2021 WSOP Online Schedule Release and Thoughts

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The Las Vegas Review-Journal spilled the beans a day early regarding the 2021 WSOP Online. They dropped the schedule a bit early and officially “broke” the story. The 2021 WSOP Online will run from July 1st through August 1st at WSOP.com in the United States.

I was hoping that it wouldn’t be an extensive schedule, but alas, we have a schedule of 33 events for the US leg alone. Today, I’m going to give my thoughts on the schedule. You can find the full schedule of events over at WSOP.com.

All Flop Games – All the Time

The World Series of Poker limited the WSOP Online last year to all flop games, meaning Texas Hold’em and Omaha poker. While annoying, I let it slide because that was better than not having a WSOP at all.

Fast forward a year – and we have the exact same thing yet again. We have NL Hold’em and PLO as the only offerings on the schedule. They didn’t even bother to offer Limit Hold’em or Omaha Hi-Lo. While I understand that Hold’em and Omaha rule the roost, the WSOP is supposed to be about POKER, not flop games.

PLO Week Only Has 3 PLO Events

Speaking of PLO, have you seen the schedule? PLO Week is supposed to run from 7-12 through 7-13. Ten days of PLO right? (Ya, we realize their concept of a week is off.) Nope. They don’t even get to a PLO event until the FIFTH DAY of the “week.” Then we get a PLO event on the eighth and tenth day. Everything else is NL crapshoot.

Who came up with this? A PLO Week with only 3 events? But it gets worse than that. There’s only one PLO event on the rest of the schedule. That’s four PLO tourneys out of 33. Gotta feed the NL machine I suppose.

200 Bracelets Coming Soon to a WSOP Near You

In 2017, I predicted it would be a couple of years before we saw the WSOP award 100 bracelets in a single year. That happened in 2019. Last year’s pandemic knocked that total back under 100. Thus far, we are on pace to have close to 190 bracelets.

We get that number from looking at last year’s schedule and combining that with what we anticipate will be this year’s live schedule. There were 31 events in the American WSOP.com in 2020 and 33 scheduled for this year. There were 54 last year on GGPoker, and we could see that number jump to 60 this year. (That is just an estimate at this point.)

If the live 2021 WSOP schedule cranks out 100 bracelets, we could see about 193 bracelets awarded this year. Would we be surprised to see the WSOP up this number to a nice round 200? Not at all. I’m hoping that either the international version of the WSOP Online or the WSOP in Las Vegas will be trimmed back a bit, but we will see.

If the WSOP continues with the WSOP Online and awarding bracelets during the series, we will see the number of bracelets reach and even eclipse 200 within the next year or two.

An Expanded WSOP Online Not Necessary

I don’t have a problem with WSOP Online. Online bracelet events have been happening for years. I didn’t have an issue with the event last year due to the pandemic. What I have an issue with is continuing to offer an expanded WSOP online while running what appears to be a full live schedule of events this fall.

The WSOP is effectively doubling the number of bracelets they are offering with the WSOP. That may be great for Caesars’ profits, but it is not great for the legacy of the WSOP and the WSOP bracelet.