On Friday, the World Series of Poker announced that the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop event has garnered 30 registrations so far. The tournament is the last one on the 2018 WSOP schedule, running July 15th through July 17th. ESPN and Poker Central’s PokerGO subscription service will team up to air the second and third days of the event.
The Big One for One Drop, a charitable poker tournament to raise money for the One Drop Foundation and its clean water initiatives, began in 2012 and became the largest buy-in tournament in history. It took a year off and returned in 2014 and then in 2016, it was held in Monaco rather than at the WSOP and was invitation-only. The idea behind that change was to have the field be comprised of non-poker players, basically in order to give them a better chance to win.
The World Series of Poker does not take a rake from the Big One for One Drop. In years past, $111,111 of the buy-in went to the One Drop Foundation, but this year, that amount has decreased to $80,000. It seems a bit odd that the charitable portion of the buy-in would be lowered for a tournament in which the point is to raise money for charity, but perhaps some players were complaining that the EV wasn’t high enough or something, so the WSOP changed things to appease them. I don’t know.
The Big One for One Drop is also capped at 48 entrants, another thing I don’t quite understand. To be fair, the most registrations ever was 48 in the first year, so going over that would be unlikely. It could be a table size issue. If there were more than 48 entries, there wouldn’t be many more, and having a few extra would make dividing up the tables a bit difficult.
“That a charitable poker tournament could have such an impact is simply astonishing. “ said WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel in a press release. “Since 2012, through 15 tournaments and player donations, over 12,000 individuals have contributed to raising over $20 million for the cause of access to safe water. This has had an incredible impact on the lives of over 170,000 people in need. Both from the poker and humanitarian aspects, the whole poker community and us at WSOP are lucky to be a part of this.”
The entire roster has not been released, but the WSOP has listed a few players who have confirmed their participation, including Daniel Negreanu, Antonio Esfandiari, Jason Koon, Phil Ivey, Dominik Nitsche, Bryn Kenney, and Phil Hellmuth, as well as King’s Casino (home of the 2018 WSOP Europe) owner Leon Tsoukernik.
Those who want to reserve a spot (since seats are limited) must put down a non-refundable deposit by July 10th. Presumably, people can still register without a deposit after that date if there are still seats available.
