2026 World Series of Poker May 26th - July 15th

Damn no shootout?

This repeated take of "anti-rec" has got to stop lol. You think Tommy from Toledo is taking a week(s) off work, flying to Vegas, Hotels etc. to fire 1 bullet and then oh well, cya later if 1 bullet busts lol?! It's the recs that also want to fire multi-bullets if need be!

One positive is that it seems that they grouped the smaller buy ins, 1k and under together to make people targeting those buy ins able to come out for 7-14 days and hit a lot of those.
Week 1 is really focused on the $550 Mini mystery if people like that.
(6/6-6/14) has the monster if you are taking a shot at a "bigger" event but then rest of week is $500 FO, $600 PLO/NLH, All the colossus flights and the $800 Deep stack rounding it out.
6/15-6/28 really only has the $500 salute and the 1k mystery millions, then the mini main.
7/1 - 7/13 then resumes with lots of the smaller buy ins, Deep stack $600 champ, summer celeb, ultra stacks, gladiator and summer saver.

I do like that they grouped some of the smaller buy ins during the same timeframe for people that want to fire a lot of those.

I mostly agree with you. Most players are plenty used to Multiple Day 1s in poker tournaments and some form of re-entry. The only slight downside, is that when everyone combines for day 2, as each day 1 completes there are theoretically less of the "pros" playing as with each passing flight, more pros bag. With this change, they can bag 1A, bust 2A and enter 1B, so slightly more of them in the day 1 fields, but most people won't notice a difference.

On your other point, if we are talking about the colossus I agree, tommy from toledo is probably firing multiple bullets, the milly maker/monster, not nearly as many recs firing multiple bullets.

Yes, actually. I don't have the numbers, but I'd guess that the majority of entrants in a multi-flight $1.5k only fire one bullet.

There are other things to do and other tournaments happening, so it's not like their options are fire max bullets or play nothing else.

What was wrong with the previous location for final tables?
That room was massive.
What could they do in Paris that they couldnt do in Horseshoe?

What? They removed the 3k 6max LHE? Unless they have a typo on their schedule for event 56 (close to last years event 60), they are down to just the $1500 and $10k. Last year that event got 343 entrants.

I’m guessing just a better quality area since
Paris > Horseshoe

They also said a whole new stage, which makes me think it’s structured completely different rather than just new paint/color. Should be interesting to see what they do.

Well, who can argue with logic like that.

Ironic because you are using the same logic, aka just stating your opinion like it means something.

Agreed. Yes, Tommy from Toledo may only have managed to scratch enough money together to take one shot.

Most recs have jobs, families, other responsibilities that they give their time and financial resources to. Maybe Tommy treats himself once a year to go take a small shot at the WSOP.

Honestly, that’s how the vast majority of recs are.

And TheFly, the fact that you felt to complain about “repeatedly” hearing about this should tell you that your assumptions of rec bankrolls are wrong. Maybe you’re repeatedly hearing it because it’s true.

Not really. In all the years I’ve played WSOP, the “recs” at my tables have generally been well-heeled, successful dudes in whatever their profession is. They will, and do, rebuy if it makes sense. Maybe not max-late for 10bigs like some degen “pro” would. This isn’t the same “rec” crowd as your local card club $50 nightly, guys that can barely rub two sticks together. The “rec” crowd at WSOP, in my experience, has much fatter wallets, otherwise they wouldn’t be firing $1Ks, $3Ks, $10Ks etc. Maybe the daily deepstack crowd and the gimmick bracelet buyins for $300 are a different breed, I don’t play those. The recs I’ve played with in the $1Ks++ aren’t scraping by, looking for backers and stakers like so many so-called “pros”.

Such a horrendously bad take, have you ever played WSOP?

Every year for the last decade or so, bud.

Again, hearing it over and over again should tell you something about your misguided take on the general rec population. Yes, some are well off, but the majority certainly are not.

Right. It's actually hard to find concrete info about largest WSOP event field sizes without sifting through many Hendon pages, but excluding online events this link shows:

https://w50p.com/po/WSOP%20Biggest%20Fie...

1. 2019 $500 Big 50 (28,731)
2. 2023 $300 Gladiators (28,088)
3. 2015 $565 Colossus (22,374)

In general, field sizes shrink as entry fee increases. That pattern held true last year when the $500 Colossus (16,301) had significantly more entries than the $1.5k Monster Stack (9,920) or $1.5k Milly Maker (11,996). Those are in identical variants with the same number of starting flights, so should give a relatively good indicator (although Monster allowed only 1x bullet for flight). There's a lot of evidence to suggest that budget is a big consideration for WSOP participants and that cheaper events are going to be more popular.

I said I don't have the numbers because I can only estimate what WSOP's internal data looks like, but if we break the player pool up into three groups...

1. Big Budget Pro/Rec (>$25k+ in entries)
2. Medium Budget Rec ($5k-25k in entries)
3. Low Budget Rec (<$5k in entries)

...my guess would be that the third group is the largest chunk of the player pool by a wide margin.

The $10k Main is a special exception and its bucket list status/widespread satellites make it very popular, yet still it trails the Colossus in any given year.

The idea that the average WSOP participant is budgeting to fire 3-4 bullets at $1.5k doesn't jive with my experience, though all I can do is estimate.

What we know for sure is that participation drops as entry fees rise, which is a pretty clear hint about the willingness and ability for the players to spend.

This isn't like a Triton series where anyone who comes to play is prepared to shell out huge sums. The WSOP toes the line, maintaining premium branding while also catering to the general public. My sense is that a significant percentage of the player pool may only fire 3-4 bullets per year, mostly on the lower end of the budget spectrum. That would be my estimate of what the WSOP's internal data would show.

Wow, thank you for pointing that out. I do like how each Day 2 follows a Day 1 (ie: Day 1A is June 3 and Day 2A is June 4). Should be interesting!

Looks like they made the 1500 & 10K 7-handed. 5 Card PLO is new.

That’s lame.

If that is true no complaints.

Usually I just post during the annual Scotch Week but this is a special day with the announcement of the schedule. Have to mostly concur with my buddy TheFly.

At a minimum we need to tone down the notion that it is severely anti-rec. I play very few tournaments but I did play the 1K PLO Mystery Bounty and the amount of rebuying was crazy. These were not pros and everyone was making sure dealer logged them out so they could rebuy.

Vast majority of these recs probably have way more money than average small stakes tournament pro. There were probably a few tight recs that probably were only interested in one bullet, so they played tight.

In the few tournaments I play I’m usually a one bullet guy. As soon as I sit down at the table I usually instantly regret the first entry lol

You regret even signing up? I guess I can understand because if you have serious experience in tournament play, you realize that "ahh ****, I just burned 1500 bucks".

I've played the WSOP the last couple of years after being a very serious "rec" and even professional earlier in my 20s. I just had life troubles that got in the way and multi day tournaments always seemed like such an investment of time I stuck to cash live and tournaments online.

Point is, I save up about 5k to bring this summer. Ill play the monster stack, and try and hit a couple 500-800$ wsop events. Ill throw in a daily or two over the course of 8 days depending on my success. I've gotten busted at near the end of day 1 in the monster both years and didn't rebuy.

As scotchondarocks just stated, I know rebuying for 1500 for 20-30 bb is not interesting to me. But also I cant afford it.

Id guess there's a lot of people out there like me who'd rather start fresh in another tournament than 95% toast another 1500-its still a good chunk of your average "recs " poker roll. Just my guess

Yep, a 1500 LHE7 + a 1500 PLO5 >>> a 3000 LHE6

While I won’t turn down +EV spots I’m on tighter side so when I bust I usually wouldn’t have many bigs and that’s not appealing. Especially since my main preference are cash games to begin with.

So when I bust and if someone asks if I plan to rebuy my standard line is that I regret buying the first bullet. Usually good for a few laughs

It also appears that they made the $1500 LO8 event 7-handed. Seems like a bit of an odd choice since they didn’t change the $10k LO8, or the $3k OE or the PLO8 events.