The 2016 World Series of Poker kicked off in Las Vegas last week at the Rio All-Suite Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. The world-famous and hugely popular live poker tournament is running for its 47th consecutive year in the casino city, regarded as the home of poker. The 2016 series will have 69 events for competitors on the schedule, taking place across a period of six weeks. The poker festival began last Wednesday and will conclude on Thursday 14th of July.
The series began with its usual soft start, as the $565 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em event started at 11 am. local time last Wednesday 1st June. It attracted a total of 731 entries and down to just 23 when the play wrapped up at 12.30am. The group of entries created a prize pool of $365,500 that paid out to the top 110 spots. The overall winner walked away with the first gold bracelet of the summer and a handsome cash prize of $75,157.
The WSOP’s single-table satellites also began earlier this week, giving eager players the opportunity to qualify for a cheap seat at some of the tournament’s events. Mega satellites started on Wednesday June 1st and will run to July 7th, just a few days before the big WSOP Main Event. These turbo satellites cost players $185 to enter and will award winners with a $1,500 tournament entry plus $100 for every ten players who register at the event. The levels of these turbo tournaments will increase every 10 minutes. Starting stacks are set at the 5,000 chip level.
Last week also saw the beginning of the Daily Deepstacks tournaments which are one-day multi-table events. The buy-ins are considered much more affordable than the WSOP tournaments, so even poker enthusiasts who just want to get in on some of the WSOP action can have a go at a deepstack game. They aren’t events with come with the coveted WSOP bracelet, as they’re just standard poker tournaments, but they can still be enjoyable to get involved with.
The rest of the WSOP schedule properly began last Thursday with the first two flights of the Colossus II event. There are six starting flights in all, two each on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The prize pool is set to be at least $7 million with at least $1 million going to the winner alone. This is designated as a re-entry tournament, so players who bust out in one starting flight may buy-in to any subsequent flight. As a result, it is entirely possible for players to cash more than once by making the money in one flight, busting out before the end of it, then entering another flight and cashing in that.
There are some new events on the schedule this year, including the $2,000 No-Limit Hold’em on the 15th of June, the $1,500 Mixed No-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha on June 26th and the $1,000 Tag Team No-Limit Hold’em on the 7th of July.
