It looks like things will be truly back to normal for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2023.
Traditionally, the WSOP announces dates for each year’s series in the final weeks of the preceding year. Today, we got that announcement.
Caesars, which owns the series, has confirmed that the 54th annual WSOP will take place from May 30 to July 18, 2023. That, too, is very much the standard, notwithstanding the pandemic disruptions of 2020 and 2021.
Save for those years, the series has taken place over roughly that same range of dates since it moved into the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino in 2005. Over time, it has started slightly earlier and ended slightly later to accommodate an increasing number of events.
The 2022 series was the first since 2005 not to take place at the Rio. The series’ new home is the Horseshoe (formerly Bally’s) and Paris casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. It seems that this move hasn’t changed the scheduling at all.
It also hasn’t hurt series attendance. Although the 2022 Main Event came up just shy of setting an all-time attendance record, the series was overall a grand success.
Caesars reports that total prize money for the 2022 series set a record, at $347.9 million, from 197,626 entrants.
WSOP Senior VP and Executive Director Ty Stuart said:
The historic debut of the WSOP on the Las Vegas Strip delivered in a big way, and we’re excited to announce our Summer 2023 dates in time for the holidays. Poker players and fans can now officially mark their calendars and maybe even book their loved ones or themselves a trip to the WSOP as a holiday gift. We’re glad to be back at
Paris Las Vegas and the future Horseshoe Las Vegas for another exciting chapter in the tournament’s history as these two resorts raised the bar in hosting last year’s event.
What Does the 2023 WSOP Have in Store?
The full WSOP schedule isn’t yet available. Caesars says it will unveil it in 2023, and if it continues to follow the same timeline as previous years, we can probably expect it to come in February.
What we know for now are the dates for a few marquee events.
The series will open with Mystery Millions, a bounty event with randomized prizes for knocking players out on Day 2. This “mystery bounty” format has been steadily growing in popularity in the world of live poker and debuted at the WSOP last summer.
This $1000 buy-in event, starting May 31, guarantees $1 million to the winner. The bounties range in value between $10,000 up to another $1 million prize.
The Main Event will have starting flights on July 3-6, with late registration available during Day 2 on July 7-8.
Here are the remaining events we know about so far:
- June 7: $300 Gladiators of Poker ($3 million guaranteed prize pool)
- June 16: $1,500 Monster Stack
- June 21: $1,000 Seniors Championship
- June 23: $1,500 Millionaire Maker ($1 million guaranteed top prize)
- June 29: $1,000 Ladies Championship
- June 30: $400 Colossus
- July 2: $1,000 Mini Main Event
- July 7: $777 Lucky 7s ($777,777 guaranteed top prize)
- July 11: $600 Ultra Stack
- July 14: $1,500 The Closer
No Mention of Online Bracelets
There’s one conspicuous omission from WSOP’s press release. That is any mention of online bracelet events.
The WSOP awarded its first online gold bracelet in 2015. The online component of these series has grown each year since then.
However, these online events started to get treated differently during the pandemic years. In 2020, there were no live events at all. In 2021, there was a separate online series over the summer and additional online bracelet events during the live series in the fall, though the latter were not included on the same schedule as the face-to-face events.
This year, the online and live series were back to taking place concurrently in the summer. However, the separation of the two schedules continued. That’s likely to happen again this year, so the online events will presumably get a separate announcement.
Will Michiganders Get to Play for Online Bracelets?
We may be waiting a while to hear that announcement because of the question of multi-state participation. In recent years, players in New Jersey have been able to participate in online bracelet events on WSOP.com. However, Pennsylvanians and Michiganders have been left out because those states haven’t yet joined the network.
Pennsylvania will be once again out of luck in 2023. However, it’s an open question whether Michigan will link up in time for the series. PokerStars has announced that it will become the first site to link Michigan and New Jersey in the coming weeks.
However, WSOP faces additional technical challenges because its Michigan site runs on different, more modern software than its existing three-state network. Some significant upgrades would be required to perform the integration, and the company has not provided a timeline for that to take place.
If not included in the main series, Pennsylvania and Michigan will each likely get their own smaller, state-specific bracelet series as a consolation.
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