With Black Friday and all of its developments beginning to die down, the poker world is now looking toward the future –well about a month into the future as the World Series of Poker and its May 31, 2011 start date fast approaches.
With the recent developments in the poker world attendance is likely to be down, but considering the doomsday scenarios some have been outlining –certain people have put Main Event attendance as low as 2,500, while positive outlooks still have it breaking 5,000—it shouldn’t be hard for the 2011 WSOP to exceed these low expectations. So as long as people are not comparing it to previous years, the WSOP could be the first step in the healing process for poker players.
Here is a look at the notable events on this year’s WSOP schedule:
- May 31: Event #2 $25,000 Heads Up NL Hold’em Championship – (256 Max)
- June 3: Event #7 $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em Championship
- June 6: Event #11 $10,000 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship
- June 9: Event #16 $10,000 2-7 Draw Lowball Championship
- June 12: Event #21 $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship
- June 15: Event #27 $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship
- June 18: Event #33 $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship
- Jun 21: Event #37 $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. Championship
- June 24: Event #42 $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship
- June 27: Event #46 $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em / Six Handed Championship
- July 2: Event #55 $50,000 The Poker Players Championship
- July 7: Event #58 $10,000Main Event No-Limit Hold’em Championship
Most of us in the poker industry are expecting attendance to fall across the board, but the hardest hit events could be the big buy-in tournaments. The reason I say this is that without sponsorship dollars there are very few players in the poker industry who will be able to participate in a full schedule of WSOP tournaments as they have in years past –simply put there are probably about two dozen players who would be willing to put up the $200,000 in entrant’s fees to play every event.
Not to mention, that if the US poker community is still waiting on their funds to be released from Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute/UB Poker, there will be many mid to high-limit grinders who are without a sizable portion of their bankroll when the WSOP comes around.
The 2011 WSOP should offer us an excellent way to measure the impact that Black Friday has had on the poker world.
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- Gus Hansen Finally Wins First WSOP Bracelet at WSOPE - September 27, 2010
Written by Steve Ruddock on April 26th, 2011