lol are you the guy that blew up my Twitter mentions this morning?

- I found several press releases from this summer referring to it as the 51st running of the WSOP, from sites such a PokerFuse and CardsChat.
- Negreanu himself confirmed yesterday that GG hosted the 51st Annual WSOP.
- On the official Main Event coverage, the hosts repeatedly stress the point that this Main Event is the analogue for the usual Main Event.

And then of course there was the certificate. Does it get any more official than that? Even if this was a combination of massive errors, I don't think this can be backtracked. This was the "real" Main Event.

Follow the money ?

The earlier "Main Event" was played on GGPoker, and did not allow US players, plus GGPoker collected some not insignificant amount under whatever bizarre deal they had inked with the "WSOP".

This new "Main Event" is described as being played on WSOP.com, will allow US players and end with a live event in Las Vegas , bringing new meaning to the term "bubble boy". WSOP.com can use whatever traffic this new "Main Event can generate.

Also, I doubt that GGPoker, which likely is not licensed in the US*, gets a cut of "this" new Main Event.

(*I haven't looked at GGPoker's current licensing, which heretofore was through the UK and Curacao. I think if the site had become licensed for US play, it likely would have been newsworthy. Perhaps there has been some "special arrangement" reached between GGPoker and the WSOP, rather than the WSOP just keeping all the money for itself ?)

If by "blow up" you mean I replied to you with a couple of tweets and engaged a couple of other interested people on the topic, then yup that's me.

Can you share that PR? I think that would clear it up. Like I say, I'm more than happy to be shown wrong on this - I could well be! - I'm just interested as it was never my impression that was how it was sold.

(Fwiw for fun I ran a database query on all our content published across our sites around this time. We have about 30 pieces on this topic. I found one that referred to "51st" on pokerfuse that is a bit ambiguous and poorly worded. Though that was back in July and talks about events still planning to play live in the fall.)

(edit 2: Again just to stress, I'm sure there was confusion on this. It was certainly sold as a big event, it was WSOP bracelets, etc. I'm sure some sites said rightly or wrongly this was the official 51st annual WSOP Main Event online, even though it was phased and was a $5k and played in Europe. I'm just not sure if WSOP themselves announced it as such, as you claim. So if you can provide the PR on that, that would sort it all out!)

Oh I woke up to a ton of notifications today. On second look, it seems that yours only accounted for 17 of them. Not a huge deal, I just thought it was funny.

Here's the Pokerfuse article referring to it as the 51st. I just realized that this is your website! https://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-roo...acelet-events/

I'm not privvy to the details of the partnership, but I imagine money is very much flowing hte other way. As per their partnership, GG will be paying heavily to use their name for their online events.

Both apparently are contributing to the $1 million added money in the HU finale, fwiw.

They have licenses in UK and Curacao, a B2B license in Malta, and I believe NSUS have have made some effort to apply for some state licensing, pending, in the US.

Hey, we have to look at Main Event champion banners for Russ Hamilton and Chris "Turd" Ferguson, and I doubt anyone is going to get too distressed if the WSOP decides to hang a banner for Stoyan Madanzhiev as well.

Yup that's the one I found. I don't edit pokerfuse, but I think it's regrettable wording - though technically not untrue (when it does play live, it will be the 51st...). It was a throwaway intro line. The rest of the article is sound and mentions the Main Event as the WSOP Online Main Event, which is accurate.

But I think it's a good example of how a lot of people were trying to make sense of how this WSOP Online fit in to the WSOP brand overall. Absolutely there's going to be cases of poor communications here.

If there's PR out there from this time from WSOP or GG calling it the 51st annual Main Event, then I'll just stand down as my point hinges rather heavily on this!

Stoyan is #NotMyMainEventChamp

I am also glad they stripped him of the title. Just judging by his name without reading the thread, I would assume he was in some Eastern European cheating ring.

I do not believe they stripped him of anything.

Perhaps the thread title needs to be edited?

Do we know if this might be sponsoring contract related as well?
Idk but maybe the WSOP needs to have an annual live event in order to not be fined by partners or anything?
Maybe Beef Jerkey has paid their annual fee already but would be allowed to get that back, if there was no event this year.

Dont know how this contract stuff works but this might be related to it?

Or he can ship them both and overtake Jamie Gold as the goat of all time.

this dude was the nicest and funniest guy at the final table and deserved to win. he did the snapcam stuff live for the sweaters and all. he was the complete opposite of an anon eastern europe stable guy or some hour-long-tanking reg. him winning was great for online-poker.

I'm not happy or sad they "stripped" him of the title, I was basically just making a "funny"

I don't see how any of this is a big deal though, one and only possible "victim" already won millions of dollars. In the past there was a European Main Event, and an Asian Main Event. This was a 5K GG Poker "Main Event".

I get Danny and WSOP is involved and yes they want to soak the brand dry but I don't mind having a final table and HU match on ESPN next month.

It seems like he should get some legal advice and see if he has grounds for a lawsuit.

I assume this was a semi-funny (to be generous) joke?

we must have 100 different sports leagues going on in the world with people literally piling on each other, I don't think we need to be overly concerned with nine people sitting around and playing poker

Absolutely ridiculous from the WSOP

Completely agree with this. Clickbaity headline making it look like winner got done in for cheating or something.

Both GG and WSOP are acting within their terms and conditions, so if you want to have a moral debate on what went on here you need to look at the whole concept of such terms and conditions.

If there had been a main event, I'm pretty sure I would have heard of this dude. And since when did the main event become a $5k re-entry?

Since the WSOP decided to make it one.

Nobody forced them to make that event the "No Limit Hold'em Main Event" of the "51st Annual World Series of Poker". But that's what they did.

And maybe they decide next summer to make it a $1000 or $100000 event, that's totally up to them.

It was a very funny joke if we are going to be generous as you say

AMERICA!!!