When it comes to high-stakes poker, there is really only one game in town, and that is the world-famous World Series of Poker, or WSOP for short, which is held in Las Vegas every July. This event attracts the best poker players in the world, and some of the world’s richest businessmen. The buy in for the 2012 event is a cool $1 million – but if you can’t quite stretch to that, you could always play online poker at Skypoker.com, which is – just about – the next best thing to a seat at the WSOP top table!
The 2012 World Series of Poker event, which has been subtitled The Big One For One Drop, will have a top prize of over $12.3 million, and over thirty confirmed players. This will be the biggest prize in the history of televised poker, smashing the previous record set by Jamie Gold at the 2006 tournament, when he beat over 8,700 players at a no-limit game of Texas Hold ‘em with a buy-in of ten thousand dollars.
The final table will be shown live on the sports TV channel ESPN, and as well as scooping the biggest prize in poker history, the winner will also walk away with a specially designed platinum bracelet.
As well as eight-time gold bracelet winner Erik Seidel, several other top poker names have confirmed that they will be attending the 2012 event, including Johnny Chan, Tom Dwan and Daniel Negreanu. They will be joined by billionaire high rollers such as casino owner Phil Ruffin and tournament organizer/Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte. Only 10 out of the 30 players that have confirmed so far are professional poker players. The maximum number of players for the game is 48, and if that many players buy in, the top prize will be $18.3 million.
Around 11% of the total buy-in money will be given to the charity One Drop, a non-governmental organisation founded by tournament organizer Guy Lalibert to push for access to clean water in third world countries. For more information about One Drop, you can visit their website by clicking here.