As the poker world gears up for the upcoming WPT World Championship to finish out the year, there are still a couple stops on the World Poker Tour schedule to finish. The first, WPT bestbet Scramble, wraps up today at bestbet Jacksonville. The six-handed final table is just getting underway as the players compete for the $351,650 first prize.
It should be a competitive match, as each player in the top half of the field has enough chips to make things interesting. The chip leader is Heng Zhang with 5.780 million chips, but Frederic Normand is close behind with 5 million. After those two, there’s a bit of a drop off to third place, but Michael Frierson is still in solid shape with 3.460 million chips.
Toby Boas is in fourth place with just under 2 million, followed by Ian O’Hara and Brian Senie straddling either side of the 1 million-chip mark.
All of the players are gunning for their first WPT title.
The World Poker Tour will stay in Florida after today’s action for the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open in Hollywood. The always popular tour stop begins tomorrow with two flights of a $2 million guaranteed, $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold’em event.
The championship event of the SHRPO runs November 24-29. It costs $3,500 to enter and has a $3 million guaranteed prize pool.
After that, it’s on to Wynn Las Vegas for the WPT World Championship, arguably the most anticipated poker tournament of the year aside from the World Series of Poker Main Event.
The Championship was brought back last year for the first time since 2017, with a drop in price from $25,000 to $10,400. Confident in their ability to present a fantastic poker experience, tournament organizers were bold and guaranteed a record-breaking $15 million prize pool. Their confidence paid off, as 2,960 registered for the event, generating almost double the guarantee: $29,008,000.
Building off of that success, the World Poker Tour has pushed the envelope in 2023, guaranteeing an incredible $40 million for just the championship event alone. It will be tough to attract that many more entrants, but live tournament poker is still booming and poker players know how great of a tournament it was last year, so it’s not impossible.
The WPT World Championship festival begins November 29, while the championship tournament starts December 12.
World Poker Tour bestbet Scramble Main Event – Final Table Chip Counts
- Heng Zhang – 5,780,000
- Frederic Normand – 5,000,000
- Michael Frierson – 3,460,000
- Toby Boas – 1,960,000
- Ian O’Hara – 1,055,000
- Brian Senie – 995,000
