Can WSOP Paradise dethrone the WPT World Championship?


An even more outlandish version of WSOP Paradise has been announced, will it be the bigger than EPT Prague and the WPT World Championship?

Poker
Reigning WSOP Paradise champion Stanislav Zegal

This time last year the World Series of Poker and GGPoker announced WSOP Paradise. A direct rival to the WPT World Championship and EPT Prague, taking place at the same time as both. 

A lot of people, myself included, were cynical about the event. It looked designed more to hurt the WPT World Championship than to grow the WSOP/GG brand. 

We were wrong. Not only was the event a success, beating almost all its guarantees, but it also seemed to have a positive impact on the numbers in Vegas and Prague. Many players even played both the Bahamas and Vegas Main Events. 

A ‘Super Main Event’

Poker
Reigning WPT World champion Dan Sepiol

Now the second iteration of WSOP Paradise seems like an even bigger challenge to the WPT World Championship. It has a ‘Super Main Event’ with a $25,000 buy-in (Up from $5,000 last year) and a $50 million guarantee (The WPT World Championship guaranteed $40 million last year).

There is also a $1 million buy-in event to match last year’s Big One for One Drop at the WPT World Championship. 

I should have learned from last time, but once again I am sceptical. Can the Super Main Event get 2,000 entries? If it came close it would be the biggest $25k in history, almost twice as big as the record PSPC from 2019. Once again, it just seems designed to hurt the WPT World Championship who must surely feel compelled to at least match their $40 million guarantee from last year (which had a $240k overlay). 

The WPT World Championship still has the prestige and the goodwill, but the GGPoker carrot being dangled is potentially a very huge overlay. The big question is will the WPT World Championship pull something big out of the bag, or put on a lower-key event and let GGPoker take the hit?

EPT Prague adopts a ‘do nothing’ strategy

Poker
Reigning EPT Prague champion Padraig O’Neil

My suspicion is that WSOP Paradise will come close to the $50 million guarantee, but GGPoker will take the big hit in the satellites. In that respect, the satellites might be the best value thing to play online this year. So bookmark those. 

My other big prediction is that PokerStars will change nothing at EPT Prague. It is the perfect option for Euros who don’t want to travel far and still attracted a record field last year with no extra marketing

The sicko in me hopes that either the WPT announce an even bigger guarantee, or just for laughs rescheduled their World Championship to November. I was wrong last year about the WSOP Paradise, let’s hope the rising tide lifts all ships again this year. 

Event Dates
WPT World Championship December 3-23
EPT Prague December 4-15
WSOP Paradise December 6-19

How close will it get to the guarantee? Let us know in the comments:


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