The third-ever official World Series of Poker bracelet event scheduled to run on the WSOP's Pennsylvania-only site was postponed unexpectedly on Tuesday. The event, a $3,200 high-roller tournament, was slated to begin at 5:30pm ET on Tuesday, just minutes before its listed start.
In a post on Twitter, the WSOP confirmed the event's unexpected postponement, blaming the situation on "technical difficulties":
The WSOP's wording of "cancelled" as Tweeted was inexact. Instead, the high-roller event was postponed by exactly one week. The new date and start time for the WSOP Pennsylvania high-roller tourney is Tuesday, August 17, at 5:30pm ET. This pushes the tourney outside the original time window for the series; the eight-day, eight-event series was originally scheduled to run from August 8 to August 15.
'Technical difficulties' not detailed
The WSOP chose not to detail the nature of the technical difficulties that caused the high-roller postponement. Given the event's sudden disappearance from the site's schedule of events just minutes before its planned start, a few of the event's would-be participants accused the WSOP of simply pulling the plug due to lower-than-expected turnout.
No direct evidence for such claims has surfaced, such as an image of the tournament's lobby showing abnormally low turnout that theoretically could have generated a very large overlay. According to the angered players' claims, WSOP Pennsylvania could boost that turnout by delaying the event, by using the added time to run more satellite tourneys.
Whether such claims have any merit is at best uncertain. The claims are also likely moot: the rules for the bracelet series -- and for WSOP Pennsylvania in general -- state clearly that "All tournaments are subject to change and cancellation."
Nonetheless, the abrupt postponement did cause some players duress. One planned entrant, posting as "Big Doddy" on Twitter, stated he'd just driven two hours to be inside Pennsylvania's borders to play the online bracelet event.
The postponement is believed to be the first such instance involving any of the WSOP's online bracelet events. The WSOP introduced online tourneys in 2015. While they've expanded every year since, the WSOP's online bracelet series have become a lifeline of sorts for the brand since the COVID-19 pandemic's onset in early 2020.
Featured image source: WSOP.com
