A week straight is too much
In what will likely come as a shock to the poker community, 17-time gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth has announced that he will not participate in the 2025 World Series of Poker Main Event.
In a two-minute video posted to social media, the 1989 Main Event champion explained that the tournament is just too much of a slog, especially for someone his age. Hellmuth is 60 years old.
“It’s just too tough, just too tough,” Hellmuth said. “People are like, ‘Oh Phil, you can play seven days in a row!’ Yeah? Try it. Try getting up and playing at noon until midnight seven days in a row and then they’re, ‘Ohhh, well, today we have to play to 2 or 3 in the morning,’ which also happens at the WSOP Main Event.”
Hellmuth went on to say that the grind of the Main Event is just too “exhausting” and that he sees no way that he could win.
“An endurance test”
Hellmuth, who won his last WSOP bracelet in 2023 in a 642-player field, said that the length of the tournament in both consecutive days and total hours per day disproportionately hurts older players, who just don’t have the stamina that younger players do.
“I’ll say this,” Hellmuth continued. “I had four great players come and tell me that they blew the Main Event because they got too tired. With 50 left, with 30 left, with 100 left. It’s turned into an endurance test. I don’t think that the World Series of Poker Main Event is measuring skill. It’s still my favorite event in the world, don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to miss it, but I know that I can’t do that.”
Hellmuth believes that if polled, 80% of players would say that there should be days off during the Main Event. The other 20%, he opines, would be in their 20’s and can handle the “endurance test” better.
He concluded by expressing his hope that the WSOP makes changes to the Main Event in 2026, even hinting that he might not even make his annual grand entrance, as he normally does that during the Main Event.
Day after day after day
GGPoker, the new owner of the World Series of Poker, just released the full schedule for the 2025 WSOP yesterday. It features 100 live events, the most ever, spanning May 27 to July 16.
The Main Event goes two weeks, July 2 through July 16, though nobody will actually end up playing for two weeks or even ten days straight. That said, Phil Hellmuth is correct that a deep run would require about a solid week of twelve-hour or longer days.
July 2-5 are the Day 1 starting flights. Day 2ABC is on July 6, while Day 2D is on July 7. So, there are some built-in days off there, but that is for logistical reasons, not player rest. Starting with Day 3 on July 8, the tournament runs for six consecutive days through July 13. July 14 is an off day and then the final table is a two-day grind, running July 15-16.
Image credit: PokerGO.com
