New, curious gold bracelet series
We’re not sure exactly when they did it, but GGPoker and the WSOP quietly changed the structure terms of its much-hyped $5,000 WSOP Paradise Main Event in the Bahamas in December. Fortunately, David Lappin, a poker pro and host of “The Chip Race” podcast, wasn’t so quiet, pointing out late last week – and following up today – the raw deal that the poker giants have thrust upon their players.
The World Series of Poker announced WSOP Paradise in July. It is yet another series that will award official gold bracelets, scheduled for December 3-14 at Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas. It was a curious announcement, as it is going up against two massive live tournament festivals: EPT Prague and the WPT World Championship. The WSOP is banking on the allure of the Bahamas and a gold bracelet to draw players.
The highlight of the series is the $5,000 Main Event, which comes with a $15 million guarantee. In complete schedule reveal in August, the WSOP said a total of 1,000 Main Event prize packages would be awarded via satellites on GGPoker, ClubGG, and WSOP.com.
And that was it. A $5,000 Main Event in the Bahamas with the usual opportunities to qualify at a lesser price point via online satellites.
Sneaky changes
But things have changed, as David Lappin pointed out and discussed over at VegasSlotsOnline News last week and this week, the Main Event has been changed from a 100% live tournament to a hybrid live/online tourney, or what GGPoker calls “OnLive,” with nary a tweet from either GGPoker or the WSOP about it.
Now, players can compete in any of a number of online Day 1s of the Main Event. When a Day 1 flight gets down to 15% of the field, it will stop and everyone remaining is in the money. Those players will also be awarded an 11-night stay at the hotel and a free daily lunch buffet.
Sounds great, right? It’s not. That hotel stay and lunch is deducted from the prize pool, $6,500 per qualifier. So now, the $15 million guarantee is not really a $15 million guarantee. The online Day 1 flights were not part of the original deal, nor are the $6,500 prize packages. One can argue the benefit or lack thereof of the online flights, but taking money out of the prize pool – and a lot of it – is a no no.
The result is that all the players who participate in the OnLive portion of the WSOP Paradise Main Event are subsidizing the lodging expenses of those who advance. And what about those who fly to the Bahamas, buy in to the live Day 1 and advance to Day 2? They just paid full freight. All of their buy-ins count toward the prize pool, but the buy-ins of the online players do not.
It should be emphasized that the online Day 1 flights are not satellites into the Main Event. In a satellite, you pay a smaller buy-in to try to qualify for a more expensive tournament and the whole point of the prize pool is to pay for the more expensive tournament’s buy-in (or a complete buy-in and travel prize package, depending on how the payout structure is setup).
In the case of the WSOP Paradise Main Event, everyone is still paying the full $5,000 buy-in, but this new OnLive portion is now being treated as a quasi satellite. The buy-ins were supposed to go completely to the prize pool, but now are partially paying for players’ hotel stays.
And the guarantee is no longer the guarantee.
Image credit: GGPoker.com