The 46th annual World Series of Poker, a series of poker tournaments open to anyone 21 years of age or older, will begin Wednesday, May 27, 2015, with nearly $200 million in prize money up for grabs. Tournament organizers also announced that several new events and changes to the series will provide better value and excitement to poker’s premier event, including a huge increase in starting chips.
New events include, but are not limited to:
May 29-30: Event #5 – $565 Colossus No-Limit Hold’em with a $5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.
May 31: Event #6 – $1,000 Hyper No-Limit Hold’em with a fast, two-day structure.
In addition to these exciting additions, the eleventh new bracelet event up for grabs this year is an online bracelet. WSOP.com will offer its first-ever bracelet event on July 2 at noon.
This $1,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em event will be the first- ever WSOP gold bracelet awarded online, and the final two players will compete live at the Rio in Las Vegas on July 3.
More details on this unique event, including information on online satellites, will be announced shortly.
Huge Increase in Starting Chips!
Who doesn’t love more chips to start play? New for 2015, the WSOP has significantly adjusted upward the starting stack for all WSOP events that have a buy-in under $10,000. The new starting stacks for these events will be as follows:
- $565 buy-in: 5,000 starting chips (Colossus, new event; 10 times the buy-in, same as last year’s Monster Stack)
- $777 buy-in: 5,000 starting chips (new buy-in level this year, treated like a $1k event) – 100 big blinds
In addition to the starting chip change, the overall structure has been improved to better address player concerns from last year. Now low buy-in events will feature the 250/500 blind level, and later on the 2500/5000 level. These adjustments along with the increase in starting chips are expected to add a couple levels of play to each event before reaching a winner.
Additionally registration has been extended in many events to accommodate the bigger starting stacks, with eight levels of registration now an option for events with buy-ins $2,500 or more in most cases (consult structure sheets).
The WSOP is also tweaking some key returning events to allow for better player experience. This includes a concerted effort to push back the weekends to include Fridays, with several prominent events now beginning on a Friday along with a new earlier start time. These events include:
June 5-6: Millionaire Maker $1,500 No-Limit Hold ’em. Now features two starting days, with flights beginning at a new time – 10 a.m. – both Friday and Saturday. Starting chip stack is now 7,500 in chips. Players who are eliminated in the morning flight may re-enter the 4 p.m. flight.
June 12-13: Monster Stack, $1,500 No-Limit Hold ’em. Now features two starting days, with both flights starting at 10 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. Starting chips stack is 15,000 in chips.
One big new addition for 2015 is the new $565 buy-in No-Limit Hold ’em event – the lowest buy-in open event at the WSOP since 1980 – with a massive $5,000,000 prize pool guarantee. This event, dubbed the “Colossus” is part of the 2015 WSOP opening weekend where they to set the record for the largest live tournament field size ever. It is the largest Poker tournament in America after all.
