World Poker Tour Begins 10th Season

The World Poker Tour began its 10^th season with the Legends of Poker tournament at the Bicycle Casino in California, starting a historic year for the world’s most prestigious poker tour. The WPT also used the opportunity to announce some new changes to their coverage of WPT events.

One of the biggest innovations will be live Internet streams of all WPT final tables. Professional poker player Tony Dunst will provide commentary for the live coverage, which has never before been available for WPT events.

In addition, the WPT announced changes to their television coverage. The final table set has been redesigned, featuring large monitors that can display a variety of information for both the audience watching live and the television audience, including tweets by players, up-to-date chip counts, and the results of audience polls.

As for the tournament itself, the Legends of Poker Main Event featured a re-entry format that allows players two chances to bring a solid stack into the second day of play. The buy-in is $3,500, and 322 players entered on Day 1A Thursday. However, anyone eliminated on Day 1A – or anyone who was willing to forfeit their Day 1A chips to try to do better on a second try – was also welcome to play on Friday’s Day 1B – along, of course, with new players who hadn’t played on Thursday.In fact, the turnout on Day 1B was even larger, with 435 players participating in the second starting day.

The two groups will merge on Saturday for Day 2 of play. The final table is scheduled to be played on Tuesday. As of yet, tournament prizes and a total prize pool have not been announced, but it should exceed $2 million. Chip leaders at the end of Day 1A included Matt Berkey and Soi Nguyen, both of whom had over 200,000 chips.