The 2015 WPT500 at Aria Las Vegas is stacking up to be quite the competition this summer. The guaranteed prize pool has been doubled to $2 million GTD with 10 starting flights (and re-entries) priced at $565. Online poker players in New Jersey will be especially pleased to know that PartyPoker NJ is awarding multiple prize packages to the event with several ways to win.
2015 WPT500 @ Aria Las Vegas, May-July
Last year’s WPT500 was a huge success. The $500+$65 buy-in, $1mm GTD attracted 3,599 entries over multiple starting flights, nearly doubling the guarantee to $1.8 million. The 2015 WPT500 is sure to draw a much larger crowd thanks to organizers greatly enhancing the structure.
Tournament officials have amplified the guaranteed prize purse twice over to guarantee $2,000,000 this time around. Best of all, the entry fee remains unchanged at $565.
WPT officials also increased the number of starting flights to 10, bridging three extended weekends from May to July, to ensure maximum volume and availably to players. Competitors can re-enter the WPT500 once per starting day, bringing the total number of chances for a single player to reach the climactic end to 20.
Contributing the theory that this year’s WPT500 will have no problem exceeding its guarantee is the fact that just about every professional poker player in the world will be traveling to Las Vegas during the summer. That is, of course, when the World Series of Poker takes place at the Rio; hence the introduction of extended flights for the 2015 WPT500 to ensure everyone can make time for both major poker events.
Jeffrey Hass, Group Director of bwin.party, explained that the additional starting flights were designed “to give poker players in Las Vegas a more robust experience, and additional opportunities to make it to Day 2”, compared to last year’s tournament.
He also pointed out that, “Last year some players had to wait before being seated at ARIA on the final Day 1s. This year they are taking away banks of nearby slot machines to accommodate 20 more tables.”
The first starting flight begins on May 31, with Day 2’s post-flight action set to begin on July 5.
WPT500 Satellites at PartyPoker NJ
In 2009, PartyGaming acquired the World Poker Tour (WPT), followed by a merge with bwin in 2011 that resulted in the formation of bwin.party. PartyPoker NJ is operated and powered by bwin.party, and thanks to its parent company’s hosting of the World Poker Tour, is proudly delivering seats into the upcoming 2015 WPT500, with two routes to variable prize packages.
WPT500 Steps SNGs: Steps satellites comes in five steps, ranked 0-4. Step 0 has a meager entry of 10 Loyalty Points (LP), which can be earned by playing real-money cash games and tournaments at the New Jersey online poker room. Winning one step catapults a player into the following step, or players can buy-in to a higher step directly for anywhere from $1 (Step 1) to $100 (Step 4).
Step 4 SNGs also come in two varieties. There are 6-seat SNGs where the prize for 1st place is the $565 buy-in to the 2015 WPT500. Or, players can participate in 18-seat SNGs with the 1st place prize being a total prize package to the WPT500 (travel, buy-in, expenses, etc.) worth $1,600.
WPT500 MTT Steps Satellites: These regularly scheduled multi-table steps satellites are running daily at PartyPoker NJ. The prizes are set up a bit differently than SNG satellites, though.
Winning a Step 1 MTT grants the player a minimum of 1 ticket to Step 3; whereas Steps 2 and 3 award two tickets into the proceeding step. Step 4 satellites take place only on Sundays at 6:45pm ET, awarding a $1,600 WPT500 prize package to the winner.
There is a Step 0 in the MTT version of the satellite structure, but there is no fee whatsoever to take part. Step 0 satellites are hosted daily and are all played as Freerolls tournaments, where the winner moves on to Step 1.