Back to Commerce
The 2025 World Series of Poker is just over two months away and while the schedule has been set for a while, there was still one detail left to settle: the Tournament of Champions. The WSOP announced this week that this year’s Tournament of Champions will once again be at The Commerce Casino & Hotel in Los Angeles May 15-17, just before the start of the world’s most famous poker festival.
The tournament is a $1 million freeroll, open to a select group of players. Those eligible include every WSOP bracelet winner, live and online, from June 2024 to May 2025, everyone WSOP Europe and WSOP Paradise bracelet winner, and every WSOP Circuit ring winner. Nobody who qualifies is required to participate, but most do.
“We are happy to return to The Commerce Casino & Hotel for the WSOP Tournament of Champions and our 15th consecutive $1,000,000 freeroll,” said Ty Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of the World Series of Poker. “With a $2 million guaranteed Circuit Main Event, WSOP satellites and nonstop action at the world’s biggest poker room, this is like the opening ceremonies for the 2025 WSOP.”
The final table will be streamed live on PokerGO, though details of the broadcast are still to come.
WSOP Circuit stop
The Tournament of Champions will be smack dab in the middle of a WSOP Circuit tour stop at Commerce, a stop that as of this writing is not actually listed on the schedule on the WSOP website. Currently, the last stop on the schedule is Harrah’s Cherokee (North Carolina), running May 1-12.
It should be safe to say that this new Circuit stop is the last one of the season. It will consist of 18 ring events, seven of which will be completed before the Tournament of Champions, so it would seem that seven people could qualify for the $1 million freeroll at the last minute.
The 19 ring events will have a total of over $3.5 million in guarantees, with the $1,700 Main Event taking care of $2 million of that.
On and off history
The Tournament of Champions has a history that dates back to 2004, but it has gone through several changes. In 2004, it was just a 10-player event, each player hand-selected by the WSOP. The next year, the field was opened up to those who made the final table of the 2005 WSOP Main Event or had won a WSOP Circuit Event. There was controversy, though, as Pepsi, the tournament’s sponsor, required that Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, and Doyle Brunson participate.
2006 followed a similar structure to 2005, but that was it – the event disappeared until 2010.
The 2010 version changed things up. The public got to select 20 participants from among every living WSOP bracelet owner. Five other seats were auto-bids that went to the reigning WSOP Main Event and WSOP Europe champs and the previous three Tournament of Champions winners. The last two spots were for sponsor exemptions.
Then, from 2011 to 2021, the format was again changed to make the event more of a WSOP Circuit championship, first called the National Championship, then the Global Casino Championship. Players could qualify by winning a Circuit stop’s Main Event, winning a casino championship title (as the highest points earner at a given Circuit stop), or finishing in the top 50 of the season leaderboard.
The event was renamed the Tournament of Champions in 2022 and introduced basically the same qualification structure as it has today, minus the WSOP Europe and WSOP Paradise bracelet winners (the latter didn’t exist until 2023).
Image credit: PokerGO.com
