World Series Of Poker About To Kick Off

The World Series of Poker is officially less than a week away from kicking off in Las Vegas.  This years event will have 60 events taking place plus the main event.  The first event, which begins on Feb 27th is the $500 Casino Employees no-limit hold’em event.  Then on Monday the real action gets underway with a $1500 buy-in no limit event that will last 3 days.  All of this leads up to the 10-day main event that begins on Feb 7th, 2026.  This years World Series of Poker will be taking place at the Rio Hotel & Casino so if you are in Vegas and want to check in on some WSOP action that is the place to be.

The new bracelet design is from Jason of Beverly Hills, who is also tasked with creating a specials main event bracelet that will stand apart from the other WSOP bracelets being awarded this year.  The word on the bracelets is that they are more flashy than last years, which were designed by OnTiltDesign company, but they aren’t quite as flashy as a lot of Jason’s work.  The bracelets will contain over 160 grams of 14 karat gold and will also contain 35 karats of flawless diamonds.  Needless to say these bracelets will be quite a bonus to the first place prize money at the WSOP events this year.

It will be interesting to see if the numbers of participants continues to rise after last years impressive numbers.  Black Friday occurred just a couple months before last years World Series of Poker so many critics were expecting the numbers at the 2026 WSOP to plummet.  Surprisingly enough it was the opposite that happened with the 2026 WSOP having 78,298 total players register for events and over $205 million in prize money won.  That was the most number of players in a single year and the most prize money awarded in one year at the WSOP.  It was also impressive how many different countries showed up to participate in Las Vegas, with over 100 nations competing for gold bracelets.  Can 2026 continue to build on 2026′s impressive numbers?  We will know in a couple months time.

One tournament that will challenge the main event as the biggest profile event of this years WSOP is event #55, dubbed ‘The Big One For One Drop’.  This tournament is a 3-day event with a whopping $1,000,000 buy-in!  There are already more than 30 elite poker players and business men with money to blow set to participate in this event.  This event will create the biggest payout in live poker history with the winner expected to collect more than $15,000,000 for his troubles!

The venue at the Rio is going to be the biggest ever this year as well with 470 poker tables being used for the WSOP.  If you like live poker action then you should definitely make a trip to the WSOP in Vegas this year!