How to choose your WSOP tournament

Posted by pokerguru on May 26, 2009

There are a lot of people that are heading out to Vegas with a few thousand dollars and looking to take their shot at a poker title. The question is what tournament should they choose? It is not so easy to pick, but if you don’t pick right, you could be wasting your money. There are a lot of things to consider before you put your name down on that registration form.

If you are looking for a huge field in a lower buy in, you are going to want to get out there early and play in the first open event or you will want to wait until the end and play in the buy ins that are close to the main event. The first event typically has one of the largest fields of the event. The later events also get big fields as everyone is scrambling for the last shot at a bracelet.

Something else to consider is how long and how many days do you or can you play for. If you are going after one of the events that are mentioned above, you can expect to be in the chair for about 12-14 hours during the first day and another marathon session on the second day. A lot of these early events go for 3 days and that is a huge time commitment that you have to be ready for if you are really going to compete.

If you are looking for a legitimate opportunity to take down a tournament, you may want to consider more of the ones that start about half way through the WSOP. More specifically, you want to look at tournaments that are the day before or day after some of the larger buy ins that you know the professionals are going to be in. For instance, the HORSE Event is something that they all look forward to. However, the price of the event dictates that only the best of the best and the richest of the richest are going to be in it. This means the tournaments that are bookends to that will be lacking professional players and therefore you can have an easier time of it, hopefully.

Another reason you may want to look at coming into some of the tournaments that are scheduled during the middle is because a lot of the players that are there for the whole stretch begin to get a little wary and if they aren’t cashing, they also get very frustrated and start to make sloppy plays. Coming in fresh will give you an added edge over them.

We all know that everything has to be lined up perfectly in order to cash in one of these tournaments, let alone make the final table. You need to make sure you can get everything possible to fit your style of play and put you in the best scenario. Study the formats and schedules thoroughly to decide which tournament will actually give you the best chance for win. That little edge may just get you some new jewelry.