Can You Re Enter The Wsop Main Event

With the event being played as a freezeout tournament, players who get eliminated from each flight can no longer re-enter, so they must bring their a-game to work for a shot at becoming the official 51st WSOP Main Event champion. The winner of the 2019 WSOP Main Event was Iranian-German poker player Hossein Ensan, who won a staggering $10,000,000. That’s $1,200,000 more than John Cynn won the previous year, and the most.

In the first half of this two-part series, I introduced readers to an age-old dilemma faced by folks attending the World Series of Poker (WSOP) – should you play the Main Event or a few smaller tournaments instead?

The earlier installment covered the pros and cons associated with playing in the Main, which costs a pretty penny to enter at $10,000. Sure enough, that big buy-in does give you a shot at winning $8 million or so, which is why several thousand hopefuls take their shot at the WSOP Main Event every year.

But for recreational players like me, and the vast majority of my readers, spending a huge chunk of your bankroll on a single tournament isn’t really sound money management. And with no reentries to work with, this is a one and done affair (at least until next year), making the WSOP Main Event one of the more volatile major tournaments on the circuit.

All things considered, there’s something to be said for taking an alternative approach by breaking that $10,000 into smaller increments for use in multiple tournaments. As this second part sets out to show you, competing in a handful of preliminary events can balance out variance and give you a better shot at bagging that precious WSOP gold bracelet.

To get an idea of how professional players divide their time at the WSOP, check out this post from Andrew Brokos of the Thinking Poker podcast as he sold of pieces of last year’s preliminary “package.” Be sure to click through to his Google spreadsheet to see exactly how Brokos broke his bankroll up while chasing bracelets in 2017.

As it turns out, his efforts didn’t result in gold, but Brokos did manage to cash four times in small buy-in events, including three runs into the top 80 or higher.

Read on for a rundown of the benefits and drawbacks you’ll encounter when playing a WSOP prelim package rather than the Main.

Reasons to Play Several Smaller Bracelet Events

The following entries highlight reasons to take the Brokos approach and spread your resources out over several smaller tournaments.

Variety Is the Spice of Life

The WSOP Main Event is a No Limit Hold’em (NLHE) freezeout tournament, and while it does crown the World Champion of poker in most players’ eyes, the game has much more to offer than the traditional two-card game.

NLHE itself can be supplemented by re-entry events, six-handed and heads-up play, the shootout format, and thanks to WSOP.com and Nevada’s regulated iGaming industry, even online access. Moving past the NLHE paradigm, poker offers several popular variants, including the four hole card action-fest known as Pot Limit Omaha, the purist’s pursuit Seven Card Stud, and more obscure offshoots like Razz and Lowball.

By sticking to the WSOP Main Event alone, you’re sacrificing the true nature of this summer-long poker festival.

Just take a look below at the 2018 WSOP schedule, which I’ve edited to include only tournaments priced at $1,500 or below, to see what I mean.

*$1,000 buy-in for women, but men can enter for $10,000

As you can see, of the 43 individual events accessible for less than the $1,500 price tag, 18 of them are non-NLHE formats.

With so many options to choose from, players who enjoy alternative forms of poker can cobble together quite a diverse package using the WSOP Main Event’s $10,000 buy-in.

For example, you could start off with Event #4: $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Eight or Better, before firing three bullets at Event #11: $365 “Giant” Pot Limit Omaha. From there, why not try Event #12: $1,500 Dealer’s Choice Six-Handed and Event #14: $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. to work on your mixed game skills?

After that, the middle of June offers a sweet spot of sorts, with Event #25: $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo Eight or Better; Event #26: $1,000 Pot Limit Omaha; Event #29: $1,500 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw; and Event #31: $1,500 Seven Card Stud providing the perfect mixed game package.

And when you tally up the damage from playing those seven tournaments, the total cost comes to $9,595 – leaving you with just over $400 for the buffets and bars.

Smaller Buy-Ins Make Bagging Bracelets a Bit Easier

I posted this table in Part 1 of the series, but it bears repeating simply to show just how massive WSOP Main Event fields have become over the last 15 years.

Without fail, you can expect to face a field of over 5,000 players, with 6,800 to 7,000 a more realistic baseline nowadays. That’s a ton of opponents to wade through, even for the more talented players out there, making the WSOP Main Event one of the more difficult tournaments to win in all the world.

Those who successfully pass the test can bring home many millions in winnings, but the sheer odds against any one player make the Main a longshot, to say the least.

On the other hand, entering a smaller buy-in prelim at the WSOP tends to provide much better odds when it comes to field size. Sure, you’ll usually be competing in re-entry events which allow eliminated opponents to buy back in, but even so the field sizes pale in comparison to the WSOP Main Event.

The table below shows you the field sizes for all tournaments priced under $1,500 at last year’s WSOP, along with the winner’s name and the prize they earned.

I’ve bolded the tournaments that managed to draw more entries than the 2017 WSOP Main Event, which attracted 7,221 players to the fray. As you can see, of the 40 events last summer offering affordable buy-ins of $1,500 or less, only four were able to generate field sizes larger than the Main.

In fact, when you lower the threshold to 5,000 entries, just six prelim events made the mark.

Without a doubt, playing in smaller buy-in tournaments is the best way to cut down on the fields you’ll be forced to fight through.

On average, the tourneys priced at $1,500 or under attracted 2,518 entries per event. Remove the mega-massive “Colossus III” – which garnered over 18,000 entries thanks to a $1 million guarantee for the winner – and the average field dropped all the way down to 2,120.

Playing against 2,000 or so opponents must offer better odds at making a deep run than a 7,000+ field, making a prelim package much more palatable than taking a shot at the Main.

You’ll Still Get Rich If You Wind Up Winning

Many players view their WSOP Main Event entry as a lottery ticket of sorts, albeit a very expensive one.

As their reasoning goes, incurring a higher degree of risk is more than worth it when the tournament pays out $8 million and more to the World Champion. Indeed, even the final nine tend to guarantee themselves a million-dollar score, so the Main stands out as a “rags to riches” goal for legions of casual players.

I’ve even heard serious players bemoan their “bad luck” after winning a prelim event. These yahoos really do have the nerve to ask aloud why they had to “waste” their run good on a six-figure payday when seven-figure payouts await WSOP Main Event finalists.

I can sort of see where they’re coming from, even if I decidedly disagree with their sentiment. You only win so many poker tournaments in your life, so you’d surely prefer those victories to come with the most money on the line.

The thing is though, prelim bracelet events at the WSOP still offer plenty of bang for your buy-in buck.

Of the 40 events priced at $1,500 or under from that table above, just three paid out less than $100,000 to the winner. Two of those were the $1,500 events in Seven Card Stud and No Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple draw, a pair of variants that younger players largely haven’t learned. The other was the Casino Employee Championship event, which limits the field to folks who work on the backend of the casino industry.

The WSOP Main Event is famous for paying out a huge multiple on your $10,000 buy-in, and last year’s champ, Scott Blumstein, enjoyed an 815 to 1 return.

Well, you can fire just $365 at the “Giant” NLHE event and shoot for a similar return of nearly 800 to 1, given last year’s champion pocketed $291,240. The “Crazy Eights” event is even better, turning an $888 entry fee into $888,888 for a 101 to 1 return.

You’ll find a ton of these low buy-in, massive payout events littering the WSOP schedule, so take full advantage by spreading your bankroll out.

Reasons to Skip the Smaller Bracelet Events

Below you’ll find a few reasons to skip the small stuff during your next WSOP experience.

The Structure Says It All

Speaking of that “Giant” tournament, for $365 you’ll get a nice big stack of 25,000 chips to work with.

That’s all well and good, but when you take a closer look at the event’s structure sheet, you’ll notice that the blind levels are only 20 minutes on Day 1, and 40 minutes thereafter. Even an inflated starting stack like that will be whittled down in short order facing those blinds – a fate that befalls many players entering prelims.

Aside from the gimmick tournaments like the “Giant” and “Colossus,” regular low-level prelims use starting stacks equal to five times the buy-in amount. Thus, a standard $1,500 NLHE event begins with 7,500 chips and blind levels that last 60 minutes. This means your initial stake will represent just 30 big blinds or so – still comfortable, but by no means deep – within just a few hours of play.

Conversely, the WSOP Main Event begins with a whopping 50,000 chips and two-hour levels. This generous structure is one of the main draws for serious players and pros, as their skill advantage can only be applied when the stacks are deep.

Ever hear the term “shove-fest” used when referring to smaller, shallow-stacked tournaments? Well, you’d be surprised how the structure for many WSOP prelims can turn even bracelet events into the proverbial shove-fest.

Can You Re Enter The Wsop Main Event Tonight

What Dreams May Come

I touched on this in greater detail back in Part 1, but it’s worth repeating based on how important the WSOP Main Event really is to most poker players.

From the late legend Stu “The Kid” Ungar – who is the only three-time (’80, ’81, ’97) World Champion in history – to modern poker icons like Johnny Chan (’87, ’88), Phil Hellmuth (’89), and Chris Moneymaker (’03), the WSOP Main Event is poker’s pinnacle.

Just imagine the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup Finals, and the Olympics into one week-long tournament to get an idea of the pride poker players take in winning it all.

But the best part is, unlike those major sporting competitions, any ordinary person can pony up the dough and play alongside the game’s greats.

Whether you’re a poker fan who avidly follows the comings and goings on the tournament circuit, a recreational player looking for a lark, or an aspiring grinder who wants to test their mettle in the top tier, competing in the WSOP Main Event is a dream for millions of players all over the world.

If your dream is to play this tournament, and this tournament only, nothing else on the WSOP schedule will suffice. I’ve had the pleasure of playing the Main three times before, and I’ll always treasure those memories. Building a stack, bluffing a pro you’ve seen on TV, pacing on breaks, and even my bust-outs – I remember every minute of those Mains like they were yesterday.

On that note, I can’t begrudge anybody out there for passing up a package of prelims to live their dream by playing the WSOP Main Event.

Can You Re Enter The Wsop Main Event 2019

Timing Is Everything

Earlier, you saw a portion of the WSOP schedule, but the full series stretches out over six weeks between late May and mid-July.

Accordingly, setting up a package of prelims will usually require you to take a week or two away from work and family obligations. Even if you break things up into multiple trips, playing $10,000 worth of early events will take some time – especially if you happen to go deep.

The Main does last for a week, but most players only book two or three days to start their trip.

If the odds catch up to them and they bust early, no harm no foul when it comes to real life responsibilities. And if the dream starts to come true and they build a big stack suitable for a deep run, they can adjust from there.

When you’re working with limited timeframes, playing a WSOP package just doesn’t leave you with the same level of maneuverability.

Can You Re Enter The Wsop Main Event

Conclusion

Can You Re Enter The Wsop Main Events

Whether you decide to enter the WSOP main event or several smaller WSOP events, there’s no right or wrong decision. Consider your financial investment, time constraints, and your chance to place in the money to decide which path is best for you.