2013 WSOPE Schedule Aims to Please All Comers
Players are counting down the days until the start of next week’s 44th annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Officials at Caesars Entertainment, owners of the WSOP brand, have been doing their best to stoke the excitement with a steady stream of announcements over the past week.
Yesterday Caesars PR man Seth Palansky unveiled the schedule for this year’s 7th annual World Series of Poker Europe. Seven bracelet events will take place at the Casino Barrière d’Enghien-les-Bains near Paris, France from October 12 through October 25, immediately after the end of EPT London. The schedule features the first-ever mixed-max Pot Limit Omaha event, and the WSOP’s inaugural High Rollers event, a €25,000 affair intended to convince players to stick around a little longer if they bust out of the €10,000 Main Event.
The WSOPE has bounced around the last few years as Caesars has struggled to grow the event. Caesars held the WSOPE in London for its first four years, during which time the £10,000 Main Event averaged a steady 350 players each year.
In 2011 the WSOPE moved to Cannes and Caesars dropped the buy-in of the Main Event to €10,000. Main Event attendance increased to 593 players that year, but last year only 420 players participated, a year-on-year drop of nearly 30%. The precipitous decline in attendance stood in stark contrast to the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas, which saw only a modest 4% fall-off from 2011 to 2012.
This year Caesars seems to be simultaneously trying to please as many different types of players as it can. Tournament officials have made the series easier to get to and have included seven different buy-ins, ranging from €1,000 to €25,000, across the seven events of the series. Four dozen smaller side events will also be held.
WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart acknowledged in the press release accompanying the schedule that the move to Paris and the WSOPE Main Event’s new spot on the calendar – a move largely dictated by the timing of EPT London – is intended to encourage greater participation in the series.
“New tournament dates and 12 million Parisians have us aiming for the largest Main Event in Europe,” he said.
The 2013 WSOPE schedule is set out below:
Event 1: Saturday, October 12, 2013 – €1,100 No-Limit Hold’em Re-Entry (two starting days)
Event 2: Monday, October 14, 2013 – €5,300 Mixed-Max No-Limit Hold’em
Event 3: Tuesday, October 15, 2013 – €1,650 Pot Limit Omaha
Event 4: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 – €2,200 No-Limit Hold’em
Event 5: Thursday, October 17, 2013 – €3,250 Mixed-Max No-Limit Hold’em
Event 6: Saturday, October 19, 2013 – €10,450 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event (two starting days)
Event 7: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 – €25,600 High Roller No-Limit Hold’em
COMMENTS