WSOP 2024 Players Guide: Marquee Events

Several of these are the ‘Marquee’ events that take place over the weekends throughout the series, but some are simply events that are expected to be really popular and need more than one starting day in order to be able to accommodate everyone who wants to play. Let’s start off with a look at the history of multi-starting-day events at the WSOP.

In the old days of the World Series the number of players who showed up for the annual festival was much smaller than today. As such there was no need to run events with more than one starting day, as everyone who wanted to play could be sat at the same time. 

Then poker got popular, it started on the internet and soon the legions of new players who had found the game via html were venturing out of their homes to experience playing the game in a real life environment. 

Swapping the quick-fire game of online clicks for slower paced poker in offline bricks and mortar casinos became the defining feature of the poker boom of the early part of the 21st century.

As it began to get bigger, extra starting days were required, but at first only for the main event, as pretty much all other events went off as single starting day affairs. The first year that the main event had more than one starting day was in in 2005, which was also the first year that the series was held at the Rio, having moved from its original home downtown at the Horseshoe. 

Since then the WSOP main event has always featured multiple starting days. Just one year later, in 2006, the poker boom was in full thrust and not only did the main event require multiple starting days, but so did some of the side events.

 The very first open event of the 2006 WSOP saw 2,776 players enter a $1,500 NL Hold’em event that was won by Brandon Cantu for just over $750,000! Before long, tournaments with more than one starting day became common at the WSOP and now they account for more than 10% of the bracelet events.

At this stage of the World Series of Poker's history, events weren’t given fancy names. Tournament names did exactly what it said on their tins, they were descriptive and fully functional names. You knew what you were letting yourself in for as the naming convention was quite simply the buy-in followed by the format of event, e.g. $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha. It wasn’t until 2013 that this began to change. 

Prior to this, the only events that were not named in this way were the main event, the Casino Employees Event, the Antes Up for Africa charity tournament and the $50,000 Players Championship. The latter of these was introduced to the schedule in 2010.

In 2013 the WSOP included a new tournament with more than one starting day, called the Millionaire Maker, a $1,500 event which guarantees that first prize is at least $1m. It was a huge success with 6,343 entries and was won by Canadian Benny Chen, who did indeed become a poker millionaire, scooping the first prize of $1,199,104. 

It was certainly no surprise to anyone that the event was scheduled again the following year and to keep it company, a second ‘named’ multi-starting-day $1,500 tournament was introduced, called the Monster Stack. The second running of the Milly Maker saw participation grow to just under 8,000 and the inaugural Monster Stack was almost as popular, with 7,862 entries and a prize pool of over $10m!

In 2015 the $600 buy-in Colossus made its WSOP debut, attracting a staggering 22,374 entries, while both the Millionaire Maker and the Monster Stack each had over 7,000 entrants. Due to the big numbers, they required a few days to play out, becoming what the WSOP would later refer to as Marquee events. 

Huge tournaments that finally gave players who could not afford the main event a way to experience a big field multi-day event. These events changed the mould of the WSOP schedule and would shape the way the series would develop over the next decade.  

In 2017 a $365 event called The Giant was included for the first time, attracting just over 10,000 entries. Also in 2017 a higher buy-in marquee event called The Marathon was launched, predictably costing $2,620 to play, as a road race marathon is 26.2 miles long. This ran for a few years, but was discontinued after 2019. 2017 was also the first year that The Closer appeared on the schedule.

The 2019 WSOP featured a new event near the beginning of the festival called the Big 50, which replaced The Giant. The name was a reference to this being the 50th annual running of the World Series of Poker, not the buy-in, which was $500 and included a $5m guarantee. A total of 28,371 players competed in this event with Femi Fashakin taking it down for $1,147,449! The $1,000 Mini Main Event was also first held in 2019.

After a couple of disrupted years due to Covid, the WSOP returned to its summer slot in 2022 and the event that been called the Big 50 was renamed The Housewarming, to mark the change of host venue. The new Balllys and Paris house did indeed heat up very quickly as 20,080 players took their seats with Henrieto Acaim emerging victorious and $701,215 better off for his not inconsiderable efforts. 

Also in 2017, $777 Lucky Sevens, a seven-handed tournament which had been played online on GG Poker during lockdown now found itself as a live WSOP bracelet event. The Ultra Stack event, which had also begun life as an online WSOP event was introduced in 2022 as a live event.

In 2023 a $1,000 Mystery Bounty Million had become the first multi-starting-day event of the series. It had 18,188 entrants and was won by Tyler Brown for a cool $1m. Another new event that was born in 2023 was the $300 Gladiators of Poker, which saw 23,088 players battle out for a share of a $3m guaranteed prize pool. That number of players is almost half the original PARTcapacity of the Coloseeum in Rome, where Gladiators traditionally did battle in ancient times.

The Seniors Championship has also grown so much that it now becomes a two flight event. Other new marquee events are a Mystery Bounty PLO that requires two starting days and the $3,000 Mid-Stakes NLH Championship.