According to a press release sent on Wednesday afternoon, the 2011 World Series of Poker (WSOP) will begin on May 31st, one day after the Memorial Day holiday in the United States, and run for 50 days. The final table of the Main Event will be determined on July 19th, at which point the $10,000 buy-in tournament will once again be paused until November.
Despite constant rumors to the contrary, the 2011 WSOP will be held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. If you don’t believe me, I’ll go ahead and quote the press release for you: “The event, as has been its norm since 2005, will continue to be held in the Convention Center of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.” Caesars Entertainment has been rumored to be shopping the Rio, located on Flamingo Boulevard off the famed Las Vegas Strip, but so far no deals have come to fruition.
The only tournament whose dates were laid out this week was the Main Event, which will begin on July 7th and include four starting days. In 2010, Jonathan Duhamel became its first Canadian Main Event champ ever after defeating John Racener heads-up. Three-handed, Duhamel was gifted 80% of the chips in play after Joseph Cheong 6bet all-in before the flop with A-7 when Duhamel held pocket queens. The pocket pair held, Duhamel doubled up, and Cheong was ousted several hands later.
The dates for the preliminary events have not yet been announced, but a full schedule will likely come to life in January. The 2010 version played out at the Rio between May 28th and July 17th, with heads-up play in the Main Event beginning on November 8th. The slate contained 57 tournaments including an all-new $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship won by Full Tilt Poker pro Michael Mizrachi.
Other 2010 bracelet winners included British pro Praz Bansi, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Tex Barch, Dutch Boyd, Gavin Smith, WSOP Player of the Year Frank Kassela, and Phil Ivey, who collected bracelet number eight. Ivey took down a $3,000 buy-in HORSE event for $329,000, outlasting a final table that included math whiz Bill Chen, John Juanda, Jeffrey Lisandro, David Baker, and PokerStars pro Chad Brown.
One of the highlights from last year for Poker News Daily was following the high-stakes bracelet bets of Tom Dwan, who nearly won a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament, but fell heads-up to Australian Simon Watt. Dwan reportedly had millions of dollars in bracelet bets on the line, but ultimately came up short. Consequently, Mike Matusow told Watt following his win, “Thank you for saving us all millions of dollars! How does it feel to be every high-stakes gambler’s hero? They’re gonna, like, put you on the wall in Bobby’s Room.” Dwan took home $381,000.
In an important change from 2010, the 2011 WSOP will feature “hard stop times.” After 10 levels of play on any given day, the action will automatically come to a halt. The same WSOP press release explained that the number of players remaining in the tournament when 10 levels were completed was irrelevant: “Once 10 levels have been completed, remaining players will have their chips bagged and tagged and return the next day to continue on in the tournament. Regardless of how many players remain in a tournament, hard stop times will be enforced after 10 levels of play.”
We’ll have the latest WSOP headlines for you right here on Poker News Daily.
What’s the rationale for hard stop times?
I think some of it has to do with player health and some of it has to do with staffing the tournament. Otherwise, you could have a tournament running into the wee hours of the morning.