December 23, 2009 (CAP Newswire) – Just in time for the holidays, the World Series of Poker (WSOP), probably the biggest and most highly anticipated poker event of the year, has released its schedule for the upcoming 2010 season.
The next edition of the event, which will be the 41st, kicks off on Thursday, May 27, 2010, the day marking the beginning of live action and satellites. As usual, the tournament will be held at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, with the biggest parts of the event shown on ESPN TV.
“On Friday, May 28, the first open bracelet event will be the $50,000 buy-in Player’s Championship – the most expensive buy-in event to ever open up the World Series of Poker,” the WSOP stated in a news release.
“The 41st annual WSOP will conclude, as is customary now, with the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Championship (aka the Main Event) which begins play Monday, July 5 and should reach its final table (nine players) on Saturday, July 17, at which time play will be halted for the third consecutive year. The famed tournament’s culmination will be held with the ‘November Nine’ from November 6-9, before a live audience with special primetime coverage from ESPN.” (Read the news release here.)
Although the WSOP is primarily a land-based event, there are tons of tie-ins with the Internet side of poker. Most poker rooms offer online qualifiers and special promos centered around the event. Additionally, most of the biggest Internet poker sites also act as sponsors of the big names in the WSOP game, so players see a lot of advertising for sites like Full Tilt Poker and the Cereus poker rooms.
So far, the changes to the new schedule are being received well. Read the opinion of ESPN’s Andrew Feldman here.