50th WSOP is kicking off today

The world's biggest and oldest poker series' is starting today in Las Vegas.

The World Series of Poker is the longest running poker festival in the world, and certainly the most prestigious. The first ever WSOP was organized in 1969 but its format was quite different compared to today.

While today, the WSOP focuses on tournaments, the first edition was built around casino cash games [3] with legends at the tables with the likes of Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson, Sailor Roberts, Puggy Pearson or Johnny Moss. Nowadays, the series attracts tens of thousand gamblers from all around the world.

The first events, the $500 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold'em event and the $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold'em will start today. The festival will end on the 16th of July and the organizers pay a tribute to the series' 50th anniversary in form of The Big 50 event.

This event will run with a $500 buy-in and $1,000,000 saved for the winner with a $5,000,000 GTD. The players will start with a stack of 50,000 and the blind levels will be 50 minutes long. Celebrating the anniversary, the event will be rake-free. These events will be followed by another 86 tournaments, for more than $200,000,000 in total prize money.

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One of these will be the 50th Annual Bracelet Winners Only event on the 10th of July, which is only open to bracelet winners. The biggest events will certainly be the $10,000 Main Event, the $50,000 and $100,000 High Rollers, and the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, while the biggest fields are expected in the $400 Colossus and the $1,500 Millionaire Maker tournaments.

The Main Event will kick off on July 3 and runs until the 16th with a three-day finale. The event will be broadcasted by ESPN and ESPN2, while additional online live streams will be available on PokerGO [5]. In addition to the live events, nine online events will also be running, where the winners will also receive the prestigious bracelet on top of the first prize.

PokerGuruBlog will follow the action closely, so make sure to keep on eye on us for the updates!