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WSOP PA Launches and Announces Bracelet Events

Written by Jennifer Newell
Last updated on
WSOP Pennsylvania

After years of waiting, wondering, and anticipating, poker players in Pennsylvania can now log on to the WSOP.com online poker website and play. The launch this week was successful, and a couple days of testing led directly into a full-time real-money poker site.

From the time that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed the bill to allow state-licensed online poker and gambling in his state in October 2017, it took nearly four years for the World Series of Poker to launch its online product. The first online casinos didn’t launch until the summer of 2019, and the WSOP-affiliated online casino was the among the first to launch. PokerStars launched its online poker product later that year…but it wasn’t until the second full week of July that the WSOP site finally joined the fray.

The WSOP was keenly aware of the long wait. So, new players will receive some perks.

Not only did the site become the first in the US market to launch on the Poker 8 platform, the newest offering from 888poker, WSOP PA also announced eight 2021 WSOP Online bracelet events.

Testing, Testing

As promised, the WSOP PA poker site opened its virtual doors on Monday, July 12. The plan was to do so on a limited basis during the first few days for testing, which happened for the first few days of the week. The operator hoped to garner approval from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) by Friday, July 16, in order to launch by the weekend for round-the-clock poker.

Testing went well. It went well enough that the PGCB offered its approval on July 15. That opened the site to real-money play 24 hours per day.

By noon that day, the WSOP announced that the site was live and approved for anyone – of legal age – located within state borders.

Senior VP of the WSOP at Caesars Entertainment, Ty Stewart, noted the company was thrilled to open the site. “The real winners in this expansion are the players who join us at WSOP.com. Our team is laser-focused on providing the most value to poker players in the state and are confident in the potential of our online poker product.”

Initial Offers and Promos

WSOP PA kicked off its first week with several welcome bonuses. Players could (and still can) do the 100% first-deposit match up to $1K or $50 in free play. The other option is to deposit at least $10 in exchange for seven tickets to $100 freerolls for new players only.

Speaking of freerolls, all new players who deposit funds before August 15 will receive an entry to a special freeroll with $50K in prizes. That Depositor Freeroll will happen on August 22 and include three seats to the WSOP Main Event happening later this year in Las Vegas, each seat worth $10K. The first-place and second-place finishers will each receive a seat, and the third seat will go to a player in the tournament chosen by a random drawing.

In addition, WSOP PA introduced the Sunday $75K. The $215 buy-in tournament will guarantee $75K for the prize pool.

Cash game players found micro-stakes games at $0.01/$0.02 and higher, SNGs as low as $0.25, and BLAST fast-play tournaments started at $0.10. All of these, along with tournament offerings, will increase upon demand over time.

Eight WSOP Bracelets

As a surprise to nearly everyone, the WSOP decided to offer eight gold bracelet events in August for state players only. Since the site is not connected to the other WSOP sites in New Jersey and Nevada, which are offering their WSOP events this month, state players will get their own chance next month.

The series of eight tournaments will run August 6-16, with one tournament per day and some running more than one day. Every event will start at 5:30pm ET and award a gold WSOP bracelet to the winner. They are also all No Limit Hold’em.

-Event 1 on Aug 6-9:  $500 buy-in Keystone Kick-Off Days 1A-C & Day 2

-Event 2 on Aug 9:  $500 buy-in PKO

-Event 3 on Aug 10:  $3,200 buy-in High Roller

-Event 4 on Aug 11:  $400 buy-in 6-Max

-Event 5 on Aug 12:  $777 buy-in Lucky 7s

-Event 6 on Aug 13:  $400 buy-in PKO

-Event 7 on Aug 14:  $600 buy-in MonsterStack

-Event 8 on Aug 13-16:  $1K buy-in PA Championship Days 1A-C & Day 2

Each tournament allows rebuys, not standard reentries, presumably due to regulations.

 

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