The World Series of Poker(WSOP) takes off at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas today. Adding up to 45 days of thrilling poker action and 62 WSOP bracelets being given away in as many events and millions of dollars being given away in prize money, the WSOP is the biggest thing in poker. The best poker players and the most crazy poker fans will all hog Vegas for the next month as the first event of WSOP Event #1 Casino Employees No Limit Hold’em kicks off the festivities. Event #2 No Limit Hold’em 8 Handed with a buy in of $5,000 will also start today.
Also starting simultaneously with the WSOP will be the ESPN Fantasy Poker League. The Fantasy League adopts a point based system where each participant drafts a team comprising of eight players from the WSOP. Each team then earns points in each event based on the following:
- 1 point for finishing in the money.
- 2 points for making the Top 50 finishers
- 5 points for making the Top 20 finishers
- 10 Points for making the final Table.
In addition to this, several points are also given off for the position a player from one’s team finishes at. For example: a player who finishes 9th in an event will garner 1 extra point while a player who finishes first in an event wins 40 extra points. Each participant is allowed to drop one player and replace him through the tourney. It is an invitation only league and generally a plethora of poker players, poker commentators, poker writers etc. get the privilege to participate.
To add some more fun at the WSOP 2013, the Carnivale of Poker with its 21 events is also making a comeback at the Rio. The poker tournament which ran from 1998-2000 each year is making a comeback after 13 years and will coincide with the WSOP. It will start on June 3rd and climax on July14th. The buy-ins of its events will be lower than other WSOP events and start at $365. To make the Carnivale more interesting, Rio is offering 100,000 USD from its side to be divided amongst the top 10 finishers through the 21 events of the poker tournament. Each of the 21 event winners will get a Gold Medallion while the Championship winner gets a Medallion with diamonds.