All Your Poker News

Harrah’s Entertainment isn’t wasting any time preparing for the 2010 WSOP since they have already released the schedule.  And this year’s schedule definitely includes some very big changes!  The biggest change is that the prestigious $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament will no longer be offered in the WSOP.  This is really interesting because a lot of the top pro players like playing in this event since there were fewer people involved.  However, it is hard to justify keeping this tournament when the amount of entrants dropped from 148 to 95 in one year.

And Harrah’s is replacing this tournament with another $50k event so people probably won’t care too much.  The event that will be replacing the H.O.R.S.E. tourney is the $50,000 Mixed Event.  The Mixed Event includes all kinds of poker games like Seven Card Razz, Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud, No Limit Hold’em, Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Hold’em, and 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball.

Another huge change is that many of the mid-range buy-in Omaha and Stud events are gone with lots of $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em tourneys taking their place.  The most obvious reason for this move is because few people played in the mid-level Stud and Omaha tournaments so the decision was made to get rid of them.  Taking their place will be six $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em tourneys.  Harrah’s is trying to use the momentum of last year’s Stimulus Special, where 6,102 people signed up, to bring in more players.

One more move that is sure to be unpopular is Harrah’s decision to take a 10% rake instead of a 9% rake from the $1,000 and $1,500 tournaments.  Players definitely won’t like this since the money will be coming directly out of their prize pools.