More than 180 rings will be drawn by the participants of the WSOP Online Circuit throughout 2021. Why “stretching” the WSOP for a year is good and bad for poker, and why was it done at all?
WSOP Circuit Series Will Become Monthly For Nevada and New Jersey Players
A press release has been posted on the WSOP.com website announcing that the WSOP Circuit will run throughout 2021. Tournaments will be run in series named after Las Vegas casinos (excluding Winter, Spring and Summer Series). On each of the series, 12 or 18 rings will be played.
Schedule of the WSOP Circuit series in 2021 (the number of “circular” events is indicated in brackets):
from January 14 to 31 – Winter Online Super Circuit (18)
February 17-28 – Planet Hollywood Circuit (12)
March 19-30 – Silver Legacy Circuit (12)
April 10-27 – Spring Online Super Circuit (18)
May 8-25 – Caesars Atlantic City Online Circuit (12)
June 10-27 – Summer Online Super Circuit (18)
July 16 to 27 – Bally’s Online Circuit (12)
August 20 – 31 – Rio Online Circuit (12)
September 15-26 – Caesars Las Vegas Online Circuit (12)
from 9 to 26 October – Fall Online Super Circuit (18)
November 10-21 – Paris Las Vegas Online Circuit (12)
December 8-19 – Harrah’s Las Vegas Online Circuit (12)
Dec 21 – $ 250K Year End Championship Event (1)
Features of the WSOP Online Circuit Series: Main Events, Freeroll, Leaderboard and Year End Championship Event
The site has published only the schedule of the next WSOP Winter Online Super Circuit. Here are the main tournaments:
main event with a buy-in of $ 525 and a guarantee of $ 250K (3 re-entries)
$ 1K buy-in high roller tournament with a $ 100K guarantee (2 re-entries)
$ 2K $ 100K Guaranteed Super High Roller Tournament (2 re-entries)
It is known from the press release that the schedule of each series includes a $ 25K freeroll, in which all the winners of the ring events (12 or 18 people) and the top 10 players of the series leaderboard will take part. And every month players will be giving away $ 10K on the leaderboard.
There will be a total of 12 stages and one special event with a prize pool of $ 250K and a cap of 256 participants, which will win the WSOP gold bracelet. This event is a private freeroll, which can be entered in one of three ways:
win a ring event,
win a monthly leaderboard,
Win a seat in the winner takes all tournament.
By the way, WSOP.com plans to add another streak as soon as another state legalizes online poker. Probably, we are talking about Michigan, where on December 29, Governor Gretchen Whitmer passed amendments to the Michigan online gaming law, according to which residents of this state can now play in a common pool with players from other states. Online poker in Michigan is expected to launch in late January.
Why was the WSOP Circuit stretched out for the whole year?
There are two main reasons for this:
Reason 1. Since live poker in 2021 remains in limbo due to the epidemiological situation, it was decided to move live poker to the Internet.
Typically, the WSOP Circuit stages take place in a variety of locations. Here’s just half of the 2020 WSOP Circuit schedule. There are stages in Brazil, Canada, France, as well as stages in the USA (Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Tunica). Of course, canceling offline events means huge lost profits for organizers.
The trick is that the WSOP, as the brand owners, keeps 0.5% as an administrative fee on the prize pool of each tournament. Pay attention to this in the lobby the next time you download the WSOPC tournament at GGPOKEROK.
It’s funny that the WSOP Online series turned out to be uninteresting to the general public in comparison with the live stages of the past years. Here’s what the World Series of Poker search dynamics look like. The Spades on the Chart are the WSOP Series that took place in Las Vegas over the summer. There was no such standard peak in 2020.
Why running the WSOP Circuit all year round is good for poker
Any series is always good. Players will know that regardless of whether they are offline or not, they will always be online. Moreover, the organizers added more than $ 600K in additional promotions in the form of leaderboards, freeroll prize pools and tickets.
Why running the WSOP Circuit all year round is bad for poker
The value of the WSOP Circuit title is lost. In other words, WSOP Circuit tournaments will become something like “Daily” tournaments in any of the rooms. The atmosphere, the prestige of winning the WSOP tournament will be lost. The World Series of Poker is something exquisite and festive.
Previously, the WSOP Circuit was a world series, which was dominated by players from the locations where the series came. And only a small group of regulars traveled along with the series to new locations. In 2021, the WSOP Circuit will be a series for regulars from the states of Nevada and New Jersey (we anticipate your question, players from Russia and Belarus cannot play on the series, unless you are located in these states). And the charm of the series will be lost, even regular players will get bored with WSOP Ciruit. It’s like having champagne with oysters every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner – it gets boring. Let’s be glad to be wrong if our prediction doesn’t come true and the WSOP Online Circuit breathes new life into online poker in the states.
Do you think the WSOP Circuit will benefit poker throughout the year or not? Share your opinion in the comments and join the discussion on Instagram
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