The 2021 WSOP Event #67: $10,000 MAIN EVENT No-Limit Hold’em World Championship may be set to exceed expectations, with a crowded Day 1D predicted by Kevin Mathers. The event may be so crowded, in fact, that he recommends playing Day 1C or 1E if you possibly can, to avoid the rush.
Mathers initially tweeted: "I don’t know how to say this and avoid causing a problem, but if more people decided to play Day 1E or 1F of the Main Event, that would be great."
He later adjusted his suggestions for Day assignments, saying, "If you could play Day 1C or Day 1E, that would be ideal." Adding, "Day 1D is projecting to be huge tomorrow."
So far, attendance for the Main Event has been high, but not so high as to overburden the WSOP's dealer pool. Day 1A saw 523 entries, Day 1B saw another 845, and Day 1C has hit 480 entries as of level 4 of 5. It looks like those numbers will spike tomorrow.
Poker seems to be alive and well.
Dealer, or no dealer
Later comments from Mathers suggest that the WSOP is a victim of its own popularity. The main problem here is dealer availability. "There may be a cap on the number of registrations based on available dealers," he tweeted.
In a more typical year, the WSOP has a larger dealer pool to draw on. However, this year has seen Caesars Entertainment struggle to get enough dealers together in one place. The most likely reasons for this are, naturally, COVID-related.
Caesars has already looked at closing the poker rooms at the Flamingo, Bally's Las Vegas, and Caesar's Palace in order to free up dealers for the Amazon Room. High-volume days at this year's series have seen satellites canceled — though this is par for the course at the WSOP, even in dealer-rich years. Day 1A of the $888 Crazy Eights event has also been canceled to accommodate the new Day 3 action after the WSOP added two additional days to the Main Event.
Mathers wrote: "Those of you planning next week's @WSOP Bracelet Event schedule - Flight A of the $888 Crazy Eights, scheduled for Thursday, November 11 is canceled."
Expect the unexpected
Players who intend to buy in tomorrow should bear in mind that there may be changes made on the fly to handle the influx of players.
Among the possible solutions to the high volume of attendees are a player-cap or switching to 10-handed tables.
Maria Ho suggested that the WSOP "should just cap [attendance for Day 1D] and force people to play one of the other starting days."
With a finite pool of dealers, the WSOP will have to balance the risk of disappointing players (many of who scheduled travel and hotels around playing a specific Day 1) against the almost universal desire not to have to play at 10-handed tables. As yet, they have not confirmed which way they will be leaning on this question. However, from Mathers' comments, the player cap seems the most likely solution.
As a result, you may want to make sure you are registered and at your table nice and early.
Featured image source: PokerGO (photo by Antonio Abrego)
