‘Tis the season for main poker match motion at Wynn Las Vegas — extra particularly, the 2024 World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championship pageant.
This 12 months’s festivities kicked off Dec. 3 with Sunday being the beginning of the $1,100 WPT Prime Championship, a $5 million assured match. The 2023 version of this occasion had an nearly unimaginable 10,512 entrants. Poker professional Calvin Anderson gained it for almost $1.4 million.
The Defending Champ Has Arrived
The web page has been turned from the 2023 WPT at Wynn collection. It is now all about placing up huge numbers once more this month within the World Poker Tour’s season-ending pageant. If Day 1a of the Prime Championship is any indication of issues to come back, this collection goes to be large.
The primary Day 1 flight attracted 1,263 entrants with three extra possibilities for gamers to enter within the coming days. Will it prime final 12 months’s discipline? Matt Savage, Government Tour Director for the World Poker Tour, thinks it is attainable.
“I hope so, however I do not assume we’re fairly going to get to 10,000. It might be good,” Savage instructed PokerNews throughout Day 1a.
Savage expects the sector this 12 months will not be far off the 2023 discipline that was bigger than even the WPT workers had anticipated. The Wynn-Encore conference heart was jam-packed on Sunday for the primary main match of the collection. Execs corresponding to Joe McKeehen, Freddy Deeb, Matt Salsberg, and the defending champion (Anderson) had been among the many hoard of gamers in attendance.
Dan Sepiol additionally entered the primary session of the WPT Prime Championship. The Indiana native is returning to Wynn one 12 months after taking down the $10,400 buy-in WPT World Championship for over $5 million. He is wrapping up a 12-month interval that has included $7 million in dwell match cashes, in keeping with the Hendon Mob. Oh, and he scooped a $1 million prize in a current every day fantasy sports activities contest.
Competitors for Gamers
The month of December has grow to be prime time for match poker around the globe, with the World Sequence of Poker Paradise (WSOPP) going down within the Bahamas, the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) working in Prague, and naturally the WPT World Championship in Las Vegas. All these occasions are presently in motion competing towards one another. However, as Savage mentioned, there’s sufficient gamers to go round.
“I feel it impacts it a bit,” Savage mentioned when requested how a lot the competing occasions have on the WPT World Championship attendance. “However I additionally assume that makes these tournaments all that rather more useful for those who are enjoying them. I imply, in the event you go searching and you do not see all the massive title gamers which are enjoying for all that cash within the Bahamas, it makes these fields extra engaging, and so I feel the gamers see that and see that and are coming right here as nicely. So, the numbers thus far on this collection have been great, so I do not assume it’ll affect it that a lot.”
Poker gamers within the WPT World Championship have spoken extremely in regards to the venue the previous two years, and it is seemingly that has performed a job in why the pageant continues to herald so many gamers regardless of heavy competitors with the EPT and WSOPP. The partnership between the Wynn and the World Poker Tour seems to be a match made in heaven. However will it proceed lengthy into the longer term?
“I positive hope so. I might like to be right here ceaselessly. I feel that is an incredible venue for us. I hope it goes ceaselessly,” Savage mentioned.
Savage praised the standard of the sellers and poker site administration at Wynn.
The 2024 WPT World Championship pageant can have most of the identical main occasions as in 2022 and 2023, together with the $10,400 WPT World Championship (Dec. 14) and WPT Women Championship (Dec. 14). However the collection will even embody a brand new and historic $5 million ClubWPT Gold Invitational Freeroll beginning Dec. 13. Over 1,500 gamers have already or will win a Golden Passport, which features a ticket into the record-setting freeroll and a free room at Wynn.
We’re simply getting began right here at Wynn in what figures to be an thrilling two weeks of poker in Las Vegas. Keep tuned to PokerNews all through the collection for every day characteristic tales, interviews, and updates from the ground.
*Pictures courtesy of the World Poker Tour.
Full WPT World Championship Competition Schedule
