2024 WSOP!

If you have a Bravo account and register online, you only have to go have your ID (and Caesars Rewards card) verified, which is in a separate location, usually with no line (or maybe one or two people in front of your). If you're all set up to use the online registration, you could wait until you get there, check out the registration line, and if it's longer than you want to stand in, use your phone to register and walk next door to the FastTrac verification desk. After they verify your ID they'll print out your seat assignment slips for you. The major downside being you'll pay a fee for using a credit card on Bravo. No fee if you pay cash at registration.

Are the big field tournaments 10-handed again this year or did they reduce them to 9?

Gladiators was 10-handed. MM has been 9. I would expect some if not all of the low buy-in events next week to be 10-handed.

MS, Seniors were 9 as well.

I seem to recall reading somewhere how to register so you can update your chip stack periodically and have it reported to WSOP for chip stack updates.

I don’t remember how to do that, though. Does anyone have a link or can you inform me how to do that, please?

My Stack app. If you have a poker news login/account, it should be the same login method. You can update your live chip counts from that app as your heart desires during the tournament(s).

Or - if you play like me and never got it over starting stack, you can pretend you forgot your login info. [emoji15]

Lol, thanks!

I'm flying in to play the WSOP Seniors $5K high roller, but I just realized the Wynn has the $3,500 4 million guarantee also on the 26th-28th. Both tournaments have very similar structures. There doesn't seem to be a guarantee on the Seniors. Any suggestions on which one to play and why?

One will have a lot of hyper aggressive 25-38 year old euros. The other will have rich American middle aged whales.

WSOP $5k Seniors will be a much softer field and pays 15% vs 12.5% so you are more likely to cash and mincash pays double. See payouts here... https://www.wsop.com/2024/payoutcalculat...

Good points! I decided I will go ahead and play in the Seniors.

How have the tourneys so far compared to previous years in terms of field sizes?

Some have been about 10% smaller. But some have been the same amount larger. I suspect this week’s low buy-in events will break records.

Also remember many events have an extra starting flight so it may be more difficult to compare.

Deepstack today had 5100 entrants. Good turnout

2-7 SD got 100 fewer people than last year, so ~20% smaller field. Kind of surprising.

After 65 events, 135k entries vs 139k last year or an overall decline of a modest -2.85%.

Overall I got the impression numbers would be down by about 10% this year, so that figure is better. However, the addition of all the extra starting flights sort of counteracts that. If the final numbers end up being close to the same as last year, I think it would still represent evidence that the poker economy is suffering from the same malaise as the economy at large.

This correlates with my experience last week (was there for 10 days, left this Monday).

It was crowded, especially during event breaks, but it felt slightly less so than last year. I am a fast walker and could actually maneuver and get through the crowd this time. Last year, I either had to be 'that guy' that shoves past people or deal with the frustration of baby steps in the cattle call.

This was also the first year I've played any of the daily deepstacks. They were fun, and decent structure for the price points. I don't like the choke points of the double escalators to get to/from Provence room, but it's a minor annoyance.

It feels like both the wsop and the players have settled in and are more comfortable with the layout of the properties. Already looking forward to next year!

Feel the same way. Like folks are now accustomed to the layout of the multi-rooms and multi-locations and things are becoming more streamlined.

I thought I would hate the three flights for the big weekend events, but a consequence of more flights has actually been fewer players per flight. Last year's Millionaire Maker 1C had 5,845 entries compared to 4,416 for this year. I think this event has been forced to go to 10-handed in the past, whereas I don't think that happened in any of the flights this year. Spreading out the single-bullet warriors across three days instead of two actually makes the individual flights more manageable.

The downside is that the infinite bankroll pros have two more bullets they can fire, which is not ideal for the rest of the field.

It also just makes for a longer tournament, assuming there are more entries. And it means having to play on Monday after a minimum cash.

From what I’ve seen, there have been plenty of available tables, now that the DDS has been moved. If they have enough dealers, I think they can accommodate a larger crowd on the last day, compared to previous years.

If they must keep the extra starting flight, they should make it Th/Fr/Sa.

I played the Monster for the first time this year and was thrilled to have 9-handed tables, whatever the explanation.

For the Monster at least, players only had one more bullet they could fire, as there were previously two flights for the event and you could only enter once per flight. I had budgeted two bullets for this one before they announced that there would be a third flight, and elected to fire A and B, figuring if I didn't make day 2, I'd then have a couple consecutive days free. Fortunately I made it through Flight A and bagged chips. It was a little odd having two days off before Day 2, but with so many options for 1-day tournaments, I didn't mind.

I don't think anyone should be surprised that the extra flight for these $1,500 events didn't result in too large an increase in field size. Not only were the extra entries only going to come from players who were ready to fire three bullets, but a decent number of those players were going to make it through on their first two bullets anyway.

Of course the WSOP knows how many triple-bullet entrants there were, and they'll look at all the numbers to determine whether they came out ahead or not. It'll be interesting to see if this is the new norm or whether they scale some of those events back to two flights.

Monday day 2 and the event finishing on thursday likely doesnt help either. Pretty unfriendly to weekend warriors

Good post on X from player/YouTuber named Derek Kwan (@Kwansfull), about wsop attendance. MM and MS specific with some additional analysis on other events in the same thread later.

He was responding to a post by wsop in X about records being broken in ‘24.