2009 WSOP Main Event Preview

Poker News - July 3, 2009 - Written by Bruce

The 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event is starting today with players from all over the world coming to Las Vegas for their chance at winning the world's biggest poker tournament. With a $10,000 buy in, the event will likely make millionaires out of the nine players who manage to make the final table. Last year's winner was Peter Easgate from Denmark became the youngest Main Event champion by winning the prestigious event at the young age of 22. Easgate bested a field of 6,844 entrants for an enormous $9,152,416 payday. This year's tournament is not expected to have quite as many entrants as last year partly due to the struggling economy. The winner will still earn a huge sum of money and will go down in the history books for winning this illustrious event.

The tournament will begin today July 3 at 12pm. This will be Day 1A with there being 3 other Day 1's to follow starting tomorrow with Day 1B. After the 4 Day 1's are completed the field will now be split into 2. The players to complete Day 1A and Day1B will all play in Day 2A on July 7th. The next day the players who survived Day 1C and Day 1D will all come back to play Day 2B on July 8th. The following day will be a break for a players with a day off from play and will be scheduled as a media day. On July 10th the remaining players who survived Day 2 action will all be combined into one field to play Day 3. With the remaining players now all playing in one field they will continue to play every day until Day 8 on July 15th. The field is scheduled to be down to a final 9 players after Day 8 play which will comprise the final table which will be played out in November. The final 9 players will have months to think about the historic opportunity which lies ahead for them. All of them are likely to already be guaranteed a million dollars for their final table performance. On Saturday, November 7th the players will play down until there are only 2 people left. The heads up action will then begin 3 days later on Tuesday, November 10th and a winner will be crowned on that day.

The World Series Main Event always attracts the top poker players in the world to go along with thousands of amateurs who get a chance to play alongside their poker idols. When Accountant Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 Main Event he bested a field of 839 players to win 2,500,000. This set off a poker boom of sorts with players all over the world taking notice of this and the Main Event has not been the same since. The next year over 2,500 players entered with a record 8,773 players taking part in 2006. This year there are expected to be about 5,000 players which is significantly less than the 6,844 that showed up a year ago. One big question surrounding the Main Event is when another well known poker professional will win the title again. Even though the top players show up every year, it has been since 2001 when Carlos Mortensen won the title since this has occurred. The poker community is hoping to stop the drought and see another professional take back the title. Some of players to watch out for this year are Phil Ivey (arguably the world's top player), Allen Cunningham (top pro who finished 4th in the event in 2006, Mike Matusow (seems to always make a deep run in the Main Event) and Daniel Negreanu (one of most consistent players in the last decade who is having an excellent 2009 World Series. The poker world is excited as the biggest event of the year gets under way today. Good luck to all the participants.