In just two short weeks, the World Series of Poker comes to Europe. There series, recently tried to become more “World” than say Major League Baseball’s “World” Series by broadening it’s home for the bracelet events. Of course the World Series of Poker has always been open to players from all over the world whereas the World Series of Baseball has been limited to American or Canadian teams.
This year, the World Series of Poker-Europe again, will feature an alternative casino for a player to win a bracelet that is not Las Vegas. European players are but a short plane, train, or car drive (especially with the Chunnel) to London. It’s interesting while the World Series of Poker describes the Euro version as almost a continuation of the Las Vegas version, there are but four events, including a main event with a 10k buy-in.
However, the 10k Main Event champion for the year is obviously the winner of the event in Vegas. Perhaps, this thinking went into the planning of having the November Nine. The final table for the Vegas event is indeed after the final table of the European version. Players will have the opportunity to try and pull an Ivan Demidov and final table both events.
This years crop of November Niners, none of whom were household names before hand, though many are online poker pros with niche recognition have followed Demidov’s impressive years with impressive years of their own. Two Niners made the final nine at the Legends of Poker, and others have gone deep or amassed large chip counts early on in other tournaments.
This time their sights will be set on London, September 17th, 2009. The first open event will be a No Limit Hold’em tournament with a 1k buy-in. That’s 1k of Pound Notes. One new addition to the schedule is Friday, the 25th, the Caesars Cup begins. In it players from Europe and the Americas will battle in a team format. The players who play poker online solely, except for perhaps the right qualifiers, will be underrepresented. The players who play live and play online poker part-time will make up the bulk of the teams. The rosters are a who’s who of tv players.
This event is just a warm-up for the main event, which will for run six days. The WSOP and TV partners like ESPN hope the tournament will be similar in entertainment value to the Las Vegas Main Event. Early estimates put the field size as bigger than 1700.