First Wsop Main Event
- Staff January 6, 2021. Live poker may be a struggle at the moment, but the regulated US online poker market continues to grow. That received a significant boost Wednesday with the announcement of a packed World Series of Poker Online Circuit schedule. The first Online Circuit Series kicks off Jan. 14 with a total of 13 events in 2021 on WSOP.com.
- The first tournament to reach a million dollar prize pool was the 1983 WSOP Main Event.
- Final Table for the GGPoker WSOP Main Event. The international leg of the WSOP Main Event which played out last week on GGPoker attracted 674 players across three Day 1s to generate a modest $6.5 million prize pool. The tournament is now down to the final table which will be held live at Kings Casino, Czech Republic on December 15. The nine finalists at the final table are assured a payout.
- Psychological Comfort at the WSOP Professional poker player Amir Vahedi, who final tabled the main event in 2003, famously stated, “In order to live, you must be willing to die.” If you believe you will be unwilling to bet or even call all-in in marginal situations for fear of being eliminated, then it would probably be best if you did not.
Residents will be able to play the Main Event on the WSOP.com platform in either New Jersey or Nevada beginning on Sunday, Dec. The $10,000 event is expected to take two full days to reach the final table, with play being suspended for an overnight break after approximately twelve hours of action.
It won't be the weeks-long recurring show many fans are used to, but the World Series of Poker will once again be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks. And it's coming to a TV near you in just a few short days.
The 2020 WSOP will be broadcast starting at 8 p.m. EST on Sunday, Feb. 28 and lasting four hours, with everything carried on ESPN2. The shows will chronicle both the domestic and international editions of the $10,000 WSOP Main Event, culminating in the $1 million heads-up match between the champions of those tournaments, Joseph Hebert and Damian Salas, respectively.
The schedule, speculated upon for weeks, was confirmed via a presser released by the WSOP this afternoon.
“We could not be more excited to deliver poker fans new primetime content on ESPN,” said Ty Stewart, executive director of the WSOP. “With compelling storylines and unpredictable action, these episodes remind us all why there was a poker boom in the first place.”
New Format, Feel for 2020 Coverage
Of course, the radical changes wrought to the WSOP by COVID-19 necessitated a new format to the event, which saw most of the play take place online on WSOP.com (U.S. players) and GGPoker (international players).
The final tables of each portion were played out live but were not broadcast via livestream, making for a marked change in the coverage from previous years. Instead, the only access to real-time results came through PokerNews' own reporting from both final tables.
That means that while the hand histories themselves may be on record, nearly all viewers will be witnessing the action for the first time. That hearkens back to the days of tape-delayed TV releases that predated modern streaming broadcasts that changed the way the WSOP is consumed by the average fan.
“We are ecstatic that even in an unprecedented year, we can give our audience another fantastic World Series of Poker event to look forward to,” said Tim Bunnell, senior VP, programming & acquisitions, ESPN. “The format may be different, but the action remains captivating.”
Additionally, the commentary team will have a new look. After nearly two decades of Lon McEachern and Norman Chad calling the action, with a variety of co-hosts joining them in recent years, the McEachern will instead team with popular pro Jamie Kerstetter.
In another departure from previous years, which saw the broadcast split between ESPN and ESPN2, only the latter will carry the poker action.
It'll be four hours straight through showing the pertinent hands from both the domestic and live final tables. It's not currently known in what order the tournaments will be shown, or whether they'll be edited in some format that follows both at once.
Once those are finished, the epic heads-up match between Salas and Hebert figures to fill plenty of airtime, considering it proved a grueling affair lasting more than 170 hands.
It's not known what role, if any, PokerGO will play in the coverage. Currently, PokerGO holds the rights to the historic broadcasts and has all of the old WSOPs for subscriber access in its on-demand archive. PokerNews has inquired whether the 2020 broadcast will join them in the vaults and will post an update if and when an answer is received. Update: PokerNews was told the 2020 broadcast is 'expected to be on PokerGO in the future' but the timeline has yet to be determined.
Tags
WSOPWorld Series of PokerPoker on TVPoker TournamentsRelated Tournaments
World Series of Poker
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Psychological Comfort at the WSOP
Professional poker player Amir Vahedi, who final tabled the main event in 2003, famously stated, “In order to live, you must be willing to die.” If you believe you will be unwilling to bet or even call all-in in marginal situations for fear of being eliminated, then it would probably be best if you did not play the tournament at all. That being said, however, no one wants to be eliminated after two hours or on the money bubble, especially if you are playing the tournament in part for the experience.
What I recommend, then, is that you do what you can to avoid close situations where you may have to put your tournament life at stake without sacrificing any meaningful edge. I’ll give you an example from my own tournament last year: blinds were still 25/50, and everyone at the table had roughly the 10,000 chips with which he started. Several players limped in, and an aggressive player raised to 350 from his button. I was in the big blind with a pair of Tens.
I felt that my opponent’s range could be relatively wide in this situation, as attacking limpers from the button is a favorite move of many aggressive players when stacks are deep, but also that it would certainly include all pocket pairs that dominated mine. Re-raising in this situation would be justifiable, but stacks were so deep that my opponent could probably even call my reraise with a somewhat wide range since he would be in position post-flop. This could result in my having to make a large continuation bet on a scary board and/or call a large bet that would often, but not often enough to warrant a fold, come from a hand that had me beat. In short, I did not trust myself to handle a decision like this well during the first hour of my very first WSOP main event.
I elected simply to call instead, inviting the limpers to call as well. Pocket Tens are a strong hand, and I was surely losing some value by not reraising them pre-flop. However, I felt I could gain this value back the times that I flopped a set. Given that I was likely to see a flop against several opponents, including one aggressive player who was at least representing a big hand, I felt I could win a fairly large pot the times that I flopped a set and get away cheaply otherwise. This was a lower variance line that made my hand much easier to play and avoided a potentially dangerous situation without sacrificing much if any expected value.
Who Won The First Wsop Main Event
As we approached the money bubble, I found myself in a similar situation. The prize money for even the lowest pay-outs was $15,000, which would have been a tremendous boon to my bankroll. At the same time, however, I promised myself before I even began playing satellites to the main event that if I played, I was going to play to win, even if that meant an increased risk of winning nothing at all.
The chip leader at the table was very aggressive and throughout the day had shown a willingness to put people to decisions for all of their chips. He definitely had a good understanding of bubble dynamics and had been picking on some of the more scared players at our table. Prior to the bubble, I had played back at him a few times, so he knew that I knew what he was up to. I had about 42,000 chips at the 400/800 level, whereas he had well over 200,000. From middle position, he made his standard raise to 2500. The big blind was rather weak, and I felt the chip leader could raise him with a very wide range.
Wsop Main Event Past Winners
I, in the small blind, had a pair of 5’s. I contemplated a reraise, but felt my opponent was very capable of four-betting a wide enough range that I would actually have a difficult decision with my measly pocket pair. I then considered calling and playing for set value, as I had done earlier with the T’s, but this time it was likely to be a heads up pot against an opponent who had not shown very much strength so far. Thus, I was going to be bluffed off of the best hand often but not necessarily win a big pot if I did hit a set. Ultimately, I elected to fold, as I could not devise a profitable way to play what was likely to be the best hand.
Wsop Main Event Satellite Schedule
The important thing here is that I folded pre-flop, giving up in equity what was at most a fraction of the antes and my opponent’s raise. I did not 3-bet and then reluctantly fold what may have been the best hand in a much larger pot, and I did not call planning to check-fold the 85% of flops that did not contain a 5, which would have cost me a large fraction of my bet. I did my best to avoid the rough spot altogether. It is also important to note that with a larger pair, say pocket 9’s, I would have played more aggressively and been willing to take the increased risk of elimination on the money bubble. With a better pair, folding pre-flop is simply sacrificing too much.