The 45th running of the World Series of Poker – the longest-running, richest and most prestigious tournament series – begins on Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas – marking the 10th consecutive year the event has been held in the Rio Convention Center.
The action-packed schedule includes gold bracelet events, satellites, cash games and thrice daily deep stack tournaments running for 49 consecutive days, concluding with the final nine players of the WSOP Main Event on Monday, July 14, 2014.
The summer festival reaches its pinnacle with the globe’s longest-running poker tournament -- the $10,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em WSOP Main Event championship -- which is slated to run over ten consecutive days from July 5 - July 14, 2014.
The WSOP Main Event will feature three starting flights – Saturday, July 5; Sunday, July 6; and Monday, July 7.
“In our 45th year, and tenth at the Rio, we are hard at work to make the 2014 World Series of Poker the biggest and best yet,” said WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart. “We will build it, we hope you will come.”
WSOP.com’s real-money online poker offerings in New Jersey and Nevada will be the exclusive online home for players in these states to win seats into WSOP events, including the Main Event. While in New Jersey or Nevada, eligible players can play on WSOP.com, whether a resident or not, and satellites are expected to run regularly throughout the WSOP.
Buy-ins for tournaments at the Rio start as low as $75. Cash games will begin on May 27 and run 24 hours a day throughout the seven-week series taking place in the Rio Convention Center.
Some key tournaments already penciled in on the schedule include:
Saturday, May 31 – The opening Saturday event features the $1500 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em “Millionaire Maker” where the winner walks away with potentially 666 times their investment – a guaranteed $1,000,000. (This event featured 6,343 entries in 2013 and the winner earned $1,198,780). The prize pool for this event last year exceeded $8.5 million.
Sunday, June 29 – The return of the Big One for ONE DROP, the $1,000,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em charity event to benefit ONE DROP where the winner can conceivably walk away with the largest prize ever awarded in poker – in excess of $20,000,000 – with the field capped at 56 players.
Thursday, July 3 & Friday, July 4 – The return of the Little One for ONE DROP, the $1,111 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em event to benefit the ONE DROP charity. The two-day start, unlimited re-entry (through first four levels) event featured 4,756 players in its debut and a huge nearly $4.3 million prize pool up for grabs. The winner walked away with $663,727. The Little One for ONE DROP will also be the last No-Limit Hold’em event offered prior to the WSOP Main Event.
Nearly 500 poker tables will be set up across more than 100,000 square-feet of ballroom space to accommodate the thousands of players from around the world who attend poker’s annual Woodstock.
The 2013 WSOP attracted 79,471 participants – the largest attendance in the WSOP’s 44-year history – in a total of 62 events, generating a prize pool of more than $197 million. Participants in WSOP events hailed from 107 countries in 2013. The WSOP Main Event, won by Michigan’s Ryan Riess this year, attracted 6,352 players and awarded Riess $8,361,570.
The current slate of individual events offered during the 45th Annual WSOP are being finalized, with 60+ official gold bracelet events expected, with weekends catering to the No-Limit Hold’em weekend warriors and a broad range of other variations of poker at both entry level and championship level buy-ins being mixed in throughout the series. Specific events for Seniors, Ladies and Casino Employees are all being planned as well.
The full event-by-event schedule is expected to be released sometime in January.
