winner will earn about $8 million."
All nine members of the 2014 WSOP Main Event final table, the so-called "November Nine," each earned at least $1 million and that won't change this year, Palansky said.
"All members of this year's Main Event final table will earn at least $1 million," he said.
There will be a change though in how the final table plays out this year, Palansky said.
"Instead of just two days as in the past, the final table will play out over three days this year, for maximum exposure," he said.
After the final table is set in July, play will be suspended until November 8, when it will resume and be televised on ESPN, he said.
In other changes, the 2015 WSOP will feature 11 new tournaments, Palansky said, including something called The Colossus.
The Colossus, officially 2015 WSOP Event #5, is a no-limit, Texas hold 'em tourney that has a buy-in of just $565, the lowest entry fee for an open WSOP tournament in 35 years, he said.
"The tournament generating the most buzz entering the 2015 WSOP is clearly the opening weekend event, The Colossus," Palansky said. "The event has a $5 million prize pool guarantee. This means organizers need a field of 10,000 players in order to reach the guarantee.
"The record for the largest live poker tournament field is 8,773, which was achieved for the 2006 WSOP Main Event. The expectation is that the event will exceed the 10,000-player mark and go down as the biggest live tournament in history."
While a buy-in of $565 is low-rent for the WSOP and at one extreme of the WSOP entry fee spectrum, another new tournament at this year's WSOP will cover the other extreme.
That new tourney is an eight-handed, pot-limit Omaha tournament, officially Event #60, and it comes with a whopping entry fee of $25,000, Palansky said.
"That's the highest price point ever for a buy-in for an Omaha event in a tournament setting," he said.
In the past, the WSOP each year has featured a Seniors Tournament for poker players aged 65 or over.
Because of the popularity of that event, this year's WSOP will have two Seniors Tournaments, Palansky said.
Also new this year will be a "bounty" tournament, in which participants will receive cash bonuses or "bounties" for knocking specific opponents out of the tourney, he said.
In addition, this year's WSOP will also feature for the first time an online tournament, which will be open to residents of the State of Nevada only and will award a championship gold bracelet just like the usual WSOP tournaments, Palansky said.
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
