By Lisa Yiasemides
WPT and partypoker’s biggest partnership yet has finally landed with two whole months of summer poker action getting underway this evening!
Each week for the next 12 weeks a Championship Main Event will take place. Of those, there are five WPT Champions Cup tournaments included (the 8-Max, 6-Max, Knockout, Mix-Max and Main Event), which will reward the winner’s name etched on the Champions Cup and a seat to the Tournament of Champions worth $15,000, entry into the exclusive WPT Champions Club, as well as a guaranteed huge cash prize.
This week Event #01 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Championship will kick things off tomorrow, at 6 pm* on Saturday July 18. The $3,200 three-day event has two starting flights to choose from on consecutive days.
All Championship events will follow a similar format, one that has been designed to recreate the experience of playing a live event. As well as massive guarantees, players’ real names will be visible instead of screen names and there will only be two Day 1s for Championship events, with a single re-entry per event.
The fact that re-entries are limited to just one ensures each event will follow in the footsteps of a live WPT tournament, and will bring with it all the trademark pressure and excitement that is part and parcel of high quality comp.
Not wanting to leave anyone out, there will also be ‘Mini’ and Micro’ versions of the Championship events, so for example tomorrow night there is a $320 Mini and a $33 Micro event to enjoy if the higher buy-ins are out of your price range.
Though there is undoubtedly a PLO8 theme for the week, in accordance with the Championship event that is taking place, but there is plenty of NLH action available too. Alongside Event #01 tomorrow night, there will be a $1,050 Opener and a $530 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Hyper (with their respective mini and micro versions, of course).
On top of that there are a ton of side events to choose from and satellites running all the time, guaranteeing no shortage of poker to choose from between now and mid-September!
Another particular highlight is the WPT Big Game with buy-in choices of $5,200 for the Main, a $530 Mini and $55 Micro, and all feature higher guarantees than a regular Big Game. Kicking off on Sunday July 19, there is a shorter late registration period and only 1 re-entry, so register early to ensure yourself a seat. Phases are also running daily for all buy-in levels.
There are two leaderboards running alongside the series, with a total of $100,000 in prizes to be won. The leaderboards have been created to allow as many players who take part in the festival to qualify as possible, regardless of buy-in. The Player of the Championship leaderboard will take into account results accrued in tournaments with buy-ins of $300 or more, while the Rising Star leaderboard will feature results in tournaments that cost less than $300 to buy in to.
Last – but certainly not least – tonight sees the WPT Poker Industry Invitational for Charity take place. The $320 event will get underway at 6pm and partypoker have added three $1,100 tickets (to the WPT Shooting Stars for Charity event later this month) to the prizepool. Members of the industry will battle it out against colleagues and peers, and the field will feature WPT’s very own Alex Gray!
That’s it for now but remember to tune in here each day for a round up of the previous night’s action, with a daily blog posted all the way through until 18th September! Good luck and we look forward to seeing you at the tables.
*All times referred to are BST