45th WSOP Updates 2015 WSOP

Tuesday May 26,2015 :  POKER'S BIGGEST FESTIVAL STARTS THIS WEEK
 
World Series of Poker organisers are all set for a record event in Las Vegas.
 
Top poker players from all over the world are probably winging their way to Las Vegas – or have already arrived – today in preparation for this year's 45th World Series of Poker festival, which will see 68 highly competitive events played out over the next few weeks, and tens of millions of dollars in prizes won.
 
This year a new event carries the organiser's hopes for a record increase in the number of entries as the innovative Colossus takes centre stage with a possible 10,000 additional entries.
 
The buy-in for the Colossus is a reasonable $565, bearing in mind that the winner will walk away with over $600,000 from a prize pool worth at least $5 million.
 
Another crowd-puller is likely to be the cross-over live-online combination event that has been included to attract more players to WSOP.
 
The combo competition will start online at WSOP.com, and the final six survivors will be taken to the Rio to a final table competition to decide the winner.
 
Players can enter and compete online from anywhere within the state of Nevada, carefully monitored by sophisticated geo-location technology.
 
82,360 players entered WSOP events in 2014, with 10 percent winning shares of the $227.7 million in prize money.
 
WSOP spokesman Seth Palansky told the Associated Press news agency this week that the Rio Casino Resort where the poker spectacular is regularly hosted can seat around 24,800 poker players in single events if need be
 
"My biggest concern is actually having enough physical poker chips," he said.
 
The main event will as always be the centre piece of the festival, although the main prize this year is likely to be more modest, the result of a flattening of the prize structure to allow more players to cash. Nevertheless, it will still be a substantial seven or eight million dollars, depending on the number of entries.