World Series of Poker Preview

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The World Series of Poker is one of the most exciting and watched tournament in the world. Poker players are excited to see some of their favorite players in action as they try and win the most coveted prize In poker, the bracelet.

The World Series of Poker begins Tuesday, and we have your guide to the biggest poker tournament series on the planet.

The basics

This year’s World Series of Poker will last more than a month and a half, beginning Tuesday and running through July 19th. Once again, the main event will play to a final table and resume in November. There are 58 bracelet events that will take place over that time period.

This the 42nd edition of the WSOP, and it will be held at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, the series’ home since 2005.

The schedule

The WSOP officially starts Tuesday with the casino employees event; you can check out the entire schedule at the WSOP website here. The first day also includes the $25K heads-up event, which figures to have many of poker’s brightest stars getting involved from day one.

Here are some of the highlights of the schedule:

Grudge matches: On Thursday, June 2, there will be three matches involving three of the most famous final tables from main event history. The matches are Chris Moneymaker vs. Sammy Farha (2003), Johnny Chan vs. Phil Hellmuth (1989) and Chan vs. Erik Seidel (1988). The matches will be aired on ESPN on July 26.

The Poker Player’s Championship: The $50K buy-in will take place on Saturday, July 2. It’s an 8-game mix for most of the tournament, with the final table being all no-limit hold’em. Michael Mizrachi won this event last year, although it was held near the beginning of the WSOP in 2010.

The main event: The biggest tournament in live poker begins Thursday, July 7th.

You can check out the schedule page to get to chip counts and live updates from each tournament.

Watching the WSOP

If you like to watch the WSOP, you’re in luck this year.

You will be able to see the final tables of most of the events online, if you are so inclined. WSOP.com will be streaming final tables for 55 events nearly live. You can see the entire schedule of the online webcasts here. Those webcasts will not show hole cards, but instead will have a camera with an overview of the entire table, along with a camera showing the community cards. There will be no commentary. The final tables, shown on a five-minute delay, generally start at 2:30 or 3 p.m., Pacific time.

In addition to the WSOP coverage, ESPN will be showing more coverage online than ever before, including six days of WSOP main event action being shown on July 14-19. The network will offer the coverage on a half hour delay on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN3.com. There will be two featured tables on each day, and hole cards will be shown for all players who are in the hand post-flop. Commentary will be provided by ESPN.

Three other events will also be shown before the main event online — the grudge matches, the $25K heads-up event and the $50K Players Championship.

As always, you can also just show up at the Rio and watch from outside the ropes.

The players

The race for the career bracelet lead will resume once again in Vegas — Phil Hellmuth leads the way with 11, although his last one came in 2007. Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson are stuck on 10 — both last won in 2005.

Right now two of the best players on the planet have eight bracelets — Phil Ivey and Erik Seidel. Seidel has been on a huge tear of late, winning millions of dollars in recent tournaments. He’ll be a favorite to get his ninth bracelet this year.

For a look at some of the top players in the world who don’t have a bracelet, check out our story here.

The Black Friday effect

The poker world has been reeling since actions by the U.S. government in April — seizing the domains of online poker sites PokerStars, Full Tilt, Absolute Poker and UB.com, in addition to issuing indictments for their top executives and people in charge of payment processors.

What will be the effect of Black Friday on the WSOP? Live tournaments in the U.S. since the WSOP have done well, with attendance ticking upward slightly in a small number of events. Will American players flock to the WSOP to get their poker fix? Or will players stay away in the wake of Black Friday? We probably won’t know until a couple of weeks of the WSOP are in the books.

The biggest question mark will be the main event. Typically, there are a huge number of players winning their seats to the $10,000 buy-in via satellite, usually on PokerStars and Full Tilt. With those options now unavailable to Americans, many expect the main event to be considerably smaller than in recent years. How much smaller is the question.

It also remains to be seen how much advertising there will be from online poker sites. Players usually are covered with advertising for PokerStars and Full Tilt. But with PokerStars and Full Tilt out of the American market, will we see many patches, hats and shirts? And Full Tilt, in particular, is in a precarious position with the public. While PokerStars has allowed cashouts for American players, Full Tilt funds for Americans are still in limbo. It seems unlikely that Full Tilt will have much of a presence at the WSOP, if any.

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