The second event in the 69-event tournament is Colossus II, expected to be the biggest organized poker competition ever.
The 2016 World Series of Poker began this week. The WSOP this year is a 69-event tournament which ranges over 6 weeks from late-May to mid-July. The 68th event will be the World Series of Poker Main Event, the most famous poker competition in the world.
The WSOP Main Event this year is going to be a little different. Certainly, thousands of players will plop down their $10,000 entry fee. Three stages of players will gamble for a week, until enough players are eliminated to complete the October Nine.
October Nine
There is no November Nine this year, because the event was moved to the final week of October, to accommodate the U.S. Presidential Election — or allow players to get themselves and their winnings out of the country before the apocalypse begins. Whatever the case, the final table begins on October 30.
Before that, dozens of other events are set to take place. Besides the familiar No-Limit Texas Hold’em events, players can enter tournaments for Omaha Hold’em, Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven-Card Stud, Seven-Card Hi-Lo, Razz, H.O.R.S.E., and a number of other variants of poker. The final event will be the Small One for One Drop Event, a charity tournament organized by Guy Laliberte of Cirque du Soleil, which raises money for water-deprived areas of the world.
Rio’s Convention Hall
Like the last few years, the 47th Annual World Series of Poker’s setting is the Rio All-Suites Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (a suburb of Las Vegas). The actual setting is the Rio’s Convention Center, which can house thousands of players and hundreds of gaming tables at once.
The list of tournaments begins as it has for a number of years: with the $565 buy-in Casino Employees No-limit Texas Hold’em tournament. Workers at the venue play to see who is the champion. Soon after that, the Colossus II event launches.
Colossus I and Colossus II
When the $565 buy-in Colossus event took place last year, it was the largest poker tournament in the history of card playing. The event had a field of 22,347 entries, making it almost three times larger than any WSOP Main Event to date. The $565 entry fee is smaller than most buy-ins at the WSOP (besides the employees’ event), so it draw a huge crowd.
That crowd also became a logistical nightmare for the organizers, who simply could not handle a crowd that size at one time. When players learned the 1st place prize was “only” $600,000, the crowd became disenchanted. The event’s organizers believe they have gotten the kinks out for the Colossus II event.
This time around, Colossus II is going to have 6 flights spread over 3 days. That leaves about 7,000-8,000 players in the event, with room for more, if an even bigger crowd shows up this year.
WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel said of the Colossus II crowd, “We can get 9,000, 10,000 players in a day. Thirty-thousand has been my number all along to be able to handle over the course of the three days and six flights.”
Howard Lederer’s Return
Gaming media has speculated that Howard Lederer is preparing a return to the World Series of Poker, after missing the event for 6 years. Lederer recently released a mea culpa for his role in the Black Friday Scandal and the fall of Full Tilt Poker. This causes people to speculate that he was seeking a return to competitive poker tournaments.
If so, the early indication is Howard Lederer will find an icy reception. Players still do not seem prepared to forgive, perhaps because Lederer was so unrelenting at the time. They might see his recent apology as calculated, instead of sincere. Of course, Howard Lederer might have released his apology to coincide with the news that Full Tilt Poker would merge with the PokerStars brand, calling a final end to Full Tilt’s long demise.
WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart commented on the possibility of Lederer’s return. Stewart said, “I think Howard has some message that he wants to give to the poker community, and we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. But I think there is a good chance that we could see Howard in tournaments in the future.”
