WPT Champions Week Begins May 18; Matt Salsberg Seeks to Claim Season XI WPT Player of the Year Honors
World Poker Tour’s dramatic Season XI will crown its final two champions – and the tour’s newest Player of the Year – when WPT Champions Week kicks off at Bellagio on Saturday, May 18.
Starting with the $25,000 WPT World Championship, WPT Champions Week will see the game’s best players battle for millions of dollars in prize money and the tour’s most prestigious title when the tournament begins at 12pm PT on Saturday, May 18. Featuring a single re-entry option, registration for the WPT World Championship will last through the tournament’s first eight levels, ending at approximately 5pm PT on Sunday, May 19.
“The WPT World Championship is always a special event that produces incredible poker and amazing champions,” said WPT President Adam Pliska. “Just consider Season X Champion Marvin Rettenmaier who put on a gutsy, brilliant performance for more than 12 hours at the final table before eventually capturing the title. It was an incredible WPT moment that we won’t soon forget.”
Rettenmaier, who will be returning to Bellagio to try and defend his title, is headlining a Who’s Who of the world’s best players competing to become the next WPT World Champion. Other notables confirmed to play include WPT Champions Club members Anthony Gregg, Ben Hamnett, Noah Schwartz, Jonathan Roy, Ravi Raghavan, and Matt Salsberg who is looking cap off an amazing season on tour by capturing WPT Player of the Year honors.
Champions Week continues on Tuesday, May 21 with the start of World Poker Tour’s biggest buy-in event of the year, the televised $100,000 WPT Super High Roller Championship. With 34 entries in Season X, this tournament generated a prize pool worth more than $3.3 million and a first-place prize of more than $1.3 million which was claimed by the event’s champion, Tom Marchese. In Season XI, this tournament will feature a single Day 1 with unlimited re-entry.
To kick off the Champions Week festivities, all WPT World Championship fans and spectators are invited to a Meet & Greet with the WPT cast in the Bellagio Poker Room from 6:30pm to 7pm on Saturday, May 18, while all tournament players are invited to join the cast at a Players Party in the Chairman’s Suite at 8pm.