Arguably the biggest two weeks in the history of the World Poker Tour are upon us. Everything kicked off one week ago, at a wild Meet-Up Game that featured legends of the game and four raffle winners who won seats into the $10,400 WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. Since then, there’s been a massive $500 No Limit Hold’em and a $600 HORSE event that drew a staggering 261 entries – and now the meat of the schedule has arrived.
The $1,100 buy-in WPT Prime Championship, with a $2 million guaranteed prize pool, kicks off with the first of three starting days on Thursday, Dec. 8. Four days later, the first of three starting flights for the WPT WC begins on Monday, Dec. 12, with a monumental $15 million guarantee. There will be a multitude of satellites for both events with as many as 50 guaranteed seats on the line, offering ample opportunity to win your way in for a fraction of the cost.
But it won’t simply be an exciting time for the players fortunate enough to make deep runs in those or a handful of other major events on the schedule. There will be live streams on WPT’s YouTube and Twitch for 12 consecutive days, starting at 12:30 p.m. PST on Dec. 8 with a $50/100 vloggers cash game featuring Brad Owen, Andrew Neeme, and Ethan ‘Rampage’ Yau, among others.
Over the course of the two weeks to follow, in addition to coverage of the $25,000 High Roller (Dec. 12), $1,100 WPT Ladies Championship (Dec. 18), WPT WC (Dec. 16-18, 20), and the WPT Prime Championship (Dec. 19), there will be several other significant cash games.
The return of Rail Heaven, a $1,000/2,000 No Limit Hold’em game, will feature Phil Ivey, Eric Persson, Ben Lamb, and a star-studded group of nosebleed players. On Dec. 14 and 15, Alexandra Botez spearheads her own $50/100 cash game which will feature more of the most popular content creators in the world today.
If you’re in Las Vegas, there’s also the matter of the Player’s Thank You Party on Sunday, Dec. 11 at Area 51. Starting at 7 p.m., shuttles will be leaving Wynn Las Vegas for a celebration that will be open to anyone with a receipt for the WPT WC, Prime Championship, or Ladies Championship. In addition to food and drink services, there will be meet & greets as well as a variety of attractions on the premises of Area 15.
There will also be more meet-up opportunities over the course of the week. Doyle Brunson is giving away signed copies of his book on Dec. 8 for the first 190 players in line at 4 p.m. PST in the Handel Room at Wynn Las Vegas, with one of those books containing a free WPT WC entry. Five lucky entrants have also been selected to play the Phil Ivey Simulator Golf Challenge on Dec. 10, with another WPT WC on the line.
For those players whose runs in the other tournaments come to a premature end, there are more events to follow. As the main event winds down, a $1,500 Mystery Bounty tournament with a $2 million guarantee of its own gets going on Friday, Dec. 16. High Rollers will have a $25,000 tournament on offer, with reduced rake for those seated at the start of play on Day 1, on Dec. 11. For the mixed game players, there’s still a $3,000 8-Game Mix event and a $1,000 HORSE tournament to come, among other non-Hold’em options.
Wynn Las Vegas is the place to be until mid-December, or the livestreams, if you can’t make it. After seeing what went down to kick off the series, you have to know it’s only going to get wilder as it goes along.