We’re getting closer to a complete 2020 WSOP schedule. The World Series of Poker released dates and structures for all 17, $10,000-$50,000 Championship tournaments, and the competitors will be playing for more than just money this year. Among the tournaments are the first five-figure online bracelet event, and 15 freezeouts.
Many consider the $10,000 events, including the Main Event, along with the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, the most prestigious tournaments each summer. They draw fewer entrants than lower buy-in events, but they’re always packed with some of the best tournament players in the world.
The Main Event, poker’s most important annual tournament, kicks off July 1. Players will receive 60,000 chips to start for the second straight year, and play two-hour blind levels. We’ll have a new world champion crowned on July 14, replacing 2019 champ Hossein Ensan.
But the Main Event, albeit the granddaddy of them all, isn’t the only “major” tournament on the 2020 WSOP schedule. Not by any means.
2020 Schedule Includes Wide Variety of Poker Variants
If you love no-limit hold ’em, pot-limit Omaha, HORSE, razz, and just about every other mainstream form of poker, you’ll enjoy the 2020 WSOP schedule. The first $10,000 buy-in event — Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better — begins June 3, eight days after the WSOP’s first bracelet event.
All of the biggest events are back on the schedule. That includes the Main Event and $50,000 Poker Players Championship, arguably poker’s top two majors.
Hossein Ensan won last year’s Main Event for $10 million. He beat a field of 8,569 players, the second-largest in the tournament’s 50-year history. CardsChat predicted last week that this year’s world championship event would exceed the record-setting field of 8,773 entrants in 2006.
The Poker Players Championship, arguably the second most prestigious poker tournament in the world, kicks off June 22. This difficult tournament features eight different poker variations. If you only have one or two games mastered, good luck winning an event like this, which always has many of the top mixed-game pros in the world.
Speaking of mixed games, the always popular $10,000 HORSE Championship — scheduled for June 9 — is back. Many of the players who compete in the Poker Players Championship will also enter this event.
The final $10,000 buy-in tournament of the summer will be played online, and it will be the first time WSOP.com has hosted a bracelet event at this price point. This one-day event runs on July 2, which coincides with Day 1B of the Main Event.
More at Stake than Bracelets and Cash
Winning large sums of cash and WSOP bracelets has always been the lure of playing in the World Series of Poker. But in 2020, Caesars is sweetening the pot a bit for its high rollers.
The players who compete in the Championship events will also be playing for a shot at a separate dedicated leaderboard, similar to the Player of the Year, and potential prizes.
Details on the Championship event leaderboard and possible prizes haven’t been released. Seth Palansky, WSOP’s VP of Corporate Communications, wrote in a press release that “more details about leaderboards will be announced closer to the WSOP, but this specific subset of 17 events will feature a point-tracking leaderboard throughout the summer where a winner will be crowned and prizes up for grabs.”
The 51st annual World Series of Poker was already sure to be another exciting series. With the addition of the separate leaderboard for high-stakes events, it just became even more intriguing.
