Though the 2021 WSOP is over and most international players have scattered to the winds, two major poker series headline a December that offers plenty of tourney choices for both Las Vegas-based players and seasonal holiday visitors. Both the Wynn and the Venetian are offering major series during the month, while at least two other Vegas properties will host prominent poker events.
Just a couple of weeks after the conclusion of its highly successful Fall Classic, the Wynn will return with its 2021 Wynn Winter Classic. The Winter Classic runs December 6-20, 2021 and offers over $3 million in guaranteed prize money. Just across the street, at the Venetian, is the latest edition of the Deep Stack Extravaganza. The current Venetian DSE begins today and runs all the way through January 9, 2022, while guaranteeing more than $2.3 million in prize money.
Though the dueling series highlight Las Vegas's poker December, they're not the only games in town. Down the Strip, the Bellagio hosts the 2021 WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic. The main event of that series, which bears the same name, begins on December 14 and runs through December 19, though the series itself begins on December 4 with a pricier mix of events than offered at Wynn or Venetian. (The Five Diamond main event is actually the 12th and last of a sub-series of high-roller events that make up much of the Five Diamond slate).
Over at the Aria, there's more notable action on tap in December. The Aria's PokerGO Studio will host the $50,000 PokerGO Tour Championship on December 22 and 23, which is expected to draw many of the game's biggest high-rolling NLHE players. Earlier in the month, on December 11 and 12, the Aria also serves as host to the 2021 RunGood Poker Series All-Stars Pro-Am event.
Wynn Winter Classic includes three multi-day events
The Wynn's Winter Classic offers 11 events total over its 15-day, mid-December run. That includes three events scheduled to run for multiple days, including the series-closing $5,300 no-limit hold'em main event. The main event offers two starting days, on December 17 and 18. The Day 3 conclusion on December 20 wraps up the Winter Classic's action. This main event carries a $2 million prize pool guarantee, two-thirds of the guaranteed money included in the series.
The other two multi-day events also carry guarantees. The Winter Classic opens with a $150,000-guaranteed NLHE event that includes starting flights on December 6 and 7 and ends on December 8. The other multi-day offering is a $1,100-entry, $500,000-guaranteed NLHE event that has three starting days, December 9 through 11 and concludes on December 12.
One other event on the Wynn Winter Classic slate will likely draw plenty of notice. That's a progressive bounty (PKO) tourney that takes place on Monday, December 13th. Live PKO events offer some logistical issues, and this event addresses those by moving up the price-point scale to a $5,200 buy-in. The PKO format also temporarily replaces the very popular mystery-bounty event that drew plenty of attention from players during the Fall Classic. But it's a safe bet another mystery-bounty tourney will return to the Wynn in the near future.
Multiple events most days in Venetian DSE
Over at the Venetian, the latest Deep Stack extravaganza adheres to the formula that the Venetian has refined over the years. That's plenty of events to choose from, with almost all offered at affordable price points.
The 41-day series includes 56 separate events. While most of those events are one-day offerings, there are enough multi-flight and multi-day tourneys to ensure that on most days, action takes place in multiple DSE events.
The Deep Stack Extravaganza's de facto main event comes via its partnership with the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT). Event #40 on the DSE schedule is the $1,100 NLH MSPT tourney. It begins on Tuesday, December 28, with the first of two Day 1 flights. The event ends on Thursday, December 30. Mega-satellites for this event run on December 26 and 27. The event's guaranteed $500,000 prize pool is the largest of the entire DSE series.
Featured image source: Flickr / Wynn
