A primarily American crowd of players gathered virtually last week to kick off the first-ever WSOP 2020 Online series. And they’ve been doing so in significant numbers thus far, despite the tournaments not offering guaranteed prize pools.
The coronavirus pandemic gave the World Series of Poker little choice but to put some of its series online this year. After meticulously planning out a 101-tournament series – mostly live poker events – for Las Vegas this summer, Covid-19 swept across America and shut it all down.
The WSOP then delivered a schedule of 85 online poker tournaments, 31 of which would be on the WSOP.com ring-fenced sites in Nevada and New Jersey throughout the month of July. The other 54 events will play out on GGPoker and its poker skins starting in mid-July for the rest of the world.
Coverage of the online events is severely lacking its pizazz, its stories and excitement, photos and videos from the scene at the Rio in Vegas. Much of it is cut-and-dry reporting, so poker fans can expect some great writing but not much to spice it up. *shakes fist at Covid*
The World Series of Poker and PokerNews provide live updates and recaps of each tournament, in as much detail as possible. We will provide a fairly basic rundown of the events, which are compiled by accessing those live reports:
--PokerNews WSOP 2020 Online landing page--WSOP 2020 Online updates page
https://twitter.com/TuckonSports/status/1278518669245427712?s=20
Note that every US-based WSOP 2020 tournament plays out in one day. Reentries are as noted below.
The first five events played from July 1-5, and these were the results.
US Event 1: $500 NLHE Kickoff
A standard No Limit Hold’em event served as the launching pad for the 31-day, 31-event series. It permitted two reentries and brought in a solid field.
Buy-in: $500Unique players: 1,195Reentries: 520Total entries: 1,715Prize pool: $771,750Paid players: 248Minimum payout: $772Winner: Jonathan “Art.Vandelay” Dokler ($130,425.75)2nd place: Justin Turner ($80,416.35)3rd place: Tony Dunst ($57,881.25)4th place: Shawn Daniels ($42,060,37)5th place: Michael Balan ($30,947.17)6th place: Kyle Shappelle ($22,998.15)7th place: Daniel Park ($17,287.20)8th place: Mark Liedtke ($13,119.75)9th place: Taylor Van Kriegenbergh ($10,109.92)
This event winner hails from Ohio. Dokler won his first gold bracelet by beating a significant field of players, notably Phil “Lumestackin” Hellmuth. That notable aimed for his 16th bracelet but fell in 11th place.
https://twitter.com/WSOP/status/1278717023074152449?s=20
US Event 2: $1K NLHE 8-Handed Deepstack
The second day doubled the buy-in to $1K and offered more chips. Again, players could reenter up to two times, and many of them did just that.
Buy-in: $1KUnique players: 647Reentries: 272Total entries: 919Prize pool: $873,050Paid players: 143Minimum payout: $1,484Winner: Louis “PokeThese” Lynch ($168,585.95)2nd place: Ryan Ko ($104,242.17)3rd place: Kevin Garosshen ($73,423.50)4th place: Daniel Fischer ($52,383.00)5th place: Sean Prendiville ($37,890.37)6th place: Jason Somerville ($27,762.99)7th place: Jon Michael Gisler ($20,691.28)8th place: Matthew Mich ($15,627.59)
US Event 3: $400 NLHE
The third event was the lowest buy-in bracelet event thus far on the night before Independence Day. But quite a few players ponied up to participate, some even taking advantage of the two reentries.
Buy-in: $400Unique players: 1,450Reentries: 641Total entries: 2,091Prize pool: $752,760Paid players: 330Minimum payout: $602Winner: Robert “BustinBalls” Kuhn ($115,849.76)2nd place: Ronald Keren ($71,587.47)3rd place: Richard Federico ($52,241.54)4th place: Theodore Lui ($38,466.03)5th place: Daniel Huster ($28,604.88)6th place: Evan Scott ($21,453.66)7th place: Christopher Fuchs ($16,184.34)8th place: Roland Israelashvili ($12,345.26)9th place: Andrew Freund ($9,560.05)
On Independence Day in America, the fourth event of the WSOP 2020 Online offered fast action and two reentries. The holiday didn’t stop a reasonably-sized field from looking for a bracelet…fast.
Buy-in: $500Unique players: 828Reentries: 351Total entries: 1,179Prize pool: $530,550Paid players: 180Minimum payout: $743Winner: Matthew “Bodeyster” Bode ($97,090.65)2nd place: Brian Frasca ($59,952.15)3rd place: Caitlin Dillon ($42,603.16)4th place: Frank Marasco ($30,771.90)5th place: Kevin MacPhee ($22,389.21)6th place: David Bernsen ($16,500.10)7th place: Ryan Dodd ($12,361.81)8th place: Shawn Daniels ($9,337.68)9th place: Jason Luxenberg ($7,162.42)
Sundays are always big days for online poker, and players did line up for one of the few WSOP 2020 events that didn’t offer reentries. The freezeout was a welcome tournament for many.
Buy-in: $1KTotal players: 854Prize pool: $811,300Paid players: 126Minimum payout: $1,623Winner: Allen “Acnyc718” Chang ($161,286.44)2nd place: Phillip Yeh ($99,708.77)3rd place: Felipe Leme ($69,771.80)4th place: Andrew Campbell ($49,570.43)5th place: Timothy Begley ($35,697.20)6th place: Alexander Condon ($26,123.86)7th place: John Forlenza ($19,390.07)8th place: Josh Greenberg ($14,603.40)9th place: Quintin Trammell ($11,195.94)
What’s on Tap This Week?
Starting today, the next seven events will provide one non-hold’em event, another freezeout, and some bigger stacks. The tournaments are lined up as follows:
July 6: $600 PLO-8 6-Handed (3 reentries)July 7: $800 NLHE Knockout Deepstack (2 reentries)July 8: $500 NLHE FreezeoutJuly 9: $1K NLHE 6-Max (2 reentries)July 10: $600 NLHE Monster Stack (2 reentries)July 11: $500 NLHE Turbo Deepstack 6-Handed (2 reentries)July 12: $500 NLHE Big 500 (3 reentries)
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