At long last, the 2024 World Series of Poker is upon us, with Tuesday marking the first of over a month and a half of wall-to-wall poker action in Las Vegas. Just like last year – and for the foreseeable future – the WSOP is being held on the Strip at both Horseshoe and Paris.
There are two events on Tuesday: $5,000 Champions Reunion No-Limit Hold’em Freezeout (8-Handed) and the traditional first day tournament, $500 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em.
Event #1 should be a good time. The brand new event is a normal $5,000 freezeout (wow, look at that…an actual freezeout), with one twist. Anyone who eliminates a former WSOP Main Event winner gets a free ticket into this summer’s Main Event.
Those tourneys are slated to run three and two days, respectively, so things will be even busier tomorrow when they are in their second days and two more tournaments begin. The pair are Event #3: $500 WSOP Kickoff No-Limit Hold’em Freezeout and Event #4: $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better (8-Handed).
All told, there are 99 live bracelet events and another 30 online for players in Nevada, New Jersey, and Michigan on the newly-formed WSOP Online platform.
The 2024 WSOP Main Event begins July 3 with the first of four starting flights, one each day for four days. There are also four Day 2 flights, but Days 2A, 2B, and 2C will all run on July 7, while Day 2D, always the largest, will be by itself on July 8. After that, the field unifies on Day 3 and the tournament runs all the way through July 17 with just a single day off before the final table.
And for those of you who are planning to try to grind to the top of the WSOP Player of the Year leaderboard, remember that the rules have changed this year. No longer is it about playing as many tournaments as possible to gather as many cashes as possible in hopes of accumulating enough points.
Now, at least in the WSOP’s mind, it’s quality over quantity. Of course, players can still grind dozens of tournaments to chase the POY trophy, but now, only a player’s top ten points results count toward the leaderboard standings. And perhaps most significantly, only one of those results can be from an online event.
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