Tournament Will Start Online, Switch To Live Play

Published on November 14th, 2020 11:26 am EST

Earlier this week, tournament organizers announced that the 2020 World Series of Poker main event will be pushing ahead this year.

In order to accommodate a world that is dealing with a pandemic, tournament organizers revealed that this year's main event will be a hybrid tournament, consisting of some live and some online play.

In addition, a domestic champion and international champion will be crowned, and these two players will square off for the bracelet and an additional $1 million.

Here is how it will work:

On November 29th, 2020, Day 1A of the international side of the WSOP main event will get underway on GGPoker. The buy-in will be $10,000, and there will be three opening day flights - Sunday, November 29th, Saturday, December 5th and Sunday, December 6th.

On Day 2 (Monday, December 7th), the tournament will play down to 9 players. The players will then make their way to King's Casino in Rozvadov, where action will play down in a live setting to one remaining player. This player will win the international portion of the event.

On Sunday, December 13th, 2020, players in either Nevada or New Jersey will begin the domestic portion of the main event. They'll play down to the final 9 players on Monday, December 14th. The tournament will then be paused and continued at the newly re-opened (at that point) Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, where the final 9 players will play down to one "domestic champion".

These domestic and international tournaments will essentially be separate events with their own prize pools.

After a domestic and international champion are crowned, the two players will clash at the Rio on Wednesday, December 30th in a heads-up match to determine the 2020 World Series of Poker main event winner. The winner of the heads-up clash will receive an additional $1 million in prize money, on top of whatever they won in the domestic/international tournaments.

There is an interesting issue of getting the international winner to the United States at the end of December, though the World Series of Poker clearly believes that they can pull it off. Organizers have said that they maintain the options of postponing the live portions of the event or completing them online, depending on the state of the world at the time.

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As mentioned, the buy-in for the event will be $10,000 USD, so the prize pools should be significant.

In announcing the WSOP main event for this year, Ty Stewart, Executive Director of the WSOP, said that "there must be a world champion in 2020", and that "poker's history is too important".

Source: WSOP.com - World Series of Poker Main Event to Return

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Filed Under: The World Series of Poker