Harrah's have announced the schedule for this year's WSOP. Someone who is disgustingly well bankrolled has 55 ways to win a bracelet in 2007 - 9 more than last year. That is, of course, providing she is a female casino employee aged 50 or older.
The 52 open events now include much mixed-game fun: a $1000 buy-in SHOE, $2500 and $5000 HORSE and $1500 and $5000 mixed limit/no-limit Hold'em events. These are in addition to the return of the $50,000 HORSE "real world championship". Gone are the $1000 and $1500 bracelet events that took place alongside days 3 to 7 of the main event, and in fact you'll only get to play a $1000 No Limit Hold'em tournament at all if you are a lady or a senior. The buy-in for these so-called World Championship events is almost as patronising as the fact that they have to take place at all.
"As part of our commitment to innovate for the benefit of all players, we've added nine bracelet events", says WSOP commish, Jeremy Pollack. Yep, that'll be the reason. Harrah's are, after all, world-renound innovators. Like the groundbreaking conversion of Caesars Palace from one of the classiest, most opulent resorts in the world into - well - just another Harrah's with a few columns on the outside. More likely it has something to do with the certain drop in the number of internet qualifiers this year and the huge amount of rake they're going to lose from the resulting smaller Main Event field.
They're still planning for 9000, which is 1000 more players than last year's capacity - the final total also includes several hundred alternates. The World's Most Vacuous Cardroom is being expanded to accomodate up to 3000 players at a time and Main Event Day One will be split into three days, rather than the four they had last year. Day 2, which was split into two, is now scheduled for one day only. If they do manage to sell 9000 seats - I guess we'll just have to wait and see about this - it's going to be a very long first day, with over two thirds of the field having to bust out before the end of play.
The press release and full schedule can be found here:
http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=393478
