Eight events just for Pennsylvania players
In writing about last week’s launch of WSOP.com in Philadelphia, I said that players on the site would not be able to compete for World Series of Poker bracelets. Well, it turns out I was wrong. Not completely wrong…let’s just say a bit off (something, coincidentally, my wife would say about me). The week of the WSOP.com PA launch, the WSOP announced that Pennsylvania players will actually have their very own bracelet events.
The eight events are only for those playing on WSOP.com and who are located in Pennsylvania. As is the case with the other states that have online poker, you don’t have to be a resident of the Keystone State, you just have to be physically within state borders while playing. Each event awards an official gold, WSOP bracelet. The tournament will run August 8-15.
All eight of the WSOP PA bracelet events are of the No-Limit Hold’em variety, though they do come in different flavors. Two are progressive knockout tournaments, one is six-max, and one is a deep stack event. The “PA Championship” has a $1,000 buy-in, while the most expensive tourney is the $3,200 High Roller. All of the tournaments begin at 5:30pm ET, one each day.
New Jersey, Nevada, still have WSOP Online
So yes, I was not correct about Pennsylvania players not getting a chance at WSOP bracelets. But in my defense, this was unexpected.
For a few years now, and really exploding last year when everything moved online because of the pandemic, online World Series of Poker bracelets (or officially in 2020 and 2021, WSOP Online bracelets) have only been the domain of players situated in Nevada and New Jersey. WSOP.com exists in both states, of course, but the other key factor is that those two states, along with Delaware, are part of the Multi-State Internet Gambling Agreement (MSIGA), which allows them to share player pools across state borders. As such players on WSOP.com in Nevada are sitting at the same tables as people on WSOP.com in New Jersey. It’s the same thing as how on, say, PokerStars, players in Canada and Mexico are at the same tables.
And that’s why it was assumed – not just by me – that Pennsylvania players would not be in the mix for internet bracelets. Pennsylvania has the ability to sign an interstate poker compact, it just hasn’t yet. Thus, there would be no way for players in the state to play in the WSOP Online, as they wouldn’t have access to the same network was players in New Jersey and Nevada.
But now WSOP.com has created special gold bracelet events for players in Pennsylvania. Not everyone is happy about it – plenty of people in the poker community feel his waters down the prestige of a bracelet even more than they believe online bracelets already do – but those in PA are probably plenty happy to have the chance.