WPT World Championship Details Announced

So here we go. I guess a big episode today, not many topics, but I'm assuming we're gonna have some strong opinions, maybe some debate back and forth. Because the World Poker Tour finally announced its and I guess I should use quotation marks here guarantee, so we'll talk about that. We have the conclusion to WPT Australia, so sticking with the World Poke Tour brand, we'll hit on WPT Australia. That took place, and then some some big events happened

online that we want to hit on. W s AP bracelets were handed out and we have a massive four million dollar winner that was part of it. It's also w s AP Bracelet season here in the US, so the Bracelet's never stop. It's WSP Europe. It's this WP that so WPT and WSP are the big topics on this episode. This episode of the Poker Gol Podcast is brought to you by the Poker Stars NAPT. The NAPT returns to Las Vegas in just under one month's time

November one through tenth at Resorts World. The series is headlined by the fifty three hundred dollars buying three million dollar guaranteed main event schedule has buyings from two hundred and fifty dollars all the way up to twenty five thousand dollars, so there is something for everyone to learn more. You guys can visit Pokerstarslive dot com slash NAPT slash Las Vegas. Again, that's PokerStars Live dot com slash NAPT

slash Las Vegas. And for those of you who are listening from Michigan, Pennsylvania or New Jersey, be sure to check out the Poker Stars Lobby on the daily for qualifiers and chances to win gold passes to NAPT Las Vegas. Tim and I are planning on being there at NAPT Las Vegas, and we hope to see you guys there. If you are there and you see us and you're a listener of this podcast, come talk to us. We love to meet the listeners. It's a lot of fun to hear you know who's out there. All Right, here

we go WPT's announcement. It's here, Free roll baby, five million dollars free roll. That's the big announcement.

however you want to classify it. I believe that that's true. I don't know of any free role that was bigger than that. But it's interesting that they're they're kind of coming with that that marketing message because I'll get into that a little later.

going to be qualifying all these people into it. So yeah, so they're doing that on the back end of things,

no guarantee for the World Championship. So I guess let's take it back to when this was announced, what a week and a half ago or so, you see this news come across you know, what's what's your initial thoughts in the moment, if you can try and like go back a few days we are we are recording this about I don't know, eight nine days after that news initial dropped, so we've had some time to kind of

think about things. But but going back to it, you know, what were your like first thoughts, like were you wowed, were you surprised? Were you let down? Like what was what was the feeling?

I'm just kind of using a general example when in the in the correct thing to do is just apologize and move on in a way, or just like admit defeat and move on, or say you were wrong and move on. In this, like in a lot of cases, in you know, real life stuff, if you just say you're sorry and move on, fine. In a case like this, you know, a poker guarantee, which doesn't involve any sort of apologizing. Just be like, listen, we shot for the moon at forty million, we missed. Maybe we got a

little bit too ahead of ourselves. We're gonna pull it back, but we're still going to give you something really great. Here's twenty five or here's thirty, right, which I think is extremely achievable given one the turnout that they had last year. You know, all the brand power that WPT has, all the loyalty that people express towards WPT, and then also from everything that I could tell, all the qualifiers

that they're going to have for this thing. So from what I've been told, they're still going to qualify it. From what I've been told. And also, if you've listened to the car wash that Adam Pliska has been on, He's done every single podcast under the sun. You know, if you listen to one, you listen to them all. But and I've listened to all of them, you have, I've listened to three of them. Yeah, and it's very same thing over and over again. So if you listen

to them one, you listen to them all. The number that they're putting out there that he's putting out there is right around one thousand qualifiers. I mean, that's a really solid floor. I part of me doesn't understand why that number isn't being emphasized more, but I also get it because you're not trying to achieve a guarantee this time, so you don't need to emphasize it. Right.

it's everywhere. If you follow the World Over Tour, which I'm sure many of you do, or if you follow any of their ambassadors, any of their you know, WPT family members, et cetera, this is all they've been talking about for the past you know, week and a half, which is what they should be doing now, what they're doing, And if you head on over to WPT dot com, you'll find an article that's everything you need to know

about the Club WPT Gold Free Role. So a lot of this information that I'm about to kind of go over for what this free roll is is included in that article. It's going to take place, this free roll five million dollars free role. It's actually five million and one hundred dollars because they released that actually before we hopped on this podcast, they released all the payout structures, which is kind of a big puzzle, but we'll get to that. December thirteenth through fifteenth at win Las Vegas.

You know, obviously day one on the thirteenth and then the final table on the fifteenth. Start times are currently TBA. So Club WPT Gold is the WPT's new sweepstakes poker model. If you're familiar with the Global Poker think of it like that. You go on to the platform, you know, eventually when it launches, which it says that it's going

to launch an early twenty twenty five. You go on there, you would buy some sort of currency, you would play in that currency, and then on the back end, you could event you know, convert that currency to some sort of cash out, right. So that's what this is going to be. Now. One thing that I'll mention is that from the people that I've talked to there, the regular version of CLUBWPT is going to stay, which makes sense

because those are extremely different player pools. You know. Club WPT's regular model is you pay whatever it is, thirty dollars a month if I think the Diamond tier is one hundred dollars a month or whatever, and then you just get access to whatever is available. Right. This one is it's not real money gaming by definition because it's sweepstakes model, but it's closer to real money gaming, right,

you know. So that's what Club WPT Gold is. So if you are familiar with the global poker product, then you'll probably like what's to come from WPT. From Club WPT gold. It's a mouthful to say that over and over. I should just call it gold. But anyway, do you.

of that like you thought of it. What I did think of though, is they specifically mentioned sweeps coins, which yeah, that's what Global Poker uses, sweeps coins, right, And then they also call this entry or ticket to this free roll a golden passport, which I think gold pass for poker stars. So like, I like, those are the things that I'm like, it's not necessarily unique.

want to describe it. So this free roll, it's going to be a giveaway for these golden passports, where it says nearly two thousand people are going to win a golden passport to come out to Las Vegas to compete in this club WPT gold five million dollar free roll. First place is going to be one million dollars. Of that five million, approximately twenty five percent of the field is going to be paid. So five hundred and three

players is what they list in this article. And then they say everyone who makes the money and busts will have a second chance drawing where one in five will draw one hundred free entries or one of one hundred free entries into the ten thousand dollars WPT World Championship. So from this free rule, I'll get it. Let's let's just I know they said nearly two thousand, but let's just say two thousands because it's just easier. So two thousand.

So then you have five hundred people are going to cash. Right, then you're gonna have one hundred of those five hundred are going to win a ten k seat to the World Championship. So you have that. Okay, so you're you're the floor of entries in the in the World Championship is well it's.

the festival, you include these one hundred qualifiers. So that's three forty right there.

I think it's three seats guaranteed. If I remember correctly. If I'm wrong, I apologize. But so that's where they're you know, ultimately getting this number of one thousand SOT pretty good floor overall. Now are they going to push towards there? And thirty five inches is what they got last year in the WT World Championship. Of course, it had that forty million dollar guarantee that they missed on by I think right around two and a half million that the WPT had to eat as it pertains to

this club WPT Gold Free roll. Just getting back to that, they have a mystery bounty format as well, where I believe it's at two hundred and ninety seven players remaining. That's when like the mystery bounty format kicks in. There's two forms of this mystery bounty. Okay, there's two hundred and eighty eight times the mystery bounties ranging from five hundred dollars to one thousand dollars. Then there are eight mystery bounties for the final table reserved for the final table.

But one of those eight, sir, is zero dollars.

and compete in this five million dollar free rold. There are going to be other ways they've mentioned, like you know, some social media giveaways and whatnot, which they've they've done in the past as it relates to the WPT World Championship. So if if you fancy yourself, you know, wanting to get into this five million dollar free role that they're having and in I guess celebration of the new project that is Club WPT Gold, then then head on over to clubwpt gold dot com and just sign up part

of the mystery bounties. They're going to have two one hundred thousand dollars bounties as top prizes. Everyone at the final table gets a minimum of twenty thousand dollars, which I already mentioned, and then there's their own pool of mystery bounties for there, uh, you know, with the with a two or three dollars mystery bounding up for grabs. So I mean you could you could win the tournament, right and then also get some of these mystery boundies

and win more than a million dollars. You know, you could come in second place, get the biggest mystery bounty and then you you know, you have four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Is that how I understand it? So again, all of this is in celebration for the launch of Club WPT Gold that is coming in what they've listed as early twenty twenty five. I believe the exact line is the site is expected to launch in early twenty

twenty five. I do find it interesting. So I've had it's been again eight nine ten days or however since this has been announced, and I've I've had some a pretty big tug of war in my head on how I feel about all of this. So on one hand, I think the the venture into the sweepstakes poker model

is good, but I have some questions. I mean, in my opinion, the WPT has always been notoriously conservative, So I'm wondering, like, what has finally been the motivation to get in right Is it simply seeing the success of somebody like a global poker and they said, you know what, we have a big enough brand, let's get into this.

I think, you know, it's been no secret. You can just you know, there's been a lot of talk about Global Poker, Chumbu Casino all owned by you know, VGW, and and how much money that they've been pulling in in revenue every single year. A lot of that stuff has been out there more recently in the news. So is that kind of like one of the things where WPT is looking at it and saying like, we need to try and get in there and get a piece

of this pie. The other side of me says, you know, are they too late to the party, because there's been some pushback in the sweepstakes gambling world. You know, for example, Michigan has said, you guys can't operate here anymore, you know, stuff like that. You know, So is is there going

to be some pushback? Is there going to be some lobbying behind closed doors from real money gaming operators who are required to like you know, jump through hoops to get legalized in certain states and pay all these license fees, these taxes and et cetera. Right, are they gonna then lobby behind closed doors being like, hey, knock knock, government, what are you doing letting these people get in here

and operate basically? And I don't know forty five plus states or whatever it is, right, So like there's stuff like that. So I where we sit right now, We obviously don't have an answer to that. But what I will say is that this could be the moment in time where in five, ten, fifteen years, whatever it is, where we say we should have known and it's it's

there are two sides that we should have known. It's one we should have known that sweepstakes casinos, sweepstakes poker were completely safe, just knowing how concern servative WPT has been in the past, and they finally got in, so they must feel it's worthwhile to get into this, and

it's it's safe enough to get into this. You know, there's not going to be like some giant regulatory shutdown like that's that's one side of things where we've been like, yeah, we should have known, and we should have like other companies should have been more willing to get into this model because WBT got into it. The other side of things is that, you know, are they too late to

the party? And like you're gonna be able to tell from that, you know, so should we have known at the time that they're too late to the party, just given the fact that there's been some increased talk of pushback. So then if this like all comes crumbling down in the upcoming years, you know, is it going to be like, yeah, we should have known that they were too late to the party. So you can kind of go either way.

And that's like just something that you know, we're putting out there that we can possibly revisit in the future. So I just find that that's an interesting thing to to kind of think about. You know. Again, I've I've gone kind of back and forth in my mind because I think getting into this sort of model for the WPT is a good thing. I mean, if you're gonna try it, you have to try it now. You can't

wait any longer. Yeah. I like the fact that they're putting they're putting an absolute minimum five million dollars in marketing behind this project, which is this free role. Now.

Is it gonna work? We don't know yet, but they are betting with their wallets, okay, And obviously that five million dollars in marketing is going to be more because you know, you're gonna have to spend some money to actually market the thing, like you know, so it's probably like seven and a half million, I have no idea, right, you also have to build the platform and whatever, and then when it does launch in what they they are listing as early twenty twenty five, I'm assuming there's gonna

be some more marketing push there, right, So, I mean, I don't think it's out of the question to say they're spending seven and a half to ten minsion dollars to try and get this thing off the ground and

up and running. So I think that coming out with such a big promotion like this club WPT five million dollar free roll can help cut down the gap that you have between other operators in this space, you know, because if you just can't try and kind of come in cold, you know, you're you're you're definitely gonna have to play catch up here. You can maybe accelerate that ketchup a little bit, you're still going to be behind

other operators, yes, but we'll see. And then I think a lot of it's just going to come down to what does the platform itself look like, Because if it's a good quality platform, I think a lot of people will flock there. Naturally, WPT has a good brand, the globe, the WPT Global platform is very good. The Club WPT platform,

the regular one is not good. So so like if they're basically just going to take like you know, the development of the the global platform, kind of use that and then a here, I think that's great, you know, especially if you can do things like play it on mobile, you know, adequately, multi table, et cetera. Secondary to that, where I think that you can really help, you know, close the gap between somebody like them in a global poker for example, is if they're going to use live

event qualification, that's huge. If they can use the Club WPT Gold platform to qualify people for their live poker tournaments. Because the World Poker too has such a big brand, then that's a really big boost to them as well. You know, if you can win into you know, Seminal Hard Rock or whatever it may be, went into the World Championship, et cetera. Now they do stuff on Club ept on the regular site. But it's like, you know,

one seed a month. It's it's you know, much much harder because of the model and the way that it shakes out here. You know, it's again it's it's not real money online gaming by definition. It's just more closely aligned so you can do you know, kind of satellite qualifiers in more of a general sense that people understand out there. So I'm curious to see how that all plays out. So on one side of me says, okay, this is a very cool promotion. This is a good

way to announce it. You know, they're going to get again, approximately two thousand people that are into this event, five hundred of them are going to make the money. One person's gonna win a million dollars, a bunch of other people are gonna win a lot of money. On a hundred people are going to then go on to have an experience of playing in the ten K World Championship.

So there's a lot to be had here from a player experience aspect, coupled with the fact that one thing we know about the World Poker Tour is they bank on player experience. That is like their core, their foundation. So I would imagine I would expect nothing less of the WPT that they're going to roll out the red carpet for these two thousand people and essentially make them ambassadors for the Club WPT gold product, right, because if you win in you come out to Las Vegas, you

have an amazing time. You know, win money or don't win money. You know, if if that experience is great, you're gonna just go back and tell people how great the WPT brand is and why they should play on Club WPT goal. So, like, you know, that's on the back end now. I do also have questions of the WPT World Championship, Like so, like the purest in me says, doing this without a guarantee seems incredibly silly. I mean, like, so I don't know how I feel about it. I mean,

how do you feel. I've been talking forever, so just to talk say something.

first year twenty two? Possibly?

is a positive sign for that platform. In this industry, we talk about Global poker, there's a couple of new ones that just came out, plus now this one. Maybe you know, things are going to be on the up for the sweepstakes model. So I think it's always good to have competition. Competition is healthy. Global focer probably doesn't like it, but I think that will be fine. You're gonna get who knows, thousands of players with accounts in

the system ready to play. I'm sure. I mean, I can't remember if you touched on it, but I'm sure there's something some t's and c's in the prize pool for this five million dollar freeyear old where some of the prize pool is allocated to sweep coins.

don't think you could. I don't think you could build in some sort of mechanism where let's say you have somebody finished in first place for a million dollars and it's in the t's and c's to award that as sweeps coins on the platform, and then you're essentially holding that million for months, right Like, I don't think that that's going to provide the good pr look that you're trying to get out of this. So from what I can tell, this is going to just be all cash.

I mean, we can obviously ask the people over there how that's going to work out or if there's any thought to that, but but yeah.

roll is right up my alley. You know, maybe it's a way I can get into more events, getting to potentially the main and I think it's you.

it depends. It's it's not that I'm not out. I'm not saying, but I'm more of a wait and see because it makes sense because I would when I'm when I'm somebody who takes a leap to playing a ten k event, I want to be able to feel comfortable playing it. I want to have value, right, you know, if there's going to be eleven, fifteen hundred or whatever

it is, Jeremy Ostmas is in the field. Okay, I'm not not playing like you know, like but ws a P main event, you just you know that it's just gonna be a field full of shot takers, recreationals, et cetera, like tons of soft spots, so you can feel comfortable there. Like obviously you're gonna run into very good players at times, yes, but the majority of players are not ten K buying level players. The WBT, I think, is a more difficult ten K than the WSP main event in terms of

player quality. So does the lack of a guarantee make it even harder? Right? I mean I don't know. The other thing, well okay, but the other side of that argument is that all the good players are going to be in the Mahamas playing twenty five k's and ten k's and fifty like you know what I mean, Like all the quo unquote Jeremy Alsi's of the world are going to the Bahamas. So it's like I'm on that well,

I mean, that's that's just my thinking. So again, it's not that I'm out, I'm playing it, but it's one of those things where I'll take more of a wait and see approach and I'll say, Okay, does this do I think that this is going to be a good field? Then yeah, I'll dive in there like I'll I'll probably

play some saddle. It's again, they have a ton of satellites on offer for this sort of thing, for this thing, so I'll probably fire into there versus you know, in years past, I'd be like, I'm not going to bother

the satellite. I'm just gonna I'm just going to sell the action in play, right, you know, I know there's gonna be enough people coming out of the woodwork because of where they put it with the guarantee, I will say that I think, you know, we had talked about it many times, but going from fifteen to forty was ridiculous.

I mean it's that's like part of me says that I wonder if that was there a plan, meaning you went from fifteen to forty, and the marketing push behind the forty was biggest guarantee in poker history, which very much woke up the bear or the bears that are gg poker in doubyssip because then they came back with fifty million and said, no, biggest guarantee in poker. Okay, So, like, did you not think that you were gonna, you know, wake up that giant from sleeping? Like I like, do

you know what I mean? Like like, were you not prepared to go head to head like that? That's like I don't think I was not prepared. I think they maybe they're still SunShot, Like, but was there anyone in the room that said, guys, fifteen to forty is a stretch? What happens if we miss it? What's the plan? Like?

Because when you go from then forty to zero, that tells me you didn't have a plan, of course, because if you were to go from forty back to like let's say twenty or twenty five, which is still an increase on the first year, Like that's like the you know, worst case scenario, we miss by a number we're not comfortable with, we're gonna scalop back. This is what we're going to scale it back to. You know, So I feel like there wasn't a plan, right, doesn't feel now?

Kind of along those same lines, I still feel like they're poking the bear a little bit here because.

to fifty million. Like so it's like, are you now kind of like poking that bear again? So yeah, that's that's like, you know, it's kind of like okay, so then what happens again? Like I I'm still like wrestling in my mind, if if how this is gonna all shake out? I mean, I I don't know, and like you know, I can make arguments for both sides, and I feel like I can make kind of strong arguments for both sides. I do feel like there wasn't a

backup plan if you missed the forty million. I think that's kind of it.

One thing that kind of leads me in that direction is just the way this gold coins the WD goal kind of came out, news came out, we all signed up, and then the days after that we started seeing promotions from their ambassadors, from other content creators use my code, you know, Rampage to be entered into this and this, and I obviously we didn't put a promo code in, so we've missed these drawings like this should have been an all encompassing marketing plan project release, so that I

could choose, Okay, I would like to be part of Rampage's promotion or I'd like to be part of Joey Ingram's promotion.

Ambassadors or whatever. I think there's one like general one on the WPT site in the everything you need to Know article, et cetera, then you can possibly get entered into additional drawings like we've missed that, you know, we've missed that chance, which silly and like a so I think that that is.

but only twenty people signed up for here. Clearly you're not an ambassador worth anything, right, So like like that's how you can track things on the back end, like who which which of your marketing channels have reach.

I don't care. You know, I don't expect to be picked. So no big deal, not that big of a deal. So yeah, I just I just wrote a bunch of

other stuff down again. You know, I just thought I thought it was interesting that, you know, they're still kind of coming with that you know, biggest in poker history messaging, only now applying it to the free roll, which you know, if we know how this went the first time around, it feels like next year we're going to get some sort of massive free role coming out of out of the WSFP or GG Poker or whatever they do a paradise in December, right, I mean that kind of seems

like that would that would track. I have a concern and this is like the the fan in me. So I talked about how like from the industry side of things, how we're thinking about things. I talked about me specifically, somebody who has played the WPT World Championship the first two years that it's been at the win or these last two years that it's been in the win. But now I'm kind of much more on the fence. We'll see how it goes. I'm probably leaning like sixty forty sixty.

I'll be in, you know, just knowing all the qualifiers and whatnot that they have, but you know, there's still there's a bigger chance than before that I would miss this sort of thing before. It was like when they announced fifteen million, right, it was like, oh my gosh, like I have to do whatever takes to get in this. Then they announced forty million, and I was like, okay, like I might sell one of my kids to get into this thing. Right now, It's like, okay, I can back.

Not a big deal. You know, maybe I fire you know, eight bullets into the prime instead. Right. So so yeah, now we saw the WPT World Championship go from being this is me speaking like the fan and me. We saw the WPT World World Championship like the old one, right, the twenty five k you know, that was one of the biggest things in poker, and then it like kind of just slowly like went away. And then they brought in the WPT Tournament of champions Right then that kind

of slowly goes away. Then they bring in this WPT World Championship at the WINN and it comes in like just gangbusters, fifteen million first year, forty million next year, like everyone's raving about it.

this free roll. So like, is this WPT World Championship just gonna like fall off a cliff?

forty entries. So like, I just think that's the I think that the quote unquote WPT World Championship should be the biggest thing at the win. Like, if you're WPT, you should want it to be the biggest ten K at the win. So the floor is whatever those numbers are. So I'll say seventeen hundred just to like round up a little bit. So that's like my if it's like if they come in and it's twelve hundred, which I don't really think is possible because they have the one thousand,

eleven hundred satellity, is that what they're saying? So, you know, but maybe there's a world that it happens.

their that's what they're shooting for. W we know from WPT, they like they always like to be like, we want this many entrance. They always have some goal in numbers when it comes to all their main tour stops. I think their goal will be twenty nine to sixty one, and then I think the next one would be maybe a little bit more where you are like seventeen hundred

to two thousand. Just they want to have a decent enough prize pool where it's like ends up being you know, maybe it is fifteen million or something where it doesn't look so bad, because bad would be a twelve hundred, et cetera. And the only way that really happens is if you know, if Adam's really promising eleven one thousand satellite qualifiers, half of them just take cash or tornament dollars or whatever they have an option of it, so

it's unlikely to happen. But I don't know exactly if that thousand is true or if they have a you know, another option where they can just accept money or cash or something.

you're at three forty. Okay, I would say just based on a bunch of other stuff. You know, people winning in VIA, they win a prime, they win WPT, et cetera. You know you're probably pushing four hundred, three seventy five, four hundred like you're getting there right, So okay, like where are these other six hundred coming from? I'm assuming WPT Global. I guess you know you're going to have

some obviously some some regular Club WPT qualifiers. Yes, So I just think that, you know, if you do have an idea of like a number that you benchmark as success or that you view as respectable, like we don't want to go below this, et cetera, then start putting the word out about that sort of stuff like, Okay, you know fifty people have won from club WPT, like, you know, sort of stuff. Again, very similar to what

Poker Stars did with that PSPC. Like I thought that marketing was incredible, right, So I do find it it interesting that the number is said to be a thousand qualifiers, so we'll see where it comes from. I also think that, listen, this is going to be a test of the player first ideology that the WPT preaches and holds to its core.

And what I mean by that is it's a test for the community, and I'm curious to see if the community passes this test, because all the community does when the WPT puts on this cruise ship thing that probably lost them a crap ton of money, they do this incredible stuff over at the wind in December. They're willing to go up to forty million and go head to head with the WSP when everyone's like, what are you doing?

That's crazy to go from fifteen to forty, Like you're doing all this sort of stuff, right, they're constantly player first, player first, player first, right, they very much say it, but they also walk the walk, right, just talking the talk, they do walk the walk when it comes to that.

So did they buy goodwill with the players? Will the players still show up without a big guarantee on this event or will the players be like, you know what, we'll play the prime whatever, but we're not going to splurge for the ten k. Or if you were going to splurge for the ten k in years past, you know, if it has a forty million dollar price tag, maybe you're firing three four bullets versus this year you're like,

you know what, I'll take one shot, you know. Or are those players saying like, you know what, why should I try and reach for a ten K when I can just reach for a twenty five K and go play a fifty million dollar guarantee?

you know, basically we're poker players. We go where the ev is so kind of in my sort of thinking like if I don't think this event is valuable, am I gonna bother to try and kind of extend myself, extend my bank roll? Or can I just fire somewhere else?

it's a guarantee. I think that there's a steepid drop off in re entries than there is the actual uniques.

how I always view WPT five diamond. I would never play that just because it just always seemed like an unattainable goal to compete in that field when you have these players who are the best of the best with multiple bullets and there's no like guarantee supporting or or you know, driving I guess more recreational or weaker players into the field, possibly creating the ev and the fact of a big overlay, like you know, So there's that aspect, right, now,

WPT five Diamond always drew very well. You know, it got banger numbers, right, you know, seven eight hundred, nine hundred and well over one thousand players in the field, huge prizes, but you know, you're battling with the Alex Faxon's of the world, who are firing multiple bullets in a very good structured event, like without that guarantee that is driving the other elements that you need to create value or are you gonna chase So like that's that's how

I kind of look at it now. I don't think it's as unplayable, I guess as I would view WPT five Diamond, you know, but it's more closer to that than it is now to like the WSP main event, right. So that's just how I kind of think about it. So and I'm curious to see if if other players feel that way, or if people make the trip out, or you know, whatever it may be. I'm curious. I also think that just kind of wrapping up this talk about the guarantee and then we're going to hit on

some of the schedule stuff. I think you just set the bar when you go to forty, which is again our argument we said you do this, it's hard to go back. Like, and if you go back, I mean, this is like the worst case going back, or maybe this is better than twenty I have none.

We're gonna take it on the chin. You got questions fire on my way, right, So why couldn't you do that same sort of thing and just be like, listen, we swung for the fences last year. We have to scale back. We obviously recognize the landscape in this specific time period going up against our biggest competitor. So you know, we're gonna do twenty five or we're gonna do thirty, and we would love to have you still. Plus there's this five million dollar free roll. Plus we're doing the

Prime again. That got ten thousand entries last you know what I mean. So it's like, I think that could have been the Cell if you were worried about it. So that's just where I'm at with things there. Let's get into the schedule, because they also dropped the entire schedule. It is available over on WPT dot com. Also, did you know that I think all the main tour events are now called championship events like WPT Australia Championship, WPTX Championship,

everything is championship. I thought it was the main tour and then that just wasn't named. Now it's championship anyway, So the schedule dropped. I have some highlights. So first thing that sticks out to me. The big opener last year was a six hundred dollars buy in one million dollar guarantee. This year it is an eight hundred dollars buy in and it remains a one million dollar guarantee. My thoughts are that it's interesting to see the buy

in increase but not the guarantee. I think they certainly could have gone to two million or two and a half million, And I know our buddy Matt Savage will fight me on this, but yeah, I mean couple things. First year that they did this, it was six hundred five hundred k guarantee, right, they got two nine hundred and ninety nine entries for a one point five five to nine million dollar prize school, so more than three x the guarantee. Last year they go six hundred one million,

they get four thy nine hundred and fifty. Michael Rosito wins the thing prize school was two point five million, so two point five x on the guarantee. So I think it's very much within the realm of possibility that they could have kept it six hundred and gone to two or two and a half million, maybe even pushed

it to three. Like that's part of the general schedule here is like if you remove the forty million, maybe apply some larger guarantees to the other stuff, or some guarantee increases to the other stuff, which you and I talked about, where like if you're gonna go head to head with the WSP Paradise in December, one of the things you could do is cater to the like sub five thousand dollars buying player, like one thousand dollars player,

five hundred dollar player, et cetera. Eight hundred dollar buying also feels too close to WPT Prime, Like that's weird to me. I mean, don't they have this WPT five hundred brand. Why isn't it just the WPT five hundred opener? Yeah, and it's five hundred dollars buying and it has a

two million dollar guarantee. And the reason why I bring up two million as a number is that Seminal Hard Rock or Seminal Rock and Roll Poker Open, which is coming up very soon, is right before the WPT World Championship opens with a four hundred dollars buying two million dollar guarantee. Shouldn't the WPT World Championship Series aim to do everything bigger and better? I mean, it's your World Championship,

it is your season ending like extravaganza. I mean, shouldn't everything be bigger and better as part of this series, including this opener?

point for an opening event. So I get get it that they've made it eight hundred dollars. Ray thinks it's still going to be still going to be huge, even.

the buy in. So what you're telling people on the surface is that we only are expecting this many entries, like you know, so that that's just you know, that's what I'm Yeah, I mean my biggest I also think that eight hundred is again closer to prime. That's like a I know it's small, but like the difference between a five h play and an eight hundred player, there's still like a little bit of a game, you know.

hundred dollars. Prime is eleven hundred. Do I want to just maybe spend twenty two hundred dollars on Prime instead? The fact that it's literally back to back also hurts for some of those players unsure all that work they're going to have to, you know, the rec player out there like me, if they have a job, it's going to have to choose between one or the other. So I mean, why wouldn't you choose the five million dollars guarantee and spend three hundred dollars more per buying that?

To me, it's probably it is probably going to be a slightly better structure, you know, more starting chips, longer levels. Obviously we don't know the actual blind increases from what I'm looking at, so I think you will lose some of those borderline players, one such as myself that I only want to spend a couple thousand dollars at the win.

You know, they want to play say the seventy five Scramble satellite, whatever it is they want to play, be played two bullets in the prime, and they're going to just skip the eight hundred. So I think it's it does hurt. Six hundred or five hundred would have been better. But yeah, I think they're doing this for a reason. I just don't like it.

is just cleaner. It has that brand of WPT five. So anyway, early they have a sixteen hundred dollars mystery bounty. Last year it had a two million dollar guarantee. It was multi flight, it had three flights. This year it's a two day even with a five hundred kre guarantee,

so some scaling back there right now. This is probably the I would say that this might this might be a bigger issue for me personally than not having a guarantee on the World Championship is the fact that they did not increase the Prime Championship guarantee.

they up it to five million dollars. They get ten thousand, five hundred entries in the damn thing. Calvin Anderson wins. It's one hundred ninety six thousand dollars in the Prize Bowl. I think that So part of part of me saying that like not or this is like bigger industry to me is that I feel like this can take away from the fact that you're not having a guarantee on the WPT World Championship ten K and then also like this goes into the the idea of just catering to

like that smaller buy in player. So you know, I think you really could have pushed the envelope if you really wanted toun down an eleven hundred and fifty million dollar guarantee and just gone for it. I mean, again, I don't know the space issues, you know, but they did say last year that you know, once they actually get into the series, get into the ballroom, they're going to have more ballroom space.

back end of the schedule. Last year they had a three thousand dollars buying three million dollar guarantee and six hundred dollars buying two million dollar guarantee, both just straight Nolman HoldEm tournaments this year the three K three million dollar returns, but the sixteen hundred dollars buying one looks like it's been changed to be a sixteen hundred dollars mystery bounty event, and instead of having that two million dollar prize school, it's gonna have a million dollar guaranteed

priz schools. Those are kind of the the big picture things that I saw. There are only four events on this year's schedule by my count, that are above three thousand dollars, and last year I think they had eight, but they of course had the million dollar buy in one drop they had, you know, they had a fifty k stuff like that. So this year those events that are above three thousand dollars. Of course, the ten thousand, four hundred dollars World Championship, you do have a twenty

five K Alpha eight. You have a ten thousand, five hundred dollars high Roller, and then you have the ten thousand dollars Seniors high Roller also listed on the schedule again WPT dot com.

the holidays. I don't know, it feels iffy to do that, so I like, you know, catering to like again we said it, like do everything, like you know, have a bunch of like one ks to three ks, you know, or five hundred to three k's and then just have

that ten thousand dollars World Championship stand out. So I am a little bit surprised that they have the Alpha eight even on the schedule, But it just seems like they don't want to ever, you know, put this horse out to pasture, Like they just want to keep the Alpha a brand around no matter what, for whatever reason. As a marketing person, I will always tell you that trying to grow multiple brands is extremely difficult. So just have them be wpts, Like everything should just be the

branded WPT end of story. You'll also see on the schedules that they have a ton of satellites listed. They have twenty five seat guarantees. They believe they're bringing back the seventy five set guarantee. I saw that on there last year they had based on the guaranteed seats that I counted up two hundred and eighty seats were given away this year to forty. I think that's very good, you know, to have that number. So you know, we talked about it. You're gonna have that to forty at least,

if not more. I think I don't even remember what the seventy five set guarantee got last year, but I.

ramping up announcements of who's gonna be there. So so they're just kind of making that marketing push. I know they had the first online flight for the twenty five K fifty million dog Guarantee that Daniel Legrownie was streaming and fired three bulletin, which I feel like he could be in that thing for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars by the end of it. I mean, who knows. So so we'll see how that goes. Obviously we're gonna

we're gonna monitor everything there. But but yeah, that's that's how things are shaken out. One last question before we move on to talking about WPT Australia and what happened down there. Do you think that there's a chance that they announce a guarantee for the World Championship that they just they like, you know, behind closed doors, are like, listen, we we need it. Yeah, let's go, even if it's

fifteen twenty. I think there's a chance. Yeah, the longer we wait, the you know, might be a little too light. People planning Bahamas trips, so planning ept progue instead. So if they do have some thoughts on that, they better get that out a sent yeah and listen again. Maybe maybe they don't need a guarantee and maybe this thing just still does freaking numbers. I mean, who knows what

the poker role? Who really knows? All right, So moving on to WPT Australia, James ops, your boy, my boy wins WPT Australia three hundred and ninety six entries, Ops top them all to win five hundred and eighty five thousand Australian dollars. How much is that in US? Without looking? Without looking, you're supposed to know that two hundred and fifty dollars to How much do you really think it is?

down there. Would love to possibly in the future. I have no idea when see the return of Ozzie Millions, but I don't know if that's ever going to happen, you know, so who knows. But good on James Opst. You know he took that a couple of years away to try and become a professional tennis player or whatever the heck.

twenty one thousand dollars. I mean, what in the f and world there were two So kind of similar to the WSP main event from Las Vegas, where you had Jonathan Tomaia winning, but all the talk afterwards was like laptop gate. Here you had Ditrich winning, but all the talk out of it. These two insane bad beats that happened at the final table. The first one was during four handed play, when you have Genny Akimov cracked Isaac

Barron's kings with six or four off. Achamov had the big Chipley at the time, just ripped in with six to four off. Baron actually flopped top set with his kings, but Okamov was able to run down a straight that busted out Baron in fourth place.

the six four following six four. So six four if you're if you're playing in the GG poker streets, six floor is just you know, it breaks everything and you can you can just win every hand with it.

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to be hard with Stormax. Earning crypto is easy. The WSP online main event that took place on gg Poker was part of a series that had thirty three gold bracelet events, so we are up to who knows how many racelet events have been given out this year. Just some highlights from the series. Not going to go through every single winner, but even number two was a three hundred dollars Gladiators. It had eleven thousand, six hundred and thirty entries. Rit Varz s Collins won it for four

hundred and nine thousand dollars. Bryn Kenny got his second gold brace, so that when he won a ven number three the twenty one hundred dollars bounty. There was a lot of bounties on here, and if you look at WSP dot com for several of the events, first and second place are the same because they don't include the obviously the bounty money. So I just think that's kind of interesting for historical purposes. Ven number seven was a two hundred and fifty dollars buying mystery millions that had

fifty two thousand, four hundred and fifty two entries. God Damn Vlad Darier won it for six hundred and twenty three thousand dollars. There was a million dollar top bounty in this thing. I don't know who won it, but it happened Dennis Wallaz Number seventeen, the fifteen hundred dollars Millionaire Maker for one million, two hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars. This had four thousand, nine hundred and thirty four entries. There was a four hundred dollars colossus on

the schedule. It drew thirteen thousand, one hundred and forty seven entries. Igor Zemstaff won it for six hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Garofolo Francesco won the twenty five k GG Millions Super high Roller for one point one million. It had two hundred and thirty entries. Bryn Kenny, You're sorry.

Chris Brewer finished in a second place where eight round and sixty five K Brin Kenny got third for six hundred and sixty seven K. Patrick Leonard fourth, Dimitar Dante fifth, Adrian Matteo sixth, Roman Hrabec seventh, and Ole Chemion took eighth place. Simon Eric Matson won event number thirty the twenty one hundred dollars six Max Bounty had twelve hundred

and thirty entries, his second gold bracelet. He won the gg Poker WSOP Online main event in twenty twenty two for Jeshi two point eight million dollars and then a

bit of redemption for Ruy Ferrara. After that that crazy bust out in the main event in third place again when his ace king was beaten by Achamov's six ' four Despite for a flopping top two pair, Frera goes on to win the five K Polo, which was event number thirty one for two hundred and forty five K Ilis Parsonen got second four one hundred and eighty two thousand dollars, continuing to prove just how good he is at PLO is the fin He also got fourth in the ten K PLO for one hundred and twenty nine

thousand dollars, and then Sergio Ado topped off the series event number thirty three, the ten thousand three dollars GGI Millions high Roller one four hundred and thirty three entries. Aido won one point nine three five million dollars his second bracelet. He won the fifty K during the summer in Las Vegas. So that is WSP online. So I have a little bit of a gripe here, a little bit of a complaint, okay, And I don't really know event No, I don't really know who to direct it towards.

I guess I would direct it towards some media companies. I guess I would direct it towards the operators. It feels next to impossible to find out the results of all this sort of stuff. W coop just wrapped up like it's just so hard, it's so like it's complicated. I was I had a really good friend of mine was deep in this ws AP Online Main Event. I think he took eleventh place. Couldn't sweat it? Like I can't. I can down. Are you trying to start live reporting anything?

Like I can I can't down. I can download the client here, but when I when I go in, I need to create an account to like actually see the players and stuff and like open a table, and I can't create an account, So like why like why isn't there Like this is the w AP Main Event online, there's more than four million dollars out topic. Why aren't we just like bringing out Jeff Gross doing multiple days of live streaming.

at all times to spring it back. I mean it has changed to poker steak dot com, but like it's just it's hard, like even now, like you go on you go on WSP dot com, like they're running they're running bracelet events right now here in the US, Like I have no idea who won the events. There have been three or four of them so far, Like I want to know, I want to know what's happening multiple positives. They just had a circuit series on WSP dot com.

I mean, I don't even know when that happened last month, like a long time ago. They only have results for the first seven events, like I mean results.

Stars blog but didn't find anything. And sometimes I can't even go to the Poker Star's website because it tells me it's not in my area. And I'm like, it's just a website, Like what are we doing here? And like it just like why why aren't I Like I can say the WPT is not doing the right thing, not having a guarantee. I have non stop seeing this club WPT goal free role. It is in my face.

I have to like shut my computer to not see it. Yeah, Like that is what I would expect from this sort of stuff, right, Like it's it's the super Bowl, it's the World Series in baseball, it's whatever it is, and it's in your face, in your face, in your face. Why isn't this in my face? Right? Like I want to follow this stuff and I want to know about it. And I want to see who won and who had big results and all this sort of stuff, but I

can never I can never find it. And it's just, you know, I feel like pocketfives dot com was like the one place that they obviously prioritized all the online stuff, like you know, sometimes they would, you know, in the old days, they would go out to the World Series of Poker and only cover the online guys and all their leaderboards and all this sort of stuff. And I

don't know, I missed that. But I also wish that there was just more coverage in general about the online stuff, you know, Like I just I feel like it's it's lacking, and it's it's hard because I want, I want to follow this stuff. I do, like I want to know what happened, who won, like you know. So yeah, anyway, that's my little, my little complaint there.

play I think, on Sundays. But it's really interesting because they have all these bracelet events, but they're they're not every day, okay, so like they take some days off, like they took them Monday off, which is kind of acceptable, but you know, because Monday is just not a big day and all in poker, and then they have one on Tuesday. I don't think they had one on Wednesday whatever. But then they also have these online championships which they

announced on social media. Yet you can't like find the schedule anywhere other than the client. So I think that that's weird. Even Daniel mcgrondniy like commented.

Jeff Platt one one wow. He won the I believe was the five hundred dollars mystery bounty that they had for fourteen k or something like that. So shout out, Jeff flat what do.

mean there's a crap ton of events. I mean it's like every day, there's like every day, I think there's a warm up event like in the like morning or early afternoon, which is like a very small buy in, and then I actually like what they've done here is that they do every day they have a bronze, silver, and gold level, so like bronze is obviously the lowest buying Like yeah, so I think that that's that's pretty cool.

So like you know, like like on the day that when Jeff won the Mystery Bounty, you know, they had a thirty three, a one hundred, and a five hundred, which I think that that's a good way to do stuff. So so yeah, so they have that. I mean, it's it's actually funny. So they announced the twenty twenty four Doubasip online, world's largest online poker festival. Okay, that takes place September twenty ninth through November twelfth. It is thirty

three bracelet events. I mean, it's a Ton. I mean this is also if you pair this with if you're coming out for NPG Las Vegas, there's a lot of bracelet events happening, so you can play online too, so it's kind of a good time to be in Las Vegas for that. But then also they have these online championships that are running from September twenty ninth through October

twenty seventh. Then they have aubas AP Online Super Circuit that is running October fifth through twenty second, so all three these same things are happening at the same time. So so yeah, it's a lot of stuff happening. A lot of stuff happening. The upgrade to the WSP platform is god, it's such a blessing.

They said that they anticipate. Oh I saw. I went to the site and I saw a banner for betmjam Nevada like they had they had doubsip dot com Nevada Review, but then right next to it they had betemgam Nevada Review. And I was like, that's weird. Benem Jam's not in Nevada. And I clicked it and it was like, we anticipated to launch this year.

or a month or something. I'm pretty sure they did south Point and there was like three people that played. By the way, you brought up the four and allar tournament at South Point, which I think is now gone. I think what I'm pretty sure that it lasted one time because I didn't play a bit, I know, but I'm saying they had that. I think the four and doll price point is too high. I think it needs to be three hundred. Do they have a two in dollar tournament?

now Gamble in the Future are running. We have next month the Texas PLO Roundup, which I know Tim is freaking pumped for. I didn't know the guy cared.

bullish on it as always. It's plo. It's gonna get people to come from all around the country and we'll be good.