Live 2021 just isn't happening. Normally this would be just a few months away, but pandemic is still peaking pretty much daily. Field hospitals are being built around the world for the incoming infected because a lot of places are running out of beds. There's no sense in expecting any kind of recovery for at least another year.

There's also too much effort, financial investment and liability involved in organizing such a massive event that may not even run, because who knows how the legislators will feel about it months from now. Broken urinals and mile-long lines to use them are not going to fly anymore either. The logistics of something like this are simply impossible in current climate.

Our best hope is to have a decent online series, which probably won't happen either unless they replace the idiot who was in charge of scheduling the last one.

Anyone else keep getting an Audible 5G ad in the middle of reading or posting on here on my phone? Has happened at least 6 times so far in the past few hours. I have to click on it to make it go away to come back here. Then it comes up again 30 seconds later. What is going on?

Anyways I disagree with you about 2021. There will most likely be some kind of live series. With partitions and maybe limited numbers of entrants for each event? I mean we know a lot more about covid then we did back in the summer and now the vaccines are here and are getting rolled out. I cannot see a full on canceling of the wsop in 2021. Just can't.

We are probably in the midst of the biggest covid peak we are likely to see but we still have a live final table coming, live cash games, people flying for recreation trips, etc.

The liability issue is also way oversold. WSOP is not creating the hazard. The risks is such an event would be well known. So long as the events did not violate govt rules or specific guidelines such a suit is unlikely to win.

Will the event be 5000+? Probably not. Will it be as international? Again, probably not. But I believe you are drastically under estimating the impact vaccines are going to have and how fast it will happen here.

Unless something massively negative occurs there will be a live WSOP in 2021. Look how hard they worked to have the hybrid ME this year.

So they're gonna go from barely being able to run one live table with players under the threat of disqualification if they tested positive, to somehow scaling this up a few months later to a full-blown poker festival because we're all going to be vaccinated by then?

Okey-doke, I guess I'll see you there.

Not a couple months later, regular late May wsop is not happening but they could easily make it happen sometime in Sep/Oct. if not, we’ll have a lot bigger issues than WSOP since that basically means vaccination was a complete flop.

While all of that is true, the main question isn’t if they *can* host a live
WSOP but if it’s financially feasible to do so.

I have no idea what number of participants they need on a per event/day and overall basis though.

International players made up roughly 30% of the ME field in 2019. That’s a lot of players. Based on flight prices, airlines don’t think there will be significant international travel anytime soon.
I’ll fly from New York to Frankfurt on Saturday and the round trip is $634 in taxes & fees and $2 (two) in ticket price. I expect that plane to be basically empty, same as every time since the pandemic started.

Would be interesting to see the breakdown between fixed and variable cost to host a WSOP at the Rio. The more that’s weighted towards variable, the easier it would be for them. Maybe not a good comparison but if you look at road running races (basically everything from 5k to marathon) the main deciding factor for them to host or cancel is the amount of police/security they have to pay for. No problem holding a race on paved trail but everything that needs a lot of roads to be blocked off isn’t feasible if sign-up numbers are only 50%.

There are currently live MTTs being played in Vegas, and have been since the casinos were allowed to open back up. Pretty much every event being run is massively beating the gtds. The 350 last week got 666 runners. The 1k from a month ago got over 1k runners.

Obviously it's different with the size and scope of the WSOP, random euro recs aren't flying in to play a one-time 1k at the Venetian, but I think that if planes are flying, people are going to come. If hotels are open (something that isn't really happening right now), people are going to stay. And it's clear that people are hungry for live poker.

I think the main deciding factor is are they allowed to, and if the answer is yes, it'll run. If it's a good idea or not is another question, but one that a lot of people and businesses in the US have shown they don't really care about the answer to.

So many scared ladies who think you can hide from a germ. A germ with a lethal rate of .02%, two cures and most people don't know they have it.

Pretty sure it’s >0.0002, unless you have some inside info from deep state, bro?

WSOP is not a casino though. It's just a brand. Unlike the Venetian they have to go through another hundred steps before they can even have a tournament. Starting with a reservation for a huge venue at least a year in advance and then going through the hiring process of many hundreds of dealers and other staff, 90% of whom are not from Las Vegas. I doubt that too many would want to travel to deal for $8 per down and to live 4 to a room at some roach-central during the pandemic.

How would you plan for a series right now anyway? Do you need to hire 100 or 1,000 dealers? What about the size of the venue? Can anybody even guess with any reasonable accuracy how many people would be in attendance? Your guess could easily be off by as much as 200%, but if you don't get it right within 20% of the actual number then you'd just screwed a whole bunch of people who risked their health to travel to your event. Either the dealers won't have the job that you promised or the players won't have the seat. Basically a nightmare of a situation.

People have no idea how much money, time and effort goes into organizing the WSOP during normal years, so I doubt there's currently much of an incentive for them to take on this enormous task with lots of risk when they've been cashing in online by literally doing nothing.

And whoever thinks there's no legal liability because "it's a known risk factor" is probably not from the US. There's absolutely a huge amount of liability if any of the safety protocols are broken by the WSOP staff and somebody ends up getting sick or dying.

Can you trust the hundreds of new hirees to not screw this up when so many of them can't even deal three hands in a row without messing up? Imagine the nightmare for the brand or the host of the series if they get hit with a class action suit because some dealer forgot to put on the mask after smoking a joint behind the outdoor bathrooms.

There's just too many reasons why I don't see them running anything meaningful in 2021.

If by a few months you mean maybe 10 then yess they can and I believe will.

But not likely you will see me there as I seldom play tournaments.

Also I have three close relatives who either have or will this year get their first jab. So by 4Q21 in the US we should have good vaccine penatration.

Also where are these two CURES?

pfizer and moderna's vaccine

vaccine ≠ cure

You do realise that 0.0002 is the same as 0.02% right?

Also, without trying to start a political discussion, surely over 30% of Americans will be vaccinated? There are plenty of vaccines being prepared to go around the entire US population before the summer is over

Which was exactly the point. Did you miss the >?

And as correctly pointed out vaccine is not a cure. In fact it s the opposite of a cure.

funny that we still have ppl talking about death rate, as if this is the problem ... but it's the "scared" ppl that are UNedUcated

also lol at "cures" ...

A truly incredible post.

I doff my cap at your stupidity.

If people think there’s going to be a full schedule of live events (70+) at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino finished before the end of the summer (meteorological season, 8/31) that includes a Main Event with at least 6000 participants: I am happy to take more bets on that.

Mod note: please keep the insults out of here, thank you.

FYI

0.0002 = 0.02%

~

Stupidity? Nope, just the maths.

They should run an event series that is only open to people who have been vaccinated. But I expect that by June, most of the US population will have had this opportunity. If this is the case, why wouldn't you run a robust series of events?

I don't think anyone who is claiming there will be a live WSOP this summer is assuming they will have >6000 participants in the Main Event. Attendance will certainly be down because there will still be a number of travel restrictions in place, and this may cause the WSOP to shorten the schedule. But a 40-event schedule with 3000 ME entrants would still be a relatively normal WSOP from my perspective. I'd be happy to play in this.


0.2% of the population of New Jersey has already died from covid. So the overall fatality rate is at least 10 times this number, assuming that every person in New Jersey has already had covid.

A series? I think yes but I am not expecting 45 days or longer. Maybe 21 days or so. Maybe shorter.

By end of Aug? Have not seen that claimed. More likely by end of Oct maybe.

6000+. That would be huge surprise. Heck might even be smaller than the US event going on now. But I am thinking more like the size of 2004. That was mid 2000s entries?

And why does it have to be at the Rio? Being smaller will open more potential venues. And since many late ‘21 conventions already being cancelled to get some capital back while they can, there will be someplace available.

Keeping smaller and shorter but big enough to be viable might just be perfect fo 2021.

Because that’s what I already have money on. But my bets were made last summer. None since then.

Now that I see that 27% of people in DNs poll voted “normal WSOP, full schedule at the Rio in the summer” which is basically the same that I have money on, I was checking if somebody else was looking for action.

FWIW, the stipulations of number of events and number of ME participants are used to quantify the very vague term “normal WSOP”. The Main Event is the marquee event of the series which had >6000 participants for the last 15 years. In my opinion it’s fair to say that a WSOP where the number of events and/or ME participants is reduced by 30%+ from 2019 doesn’t qualify as a “normal WSOP with a full schedule”.